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checkoutmybookshelf · 2 years ago

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The Polin Fic (Part 3 of 3)

Hello friends! I have written a Polin fic to pass the time between seasons of Bridgerton, and I thought I might share for those of you who also ship. This is arguably safe for work, but anyone with medical/wound/illness triggers may want to give this one a pass.

This is the final instalment of the story. It follows largely the show continuity, with the odd bit of book continuity in there.

This is PART 3, so if you're just finding this now, head on back to my blog (I'm pretty sure that's what we call our tumblr pages? I am a tumblr novice) and check out Parts 1 and 2. They are also available on Ao3.

Anna took one look at the slightly at sea Bridgerton men and–masterfully restraining an eye roll–proceeded to sort out the mess that was the tea tray. It was still covered in spilled milk, porcelain shards, and uneaten food. Additionally, there were two basins of pinkish water and a pile of dirty cloths that needed attending. She rang for another maid, who appeared promptly, and the pair got the room back in some semblance of order.

While the maids were setting the room to rights, Colin walked to the window and stared out, both to avoid being underfoot by pacing and because from that vantage point, he could keep a tacit eye on Penelope. As he watched the sky turn peach and rose with lavender edges, he regretted his choice somewhat. As a seasoned traveler, he knew better than most that nights could be long, and Dr. Taylor’s words rang in his ears: if she survives the night.

Twice during his travels in Greece and Cyprus, he had heard the phrase “if they survive the night.” The first had been after a horse was mauled by a wildcat the party had failed to see in time to shoot, the second after a member of the travel party had taken a bad fall. Neither had seen dawn. In both instances, however, Colin had had his hands full with tasks, keeping the fire going, ensuring the rest of the horses and pack animals were tended, and other camp chores. He had kept himself distracted and useful, and when he had run out of camp chores as his colleague lay dying by the fire, he had distracted himself by writing to Penelope. His hands were fidgeting, wishing for similar distractions now.

Anthony moved to stand beside Colin, hands tucked neatly behind his back, watching the sun set.

“I don’t know how you did it,” said Anthony, quietly. Colin hummed an unspoken question in response, eyes fixed on the horizon. “As soon as I realized the doctor had Kate in hand after her accident, I couldn’t remain in the room. The thought of watching her go…seeing with my own eyes that I had lost her was more than I could have stood. And yet, you stayed with Miss Featherington.” Colin’s jaw worked for a moment before he snorted.

“Just when I thought you all might have at least read my letters, even if you did not write back.”

“Colin, this does not compare to the horse–”

“Of course it does not! We lost one of our party in Greece as well.” Colin was silent for a moment before admitting, “That does not compare either, not truly.” The two men stood quietly as the sun slid fully below the horizon, and the maids in the room lit candles.

From the corner of his eye, Colin could see that Penelope was growing restive, her head turning back and forth on the pillow, and her body shifting as much as it might without causing undue strain on her wound. Something about the candlelight accentuated the pained scrunch of her face. Were her eyes open? Colin was not aware of moving to her side; he simply found himself there.

“Pen, are you awake?” he asked. Her eyes turned toward him, but they still held the empty, glassy, nightmare look; she did not register his presence. She seemed to be in the throes of a fever dream as she whispered, “No, she shall not have Whistledown.” Her voice died away to incoherent mumbling as she continued to gently thrash beneath the covers.

Damned bloody Lady Whistledown. Colin stood abruptly and nearly knocked over the dressing screen as he emerged beyond it to pace the room, furious. Even delirious from fever and with her life hanging in the balance, Penelope was still choosing Lady Whistledown. He couldn’t seem to merge Lady Whistledown and Penelope in his head. There was Pen—beautiful, clever, vibrant Pen, who had been a fixture in his life since they were both children and whose letters had been his constant companions during his travels—and some faceless harridan who had challenged the crown, nearly ruined Eloise, and succeeded in aborting his and Marina’s elopement. And in Colin’s head, the harridan was firmly to blame for putting Pen in danger. Without Lady Whistledown, he reasoned, Lord Andrew would never have ordered Pen killed, she would never have been exposed, and the queen would not have threatened her life. She would not be lying before him, hanging on to life by a thread.

When the door opened, Colin’s head snapped toward it with nearly a snarl. A footman entered, handing Anthony a note. Reading it, Anthony sighed. “I am summoned to see Lady Danbury. If anything changes with Miss Featherington, Colin, call for the doctor and then have me fetched. And do not frighten the maid, scowling so.” He clapped a hand on Colin’s shoulder, then left the room, leaving Colin and Penelope alone, save for Anna, who was unobtrusively blending into a corner, a bit of mending in her hands.

Finding himself largely alone with his thoughts and increasingly too tired to pace, Colin went to draw a chair to Penelope’s bedside and stopped. He was caught between how alarmingly right the action felt, his anger at Whistledown, and the sense that the entirety of the ton would disapprove. Colin growled. He’d been quick enough to ignore propriety when Anthony and their mother were in the room; why on earth would he hesitate now? With a bit more scraping and squeaking against the floor than absolutely necessary, Colin moved the chair to where he could easily take Pen’s hand and sat, arms crossed over his chest, scowl still firmly on his face.

“Were it not for Lady Whistledown, I’d be coming to talk to you about this,” he informed her. “It was always you I wrote to when I felt uncertain in my travels.” He reached again for a letter he was not carrying, sighed, and rubbed at his eyes instead. They felt grainy from a lack of sleep. When he realized he was fidgeting because he was waiting for Penelope to answer him, he forced himself to stop. The fever and infection had her in their grip; she was not going to respond to him. She would not simply wake up and tell him that Lady Whistledown was gone for good and that she would be the Pen he had always known.

Except…

Before she had been out in society, she had been a fixture in the Bridgerton household but as Eloise’s friend, primarily. It had not truly been until Pen’s first social season that she and Colin had really gotten to know one another, and how much her letters had meant to him on his travels had initially been a surprise. Thinking of her letters, Colin realized that if he had stopped and thought for more than a moment and held Pen’s letters and issues of Whistledown up beside each other, he would have been able to see similarities.

When Pen spoke to people at social events, it was always polite and often brief. The politeness and brevity carried into her letter writing, but the letters also revealed a wit and a deeply insightful mind that rarely came to the fore in polite society. Unlike Colin’s other correspondents, who rarely wrote enough to have developed their own voice in their letters, he could always hear Pen in her writing. She had favorite turns of phrase, particular ways of constructing sentences to make him laugh or rethink an argument that had been overly shallow. Occasionally, she even revealed flashes of how widely she had read with an allusion that he would have expected from Benedict or Lumley, not a gently reared young lady who was expected to have read enough to be “accomplished,” but not so much as to develop thoughts of her own.

Lady Whistledown’s voice was sharper, harder, and more overtly authoritative than Pen’s in her letters, but the sentence construction was too similar to be coincidence. Her easy, casual use of parentheticals in her letters to clarify a fact for him or drop a joke to make him smile was simply a softer version of Whistledown’s use of them to highlight a fact or offer a particularly cutting piece of commentary. If he recalled correctly, both the barb about Penelope looking like an overripe citrus in her yellow dresses and the reference to Kate Sharma as a shrew had been parentheticals in Whistledown, and both were near-identical in construction and placement, as many of Pen’s own observations to him about other matters. Furthermore, typical scandal sheets often either refrained from using dependent phrases and clauses in that way—for fear that their primary audience of gently-bred young ladies would be left behind in understanding—or preferred dashes.

Equally similar were Pen and Whistledown’s ways of seeing the world. Pen herself was softer in her assessment of marriage mart prospects in her letters to Colin, but the way she framed the marriage mart and the ton itself were, now he stopped to compare the two, shatteringly similar to Whistledown. Pen’s challenges to his thoughts, his assumptions, and his worldview were simply softly dropped lace cousins of the leather gauntlets Lady Whistledown had hurled at the queen’s feet.

If anything, Pen had been taking an enormous risk by writing to him so consistently. Colin himself was more than a casual writer. Pen knew of and encouraged his journaling while he traveled. He had been thinking of asking her to read them when he had returned, before he had put his foot so firmly in his mouth. But of the entire ton, Colin had known how Penelope wrote. And while there were differences in tone and content, it was fairly clear on close inspection that Pen’s and Whistledown’s voices were one and the same. Only Colin could have made that connection; Pen didn’t write to Eloise often, the two preferred to spend time together in person. Penelope had given Colin the means to uncover her secret, had trusted him not to, and he had simply failed to see it. Had failed to see her.

His stomach dropped through the floor as he realized the full extent of his second betrayal. It hadn’t been leaving without saying goodbye; it had been failing to see her and—as Benedict had said—asking her to be less than she was. His inability to see that she and Whistledown were one and the same, and that Whistledown was almost certainly simply a manifestation of Penelope’s own strength, wit, and skill had led him to dismiss that part of her. To ask her to abandon it. Small wonder she had ordered him out and not trusted him to carry out her plan; he had given her ample grounds to mistrust him—twice.

For the first time, Colin could see Pen’s plan with the final issue of Whistledown clearly. Not, as his siblings had suggested, by removing Pen from the equation, but by reconciling Pen and Whistledown and seeing her as truly herself. She had very neatly gotten exactly what she wanted and hamstrung the queen’s ability to fake Whistledown or publicly accuse Pen herself of treason for criticizing the crown. And she had done it from what was essentially a prison cell, with a stab wound (and the resulting fever), while sidestepping his clumsy attempts to stop her.

Penelope’s breathing began to rasp in her throat.

Colin surged forward in his seat, thinking she couldn’t breathe. Anna was at Penelope’s side as well, efficiently checking her pulse and airway. Then she took Penelope’s hand and gently pinched it. The small peak took long moments to melt away. Anna looked troubled as she lowered the hand.

“She can breathe, I think,” she said. “But she has not had anything to drink today, and I do not know that she has since the first time her stitches popped. Someone really ought to go for the doctor…” her voice trailed off, knowing that Colin was not going to do the proper thing and suggest that he himself fetch the doctor. She sighed when he proved her right and merely rose to pour a glass of water before returning to his seat.

“I will try to wake her enough to drink something while you are gone,” he said firmly.

“My lord, it’s hardly proper,” she began.

“Hang proper, Miss Featherington is extremely ill,” he snapped. Anna turned on her heel and marched out. The best she could do now was be quick.

Colin turned back to Penelope. He was loath to try shaking her awake, not wanting to jostle her wound. He settled for patting her cheek while calling her name. He was alarmed by how hot and dry her face was; with a fever that high, ought she not be clammier? They must get water into her. She could not succeed so brilliantly only to succumb to this. He would not lose her.

Penelope roused enough to turn her face away from him—he patted incrementally harder, avoiding the hand-shaped bruise that still shadowed her face. Her eyes finally flickered open.

“Colin?” Her voice sounded as though her vocal cords had been replaced with wood rasps.

“Yes, Pen, it’s me. You must drink something, here.” She was cognizant enough that she shakily took hold of the glass, though Colin maintained a grip on it just in case. She took a tiny sip, swirled it around her mouth for a moment, swallowed, and lowered the glass.

“Where has Lady Danbury gone?” she asked.

“Pen that was last night. A day has passed. What do you remember?” Sheer panic crossed Penelope’s face.

“A day! No, no, it cannot have, I must get the next Whistledown to print. The queen cannot be allowed to have it.” She tried to rise, to get out of the bed, but was unable to even push herself to a sitting position. Body trembling, Penelope tried again, fighting Colin’s gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Let me up, Colin. I must—”

“Pen, Whistledown went to print. It is all right, you succeeded. Please, Pen, just rest. Drink a little more.” He held the glass out to her again. She took another small sip, eyes glassy but still appearing to see the room.

Expecting their mothers—undoubtedly furious at the lack of a chaperone in the room—and the doctor at any moment, Colin took a chance.

“Penelope, I owe you several very large apologies.”

Penelope took another sip of water to hide her incredulity. He wanted to do this now of all times? When she was fighting all out to stay present and barely succeeding? Already, there were creeping stars and darkness at the edges of her vision, and she simply did not want to pay attention to the black hole of pain and wrongness that was her abdomen. But naturally, Colin chose that moment to attempt to make amends. She might have laughed had she been alone and sure that laughing wouldn’t overwhelm her.

“Colin, I assure you there is no need–”

“Pen, there is every need. I behaved like an utter cad with no regard for how my words or actions would affect you–affect our friendship…” He petered off, suddenly uncomfortable. He had to apologize, had to set things right between them, but “our friendship” had felt dissatisfying, empty. The phrase no longer encompassed all Pen was to him. He fumbled, quite unable to find another phrase and finish the sentence.

For her part, Penelope was simply waiting for him to finish. He had made his feelings quite clear when he said he would never court her and clearer still when he had casually suggested she abandon Whistledown. She would not waste her energy here and now hoping that he had changed his mind, that he could see all of her, and find it in himself to meet her love with his own. However, she could not find it in herself to order him out again. If he needed his guilt assuaged, fine. She could do that much, and then she could rest. And when she recovered–she refused to listen to the creeping voice in the back of her mind that whispered “if” as it watched the swirling shadows at the edges of her vision–she would mourn Whistledown and then pick herself up, turn herself to the future, and leave Colin Bridgerton behind.

The silence between them stretched on, Colin feeling more and more the fool for being unable to finish his sentence or his overall apology, and Penelope increasingly understanding that she was losing the battle to stay conscious. She wanted him to finish his sentence, or perhaps begin a new one. Something, anything for her to focus on and help keep the darkness back.

She had forgotten about the glass of water in her hand until Colin’s expression changed from chagrin to concern, and he took the dangerously tilting glass from her hand.

“Pen? Are you all right? Are you still with me?” To Penelope, he sounded very far away. The breath she took to tell him that she was still there was too sharp, too deep. The pain and darkness pulled Penelope down once again, Colin’s face fixed in her mind’s eye.

As Penelope’s face twisted in pain and her eyes fluttered closed on him again, Colin caught both her hands, as though he could anchor her to consciousness. It was a long while before her face began to relax, and Colin had to pay close attention to ensure that she was breathing at all. It struck him then that Anna had said she would fetch the doctor, and she had still not returned. He did not imagine for a moment that the girl had dawdled, so what was keeping her?

“It seems Lady Whistledown was wrong, then,” said a voice behind Colin. “A rare occurrence indeed.” As he whirled and rose, Colin hid behind a polite bow the step that put him bodily between Penelope’s still form and the woman who had threatened her life.

“I beg your pardon, your Majesty?” Colin asked, wanting nothing so much as to get himself and Penelope out of this encounter with their skins intact.

“Lady Whistledown wrote that you, Mr. Bridgerton, would never dream of courting the youngest Miss Featherington. And yet, here you are. Rumors of my displeasure with the young miss are rampant; most of the ton have abandoned the Featheringtons as lost to society at best and about to be banished in disgrace at worst. And yet you risk your own reputation and that of your family over a girl you would reportedly never consider courting. You even risk her reputation–what is left of it–by remaining at her side, quite unchaperoned.

So, Mr. Bridgerton, either you are the worst imaginable sort of rake or else the Bridgerton family’s penchant for finding love matches with the absolute maximum amount of scandal possible has once again come to the fore.” The queen paused, eyeing Colin pensively.

Colin, normally effortlessly charming in even the most awkward social situations, found himself at a loss for words. This was no matchmaking mama he could put off with a clever quip and a charming grin. The queen still held Pen’s life in her hands, could still decide that Pen had to pay for everything she had printed.

“Surely, your Majesty, despite Lady Whistledown’s prodigious skill at uncovering scandal, she is not so omniscient that she could know everything that goes on,” he said. He then had to cover a gulp as the queen frowned at him, eyes darting to Penelope.

“Hmph. Do you often continue to beat the bushes after the birds have flown, Mr. Bridgerton? That makes for an extremely poor hunt.”

“I bow to your expertise, ma’am,” he said, inclining his head.

“While flattery is the obvious choice, it is also the boring one,” Queen Charlotte snapped. “You are on unfamiliar ground, Mr. Bridgerton, and the familiar choices may not be best. Your Dr. Taylor says he does not expect Miss Featherington to survive the night–do not look surprised, Mr. Bridgerton. Do not for a moment imagine I do not know all that goes on under my own roof.” She smirked at him, eyes cold. “Lady Danbury is clever, but she forgets that she cannot escape my notice; however much she may try.”

So she knew that he and Lady Danbury had visited Penelope the previous night. But she didn’t seem to know that he and Benedict had ensured that the final issue of Whistledown had gone to print. He was not about to enlighten her about his family’s role in that endeavor, but he could not let her dismissal of Pen’s chances stand.

“With all due respect, ma’am, Miss Featherington will recover,” he said. The queen raised an eyebrow at him.

“If she will be fine in the morning, then why are you here?” she asked. “Surely, propriety would have you home now and calling during respectable hours tomorrow. You cannot mistrust your family doctor, not if you specifically requested him above the royal physician.” Her tone should have been a warning, but Colin didn’t hear it.

“Miss Featherington is a dear friend, I would be at her side in adversity,” he shot back, aware that his tone bordered dangerously on insubordination. The queen rolled her eyes.

“You sound like that little American fellow, Adams. He referred to his wife in precisely the same terms when he was here for an audience in ‘85.”

“Please, do not mistake my meaning, your Majesty–” Colin began before the queen’s waved hand silenced him.

“Lie to yourself, if you wish, Mr. Bridgerton, but I am bored with Bridgertons and their inability to recognize love when it places them firmly before the displeasure of their queen.” She narrowed her eyes. “I ought to order you out, Mr. Bridgerton.”

He took a half step back until his legs contacted the edge of Penelope’s bed, anchoring himself to her.

“It is your Majesty’s prerogative to give the order,” he said, meeting her eyes directly in what ordinarily would have been a catastrophic breach of protocol. But she herself had said they were in unfamiliar territory, and he had a promise to keep that overshadowed such petty constructs as propriety and rank. That promise gave him the courage to add, “And you may test its effectiveness at your convenience.” Anthony would kill him, Colin thought distantly. Well, Anthony could join the queue. Nothing was more important than Penelope.

The clear, bone-deep truth of the thought that nothing in the world was more important than the woman on the bed behind him reframed the world around Colin. It was as though he had stepped from shifting sand dunes onto a solid stone and grounded himself. Standing between the Queen of England and the woman he loved was exactly where he should be.

Had Penelope been conscious just then, she would have seen Colin’s body language change. Generally, the “Bridgerton backbone” involved subtle jaw and shoulder tension, and a tendency to set the weight ever-so-slightly back on the left foot. That tension eased out of Colin’s jaw and shoulders, and he squared his weight center: rock-solid and sure.

Queen Charlotte’s eyes remained narrowed, but the corner of her mouth may have quirked infinitesimally. “If I recall correctly—and I am never wrong about figures—there remain five Bridgertons to attach themselves in matrimony. I should hate to set the precedent now of giving orders that Bridgertons feel they can flout. Your Dr. Taylor has been called away—another of his patients has apparently gone into labor—and will return to see the state of things in the morning. Until then, Mr. Bridgerton.” Without waiting for him to bow politely, the queen pivoted and strode from the room.

Colin’s knees went weak, and he half collapsed into the chair behind him, reaching for Penelope’s hand again.

“It’ll be all right, Pen,” he muttered. “I promise you it’ll be all right.” He realized he was gripping her hand so hard that her fingers were changing color, and he forced his hands to relax around hers.

She was too pale, the fever spots on her cheeks too red, and overall too still. Lacking a clock, Colin glanced out the dark window. He could not even see the signs of false dawn in the sky. How much longer did Pen have to hold on until she was out of danger?

She was not breathing enough to suit him. Each breath was slow and shallow, and an eternity passed between inhale and exhale. Even hunched over in his chair, he couldn’t tell that she was breathing at all. He slid off the chair onto his knees, still holding her hand as he bent his head next to hers to listen for each breath. The fever heat radiated from her face, warming his. Quite without his thinking about it, Colin’s breath matched Penelope’s. Barely a minute later, he gasped in a deep breath. How could she recover with so little air?

He had just understood that he loved Penelope. He still had to make amends for how much of an idiot he had been, to tell her how much he loved her. And yet…he may not have the chance to do so. Colin had no sense of what a world without Penelope would look like. He had no desire to even imagine what that world would look like.

Feeling as though he and Pen had fallen out of time, Colin watched her face and breathed with her, waiting for dawn.

Penelope dreamed. It began innocuously enough, even pleasantly. In her dream, Colin had not dismissed the idea of courting her or the idea that she had the skill to be Lady Whistledown, and she could simply enjoy dancing with him, as she had through two London seasons. The music changed—a waltz. He pulled her in close, closer than propriety allowed, but Pen found she didn’t mind. That was when the first bolt of lightning struck the ground a meter or two from where they waltzed.

She tried to pull Colin from the dance floor, to find some shelter, to point out that lightning was striking the floor with increasing frequency, but he did not hear, did not see. He simply held her closer, speeding his step with the tempo of the music until Pen thought she might fly apart with how frantic everything was. They had to stop; she had to breathe, had to think. If she could just have a moment—a single moment of stillness—she could form and execute a plan.

The music stopped more abruptly than a typical orchestra at a ball would, and Colin stopped just as suddenly. She barely registered the moment before Colin was struck by a bolt of lightning and fell to dust around her.

Penelope knew intellectually that her heart was still safely ensconced in her chest. But in that moment, her heart fell to the floor and was ground beneath the heel of a scowling man holding a knife. She turned to run, making it only a couple of steps before she sunk to the knee in a mass the consistency of tar, but smelling like ink. Time and space stretched as one moment Pen was alone in the morass, and the next the knife-wielder was before her. She accumulated cut after cut—all largely superficial—as she struggled to put one foot before the other to get herself away, get herself stable, get herself safe. She could do this; she had done far more with far less and walked without fear through the city in the wee hours. She had nearly single-handedly kept her family afloat financially in the wake of her father’s murder.

She heard voices echo across the span of the mire as she struggled. Her mama, reminding her of all her insecurities about her body, her weight, and whether she would find love. Prudence and Philippa, cruel simply because they were bored. Cressida Cowper’s voice deriding Penelope without saying a single thing that was in itself cruel or mean-spirited but taken as a whole was a damning disparagement of Penelope’s existence. Eloise’s voice, insisting that Whistledown could do more, more, before finally repudiating not Lady Whistledown but Penelope herself. An insipid wallflower, indeed. I wish never to see or speak to you again. Eloise’s voice made her shudder deep in her chest, and tears slid down her face, but she kept moving forward. She could do this. She would do this no matter what anyone else said.

She kept listening.

Ordinarily, it was no trouble to block out the voices that pinched and stabbed at her heart, but she was listening for the one voice that was unfailingly supportive and never failed to lift her spirits. A voice she knew, whether it came to her ears at a ball or to her mind in a letter. The voice that always seemed to know when she would appreciate a joke or a kind word, even when she could not ask for them.

Was this muck getting deeper? She could no longer lift her feet clear with each step, and she had the horrible sense that if she were to trip and fall, she would be submerged and held under by morass’s viscosity. She simply had to go slower to ensure that she would not fall. The crushing sense of desperately wanting help and knowing that not only was none forthcoming but she also could not open her mouth to ask was intimately familiar. She pressed her lips together, swallowed hard, and kept going. She would manage this herself; she was good at that.

The viscous, inky fluid was above her hips now, and she needed her arms to help pull herself inch by agonizing inch forward. The voices of her sisters, Mama, Cressida, and Eloise continued and grew louder. Still, Pen strained to hear the voice she was listening for. She was so focused on listening that she quite forgot to use her eyes and never saw the wake that would have warned her that something else was under the surface of the murk.

A bare second before something looped around her ankle and pulled, the voices went silent. She felt her feet go from under her, and she began to sink slowly. The ground that had moments before been solid under her feet seemed to disappear entirely, and the time it took for the muck to creep up her torso was enough for Pen to truly begin to panic, thrashing slowly and to no avail as she sunk to her collarbones and the muck crept up her neck, a millimeter at a time. Panting to the point of hyperventilation, and feeling the lightheaded buzz spread through her body and further impede her movement, Pen tipped her head back to keep her mouth and nose clear. She had to think, had to keep her head. She would survive this somehow. Her ears would go under in a moment, and she shuddered involuntarily at the thought of this tarry goo sludging its way into her ears.

Surely the queen cannot believe you are Lady Whistledown.

I would never dream of courting Penelope Featherington.

Colin’s eyes as he refused to believe she was Lady Whistledown filled her vision and his laugh with his friends the night of her mama’s ball until she slipped fully beneath the surface of the viscous fluid and her senses went silent.

The back of Pen’s mind had suggested that she might find the bottom and kick off it, or bob back to the surface, as she had read that those who fell into quicksand did if they did not panic. But in the strange logic of dreams, as soon as she was fully submerged, Penelope knew that the fluid around her was more akin to a dry sandpit. She knew with utter certainty that she would make it worse by moving.

So what if she simply let go?

She was exhausted, and surrendering required no effort on her part. There was a peace to simply letting the sludge hold her body and not worrying about surviving. Everything she had told Colin about her family being looked after was true. She herself had killed Whistledown. Colin had made it clear that he would not be there for her. The question Penelope faced, the choice she had to make, was whether or not to be.

She had never liked Hamlet. Had always thought that his assertion that his love outmatched that of a thousand brothers was unnecessarily melodramatic, and that if he had simply made a choice—found his own “Bridgerton backbone,” she thought, as a smirk and a pang competed for space in her heart—he would have managed to find a solution that did not involve a body count. But faced with a body count of one, Pen was suddenly unsure. Would it truly be so bad to leave all the voices that hurt her behind? To embrace the rest that was silence?

Silence.

Penelope and silence were old nemeses. She had endured it her entire life, and although she could kill Lady Whistledown to keep her out of another’s hands—she nearly inhaled then, surrendering to the silence, in grief that Lady Whistledown was gone—she could neither go silently into eternity nor remain silent. That truly was beyond her capacity.

Penelope would be.

She began to move, carefully, purposefully. The long moments of contemplation had made her lose track of which direction was up, and she couldn’t feel herself rising if she remained still. Since her only real hope was dumb luck, she chose a direction and kicked, scooping blindly with her hands and deeply regretting her mama’s refusal to allow her swimming lessons as a child. She might have been able to make a more efficient job of it now if she had any sense of how one was meant to swim.

Even lacking any practical knowledge, Penelope knew quickly that she was truly lost, and was likely making it worse. She had read about people who survived the initial rush of avalanches, only to die digging in the wrong direction, and she had the dreadful sense that that was all she was accomplishing by flailing around in darkness and silence. She would have been grateful for the spiteful voices again; they could have spurred her on.

Penelope had no idea how long she tried to find her way out of the black morass; it could have been hours, or it could have been minutes, but she was flagging and she knew it. But, having chosen to try, she would keep fighting until she couldn’t. She wished she could call for help, but there was no one to hear her, no one to find her. A sob tore from her chest, and her mouth filled with viscous sludge that tasted of ink. Panicked—would it go to her lungs?—Penelope thrashed and felt herself begin to drift away with a terrifying finality.

“I was a cad, Pen.”

How could she be hearing him? Her senses were buried along with her body.

“I was careless of your friendship, your skills, your feelings. I hurt you.”

This wasn’t a fever dream, Pen was sure. She was hearing him, but his voice was soft, and she was drifting away. She strained, listening. She was still hurt, still furious with him, but if she was falling away, Colin Bridgerton’s voice was still very much something she wanted to hear. She stopped thrashing, stopped worrying, stopped everything but listening.

“I am so, so sorry, Penelope. I was an idiot, and I took you for granted. I should never have done that. I should never have belittled Whistledown to you, should never have asked you to give up a part of yourself. Benedict and I made sure that the final issue was printed. I thought—I was a fool. I thought that if we could just complete your plan, you would wake up and be all right. You might not ever forgive me, Pen. But if you simply lived to hate me, that would be all right; it would mean you were still here.”

Penelope’s heart went erratic, stumbling on beats of different lengths and skipping some altogether. This was nothing she had ever heard from Colin before. He was popular, had always been popular, enjoyed being popular, and had never in his life accepted anyone hating him. He had broken his leg as a child in a bid to befriend another boy. It hadn’t worked, but Colin had not ceased pulling idiotic stunts to be part of the group or to ensure that someone thought favorably of him.

Distractedly, Penelope noted that the inky sludge seemed to be less oppressive, as though someone had thinned it ever-so-slightly with water. It rippled as something that was half a laugh and half a sob reverberated in Colin’s voice.

“I don’t know if you can hear me, Pen, but I couldn’t let you go without saying this to you. Please, please, Pen. Don’t go. You don’t have to stay for me, you don’t have to like me, or forgive me, but Penelope, you have to know that I love you and I am so sorry I hurt you. Just please stay.”

She was elated. She was furious. She refused to be silent in response to that. Focusing on Colin’s voice to give her a direction, Penelope kicked and felt the crown of her head break the surface.

During the long night that their traveling companion had been dying, the men sat or paced quietly around the camp. As the dawn approached, Colin had listened to them recount old wives’ tales and sailor’s stories about people on the edge of death who either fell over that edge or recovered with the change that came with dawn. A world away in a palace, as false dawn showed its near-imperceptible light, Colin couldn’t stop replaying each story in his head as he watched Pen’s breathing grow shallower and shallower, and felt her pulse go weak and erratic under the fingers that had fallen over her wrist—his hands engulfed her small one.

Colin couldn’t breathe. He felt as though the world was balanced on a knife edge, and there was absolutely nothing to stop it from falling to a world in which Pen did not exist. She exhaled. He waited, breath held, counting seconds. Finally, he had to breathe or pass out himself, and she still had not inhaled. The floor fell out from beneath him; his mind went blank. This was not happening. She would breathe. She had to breathe.

As the first fiery fingers of true dawn clawed their way over the horizon, Penelope took a deep breath and opened her eyes, finding his almost immediately and holding steady. The fevered glassiness was gone, and Pen was clearly there behind that steady gaze. Briefly forgetting that he had a voice at all, Colin cupped her cheek, noting that she was cooler than she had been all night. She might still have a bit of a fever, but it was not the burning force that threatened to take her from him.

“I—” she rasped before coughing at the dryness of her throat and mouth.

“Easy, Pen, here—” Colin collected the glass of water from the side table and slid an arm under her shoulders to lift her just enough to drink. After a few sips, Pen rested her head against his arm, and met his eyes again.

“I am still angry with you,” she said. She might as well have ripped his heart from his chest with her bare hands.

“Of course,” he said, releasing her and rising from his position on the floor. “I shall fetch someone else—” her hand shot out, capturing his. Her grip was weak, and she had caught his ring and little fingers more than his whole hand, but he couldn’t have pulled away.

“I am still angry,” she said, “but if you leave now, I shall never speak to you again.” Colin couldn’t help himself. He laughed as tears escaped his eyes, and he twisted his hand to gently take hers and lift it to his mouth for a kiss.

“As you wish, Pen.”

After that perilous night, Penelope’s recovery was slow, but it was steady. It was a week before she was well enough to leave the palace. Colin visited her every day; once it was clear that Penelope would, in fact, recover, Ladies Featherington and Bridgerton vehemently insisted on reinstating the rules of propriety. Colin had been bundled back to Bridgerton House barely an hour after Penelope woke up, where he fell upon several platters of sandwiches before falling into bed for the rest of the day and that night. The following day and the days after saw some subset of the Bridgerton siblings join Colin on his visits.

Lady Danbury also visited Penelope several times during her palace recovery. She had been fond of Penelope before her reveal as the notorious Lady Whistledown, and the girl’s actions and composure during her ordeal had only increased Lady Danbury’s esteem. The pair’s easy allyship developed quickly into a true friendship. It surprised neither Colin—who was visiting with Daphne as a chaperone—nor Penelope when Lady Danbury entered the room on Penelope’s final day in the palace. What surprised everyone was the queen entering behind her, holding a small box. Colin and Daphne rose, bowing and curtsying deeply, respectively. Penelope, who was still propped up on a mountain of pillows, bowed her head.

“Duchess Hastings, Mr. Bridgerton, Miss Featherington,” said Queen Charlotte. The three rose. Colin, still wary of the queen’s wrath against Penelope, quietly took Pen’s hand and squeezed gently, affirming that he was there if she needed him. The queen met each of their eyes before continuing.

“None of you will say a word of what occurs in this room today. Is that understood?” she asked. Penelope glanced at Lady Danbury, who tilted her head in an infinitesimally tiny nod behind the queen’s back. Pen, followed by Colin and Daphne, affirmed their understanding. The queen smiled and focused on Penelope.

“Miss Featherington, you have suitably impressed me and Lady Danbury. And while I cannot have a rogue columnist questioning me in public, one thing I have learned is the benefit of those who will offer their opinions—even those opinions that may displease me—in private. I have come to understand and respect your removal of Lady Whistledown from the assets of the crown.” The slight frown punctuating that sentence said that she was not happy about it, but she had accepted it. Something in Colin’s chest eased; Penelope appeared to be out of danger on that front.

“Miss Featherington, I am here to offer you a chance to join my inner circle and use your prodigious skills of observation and assessment to advise me. I do not ask you to write Whistledown for the crown—although I may occasionally request your help with the odd piece of particularly crucial correspondence. This arrangement would be private, mind. It is well known that Lady Danbury advises me; I also need someone who has a lower profile. You would be free to have your voice heard. What do you say, Miss Featherington?”

Penelope looked again at Lady Danbury, who raised an eyebrow and smiled. Penelope took a deep breath. She was still mourning Whistledown; Colin had sat with her and held her hands as she had finally cried for the end of the vehicle that had given her a meaningful voice, and Kate—their chaperone—had kindly melted into the background, granting Penelope what privacy she could within the bounds of propriety.

The queen was offering her a new avenue for her voice and the skills she had honed, and she would still be free to write as she wished—although perhaps not scandal sheets. There was something exciting about that prospect, and there was no question that it would challenge her to further grow her skills. Excited but undeniably feeling trepidation, Penelope reached out. Colin had released her hand once the queen had accepted the loss of Whistledown, and though she had made her decision, she found that she wanted his support as she voiced it. He didn’t even look down as his hand enveloped hers.

“I believe I would like that very much, your Majesty,” she said.

“Ah, excellent,” replied the queen. She opened the small box in her hand and removed a small medallion on a bit of ribbon. Stepping close, she pinned it to the robe covering Penelope’s chemise.

“Welcome, Dame Penelope,” she said. “We shall discuss this more upon your full recovery. Until then, my dear.” She swept from the room.

Lady Danbury hugged Penelope around the shoulders with a soft “Well done, Penelope” before she followed the queen. Shortly after, a letter reminding Penelope that, like her new position in the queen’s court, her honor must be kept secret from anyone not in the room when it was conferred. The letter ended with a directive to burn it. Penelope giggled—carefully, to avoid jostling her still-tender wound overly much—at that, and asked Colin to toss the letter in the fireplace for her. “It seems that I will use more of the skills I developed for Whistledown than I imagined,” she noted.

Colin kissed her hand with a smile that did not entirely belie the worry in his eyes. “I am proud of you, Pen. And I am glad that I can be here for you if you need me in this new role.”

The next morning, Penelope was carefully removed to Featherington House. After recovering from the move for a few days—during which Colin continued his visits, chaperoned by either Anna (who Penelope had personally hired) or Lady Featherington herself—Penelope began to take short walks to help rebuild her strength. They began in the house but quickly evolved to walks in the garden and finally short promenades. Throughout the process, Colin was at her side, supporting her. The difference was that where he had played hero to a construct of her as a damsel in distress when he had disrupted the ruby scheme, now he treated her as an equal, a partner.

Penelope let go of the idealized Colin she had loved since she was a girl and who had hurt her so badly. Instead, she fell in love with the man who challenged her as a writer and supported her in her choices. It wasn’t always easy, but their conversations while walking strengthened their relationship to the point that when Colin went to one knee before her at the first ball of the next London season, she knew that she was in for a life full of more love and laughter than she could have imagined.

I hope you enjoyed this fic! It was originally planned to be a couple thousand words max and to get me back into the flow of writing, but as you can see, it got *wildly* out of control.

#polin #polin fic #polin fanfiction #penelope featherington #colin bridgerton #bridgerton #bridgerton netflix #no beta we die like edmund

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plush-rabbit · 4 years ago

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An Indulgence for the Night

Word Count: 2.3K

A/N: Compress stans have finally been fed and I want comfort (I also wanna get a feel for him)

Atsuhiro lays in bed, a thick comforter on his body that traps heat and feels as if it weighs more than the world itself. His body is tired, exhausted beyond belief with eyes that droop and vision that grows hazy the longer he stays awake. And yet, he can’t force himself to fall asleep- no matter how long his eyes stay closed, they only reopen and he has to bite back a groan to keep you from waking up.

It’s silent. The electricity that hums in the walls do nothing to calm him down, they make him wary and they’re too loud for him to concentrate on anything. Outside, nothing moves. The trees stand still, not a car flashes by with its headlights, there’s no squealing of tires that fill the night in a godforsaken screech- the world is on pause and he is unable to sleep because of it.

He’s thought about waking you up, to seek a bit of comfort from you in hopes that it would lull him to sleep but you also need your rest- you’ve been out and about for so long and you’re tired- he won’t ruin your sleep just because his body and mind have decided to fight against each other. He’ll stay in the soft bed, grow warm and have muscles that ache to be stretched until sleep does finally consume him. He’s a grown man- he can handle a bit of restlessness. Even if it means doing it alone.

The patience lasts for five minutes before he’s removed the too heavy blanket from his body and stretched his legs out in front of him. His hand drags down his face and he’s biting the bottom of his lip as the pink under his eyes leaks for a quick second. He shakes his head and binches the bridge of his nose, nails pressing into the thin skin and tosses his legs over the bed, leaning forward and holding onto the residual limb with a soft groan. His feet- decorated in geometrical print socks with neon colors that you once gave him- press flat against the floor and he paces around the room. He’s aware of what he's doing. You may be a sound sleeper, but with enough noise, you’re bound to wake up. He feels a tad guilty, lips pulled into a frown but he thinks this is better than shaking you awake. At least this way he can pretend that he didn’t mean to wake you up. He’s alway been a great pretender.

His steps are dulled by the socks, the floors are new so they hardly creak under his weight and there’s a higher chance that he’s going to wake up the people below rather than you. His arm is beginning to ache- a dull pain that isn’t as strong as it once was and his movements are getting sluggish. Perhaps he'll fall asleep with the pacing before you even have a chance to wake up. It was selfish of him to do so anyways- he could have just held you by his side, it’s always been enough to make him grow at least a bit drowsy, to feel himself relax in your arms as you stroked his hair around your index. He just wanted an excuse to not be alone tonight. To not let the silence drown him.

He stops midway, shoulder slumped forward and head in an acute angle, eyes that close and he can feel his body sway, and he’s sure that if he stays in this position, he’ll end up falling asleep but he’s also positive that if he were to move, he’d disturb the sleep that has begun to creep into his mind. There’s no real reason why he can’t fall asleep, no nightmares that threaten to reveal themselves once he’s vulnerable, no churning in his gut that warns him that something bad might be approaching; there are no worries that keep him awake. He is with you, he is in bed with you, your body draped in a shirt of his, nestled under the blanket where he should be and you both are safe- you’re alive and unharmed. There really is no reason for him to be awake.

With a heavy head that has begun to ache, he walks back into bed, and lays above the covers, right arm near your body as his hand dances over the space between you and him and under the covers, he grabs your hand, running his thumb over the knuckles, dipping in the small spaces and there’s a tugging feeling gnawing at his chest, telling him to shake you awake and deal with the consequences later as he just wakes you up. There’s no reason to do it- the anxiety is at bay, and he supposes he’s just restive- he just needs something to quell the silence and fill it even if it’s your voice in a hushed manner. He wants to call you name and his mouth opens, turning his head to look at you and your sleeping expression that is content and he can’t bring himself to. You’re content and you indulge him enough with his own wishes- you at least deserve sleep that remains undisturbed.

His hand lets go and even under the blanket, it isn’t as warm as it was. He reaches over and presses his lips against your temple, tilting his head until his nose is pressed against you in a soft tap. His breath fans across your face, a shuddering breath that leaves him feeling shaky and even as his body grows weary, he tilts his head, lips pressing against your sleeping face, and your brow twitches, aware of his movements and he can’t stop the soft kisses that cover your face. He kisses at your brow, shushing the little twitch and pecks under your eye, feeling your lashes brush against him in a butterfly kiss. He peppers you in kisses, leaving your face marked by his love, feverish and pressing deeper the more he continues, feverish as he breaths against your lips, eyes shut tight until color blooms. He shudders when he feels your breath and lets out a low whine when you brush against him, leg kicking out softly to touch at his. He’s sure that if he were to kiss you again, to let his lips brush against your skin or have his nose swipe against yours, you’d awake and you’d welcome him into your arms.

Atsuhiro remains still, eyes closed and breath heavy and deep, and he’s sure that sleep is just a touch away, that he can rest against you for a moment- for the night until sleep catches him in their clutches but the he hears you yawns, a soft whimper that starts in the back of your throat and he opens his eyes to watch as you roll on your back and curve over the bed, eyes shut tight until you drop unceremoniously onto the bed. You blink once. Then twice. And you turn your head to face him.

“Well hello, you,” you say in a weak voice, a hand coming up to rub at an eye that is still bleary with sleep.

“Did I wake you up?” He asks, smiling as you narrow your eyes in a playful manner.

“I don’t know-” a yawn interrupts you and makes your words so hollow- “were you trying to?” With another yawn you roll back to face him, inching closer to him with the blanket pulled tight in your hands.

“Would you like the truth or a lie?” His voice is hushed, lowered into a whisper as the sleep that he desperately craved, slips past him in wisps.

You hum and bury yourself deeper into the bed, raising the blanket so he could join you. He gladly takes the invitation and comes to rest near you, resting on his arm and raising a brow as he waits for your answer. “Humor me.” Your smile is coy, teasing as you lean up and brush your nose against him in a small kiss.

“Ah!” His smile brightens, immediately closing his mouth until his smile is stretched across his face. “That,” he says in a quiet voice, “I can do, my dear.” He legs jerks against you, knee pressed against yours, until he bends his leg and pushes himself against the softness of your thighs. “I’m always here to entertain, of course.”

You roll your eyes and he can feel his heart quicken. Every smile of yours turns him into someone who he once was as a child- someone who blushes furiously at the sign of attention from someone attractive, whose heart skips a beat when his hands meet yours and words start to slur and stutter until he can do nothing more than smile sheepishly at you. He’ll hold his hat in hand, fiddle with the brim and speak through the mask, face growing hot under and for once, he wished that he could drop the theatrics but you always stayed close to him, pecking him through the mask and letting you hands play with the edges as you held him. You gave him the chance to reveal himself to you, something intimate that left him teary eyed and looking away as if he were sharing something forbidden with you. He let you see all of him- to indulge you in moments that felt so intimate that he was sure his heart was going to stop, to collapse as you took his face in your hands and held him tenderly.

“Well,” he starts off slow, voice below a whisper in a gentle tone, “if I have to be honest- which I will be-” he winks at you and he takes great delight in your chuckle- “I just couldn’t sleep.” His eyes lower and focus on how your lips pout and open. “Nothing bad- just restless, I suppose.”

You snort and he looks up at you, a silent warning as he raises his brows, lips curling into a lopsided smile. “You- restless? Well, color me surprised.” Your hand reaches under the covers and cups his face and he lets his close in a flutter. “And how long did it take for you to wake me up?”

He smiles and shakes his head softly. “I’ll have you know, I lasted much longer this time.” He opens his eyes and meets yours for a second before turning his head and pressing his nose against your palm. “I even paced around the room,” he mumbles into your hand, pressing a gentle kiss against the lines that decorate your palm.

“Oh you poor baby,” you pout, tapping your fingers against his face. He smiles against you and shakes his head.

He takes a deep breath. “Alas, that’s how it is.” He pulls away from your hand. “I did want to wake you up,” he confesses, ears burning in shame. “I paced to get your attention. Kissed your face in your sleep and wished that you would wake up.” He can’t meet your eyes, keeps them focused on the thin line that your lips have formed into. “I-” he sighs and closes his eyes, letting the word hang in the air.

Your thumb strokes his cheekbone and the space between his brows knit together. He wants to open his eyes but he’s unable to face you without feeling a tad of shame. He lets out a shuddering breath when your hands slide down his face, and thumb presses in the middle of his lips, dragging down until they part and he looks at you through half-lidded eyes, swallowing nervously. In his chest, his heart pounds against him, painful and heavy, longing and yearning to kiss at your lips and let himself indulge in your touch for the moments that he is awake. He lets out a soft moan, letting his eyes close and lips remain parted when you run your hand through his hair, curving over the side of his head and feeling at the soft curls that decorate his head.

“You know, you can always wake me up when you’re restless,” you mutter, your fingers binding and scratching lightly at his head. “I don’t mind-” your motions are soft and controlled and he sighs in relief when you go to cup his face again- “not when it’s you, Atsu.”

He smiles softly, eyes closed and nods. “If I have to be honest, I think I’m finally starting to grow weary.” He opens his eyes only to shut them once a yawn pulls his mouth open and tears prick at his eyes. “Thank you.” He bows his head and inches himself close to you, leaning in to close the gap between the two of you. “I appreciate it very much.”

“I know you’d do the same. Because that’s who you are,” you reply, closing the gap.

And he would. He’d stay up for hours if it meant that you wouldn’t be alone. He’d do whatever you wanted if it meant that you would smile. He wants nothing more than to see you happy and right now as you kiss him and pull away to pepper kisses down his neck and against the lobe of his ear. Atsuhiro would cherish his moments with you, to keep himself against you and welcome your touch and return it eagerly as he felt you smile. You hold him with softness that can never be replicated, cusped in your hands and fingers threaded through his hair as he whines under your touch, letting out a breathless laugh. He’s grateful to have you here, pressed against him and mumbling good night to him as you push him onto his back and drape yourself on his chest, your hand drawing loose shapes on his chest that he is too tired to make out and he lets his eyes close as your hand falls flat against him, curling and pulling on his chest and he’s glad he got to kiss you before he fell asleep.

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clvmtines · 4 years ago

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welcome aboard, clementine martinez, student #2. we are excited to set sail with you ! has anyone told you that you look like alexa demie? according to our records, you hail from florida, usa, prefer she / her pronouns, are a cis woman, and are here to study creative writing. we also see you received a spot on the ss university because of your online lottery win — we won’t tell anyone. during your first few weeks here, other students said you were + charming, + free-spirited, but also - restive. it sounds like you spend most of your time at the billiards room. upon checking your luggage, we noticed you packed a casino chip carried around for luck from home. hopefully your roommates don’t steal it!

hi friends! i’m very excited to be here. i’m jay (est, she/her) n i used to play astrid nyland a few months ago if anyone remembers bt i had to leave for personal reasons. i’m so glad to be back now that i hve life sorted and some free time for summer break <3 read on for some details abt this new muse of mine, clementine.

01. biography !

so ! clementine was born in florida. & yes, her real name is clementine. her mom thot it was the cutest name idea ever. clementine mostly goes by clem. she comes from the town [redacted] in florida bcoz i am too lazy to look up a specific town <3 but alas ! it was swampy and humid and she lived in a trailer park.

her parents got knocked up at nineteen. clem was born nine months after a particularly wild 1999 fourth of july. her birthday is march 26th and she’s an aries.

(TW: addiction, child injury) clem’s dad was a gambling addict and petty criminal—he wld steal credit cards n whatnot. he wld gamble away diaper money n it would cause constant fighting until her dad finally left. her mom took this very hard n began drinking a bit too often, leaving clem to to make cereal for dinner n fend for herself. once clem tried to make hot dogs on the stove and spilled boiling water on herself. got a p bad burn on her arm/shoulder and still has a big scar.

the soundtrack of her childhood was cicadas buzzing and stray dogs barking. the sizzle and pop of natty light cans. turning up her ipod to max volume to drown out the sounds of her mother fighting with her new boyfriend.

throughout her upbringing, clem’s dad was always in and out of the picture. he’d blow into town when he hit it big. he’d take her on these little “adventures” like staying in a motel 6 n renting movies at block buster n ordering good pizza nt the dominos shit she ate with her mom lol. ofc he was charging it all to someone’s stolen credit card. he’d always promise to, like, take clem away. n clem was a daddy’s girl so she believed him. the last time it happened was her h.s. graduation. her mom didn’t show ( "overslept” after a bender ) but her dad did and surprised her n said everything wld be different. bt then he bailed on their plans for the next day n when she called his cell, the number was disconnected. tht was the defining “i’m done” moment. clem promised to never be disappointed by her father again.

(TW: racism) her mother has mexican ancestry and clem’s always been called her twin. but clem was raised in a predominately white area and honestly ?? it was really hard without her even realizing it. she’s still unpacking a lot of things today abt her youth that jst weren’t okay bt she thought were normal. like microaggressions, stereotypes, being fetishized by boys in high school. gross shit.

as a kid, clem was rumored to be really poor bc she wore tattered clothes n got free lunch at school. once she invited a friend to her house & the next day they told everyone it’s in a trailer park. that reputation—the “trailer park girl”—was really hard to shake. and clem got almost desperate to shake it. she was endlessly trying to set her old self on fire and emerge from the ashes like a phoenix.

eventually clem became more “popular”. in school she was, like, a straight b student. very average although super creative and quick-thinking. she always had street smarts. problem solving skills. independence. more of, like, practical intelligence as opposed to book smarts because academia bores her tbh. she was like why am i reading these overrated boring books by dead white men or learning abt polynomials when i know nothing abt how to pay a mortage or do taxes. like...she saw the american education system as bullshit and put in modest effort because she didn’t believe it deserved her sweat and tears.

however, she entered the online lottery for the seas program on a whim and got in. so she’s studying creative writing now.

02. personality !

first thing you shld know abt clem is that she’s a compulsive liar essentially—she tells various stories to make her life seem better than what it was. to one person, she’s an heiress to a real estate company and grew up wealthy. to the next she was raised by nomadic hippies. some of her lies are small fibs while others are grandiose tales. she rarely talks about her actual upbringing. she hates talking abt her family or the v real trauma of growing up in a household where both parents struggled w/ addiction; the uncertainty, the broken promises, the fact that she had to grow up so soon and deal w/ so much. it wasn’t fair, and if she thinks about it too much, she feels this anger. anger at the universe. anger at her circumstances. she doesn’t know where to put this anger. she doesn’t know how to shrink it. so she avoids it.

despite her rough upbringing, though, clem is actually really sweet and kind. she’s adventurous, fun-loving, free-spirited, and bold.

bt ! she can also be closed-off, competitive and restive.

she’s seemingly tight with everyone? like she’s jst that girl who can get along with anyone tbh.

in her spare time you can catch her tanning by the pool, hanging at the bar, playing pool ( which she learned from her dad ), and socializing. she’ll never say no to hanging out with people.

she learned a lot from her little “adventures” with her dad, who was very good at conning others and often involved her in his dumb little scams. clem is suuuper good at pulling the ‘im baby 🥺’ card to get what she wants.

she can be a little selfish, because she grew up looking out for herself.

stubborn and dogmatic as hell !!!

she doesn’t do too many relationships but when she does fall, i imagine she falls hard and fast. she refuses to be made a fool of, tho. when she gets vulnerable she flashes back to being a kid, waiting all day for her dad to show up only to have him bail on her. again. she hates that feeling. so if she, like, senses a shift in someone’s energy she’ll b like, “i’ll break up with u before u can do it to me” and the person wasn’t even tryna dump her lmao.

has a lot of sex. too much ?? sex?? mayb. but she’s v sex positive.

her personal style is v late 90s. hair clips, big scrunchies, neon, fur trim, crop and tube tops, hoop earrings, chokers, patterns, platform shoes, biodegradable glitter cuz it’s good fr the earth *winks*. clothes from o-mighty.......actually jst google o mighty, pull up the images and That is clem. she dresses like a bratz doll. she’s dedicated to the aesthetic.

03. headcanons !

her item brought from home is a hot pink poker chip from a casino. her dad gave it to her. he said it reminded him of her because of the color; he got it during one of his winning streaks and said it was lucky. she has a complicated relationship w/ her dad n doesn’t even speak to him anymore, bt she will never go anywhere without it.

she’s a smol bean—only 5′4

an astrology girl and she reads palms ! she absolutely makes astrology tik toks that people only watch because she’s hot. her flirting technique is to ask you to read your palm.

she doesn’t typically drink to get drunk. but she does love a good sugary cocktail. to her, a drink is like an accessory. a blue fishbowl by the pool, a jack and coke as she stands around a bar. usually she'll nurse the same beverage for a while. if you see her wasted it usually means she’s going thru it emotionally lol. the one thing she does do is drugs tho

pretty much listens to exclusively female artists.

a bit of an activist. environmentalism, feminism and the like, she’s v outspoken. vegan for ethical reasons (TW: drugs) bt still does cocaine. she wears shirts with ‘my pussy my choice’ bedazzled on the front.

loves to rollerblade ! back home she didn’t have a car so she’d bike or rollerblade. now she still has her blades and she’ll use them when the ship docks.

03. wanted connections !

Friends, bffs, ride or dies, friends who are like siblings to her, maybe a friend with an unrequited crush on either side ??

an ex she dumped/cheated on/otherwise self sabotaged their relationship because she was afraid of vulnerability.

an ex friend who realized she lies a lot abt herself n felt betrayed. OH ! ESP if they opened up to her on many occasions abt intimate, personal stuff. imagine the betrayal they felt when they found that everything they thought they knew abt clem is a lie.

someone who she actually opens up to. a confidant. or, maybe, like, a stranger she drunkenly spilled her soul to and now she avoids them like the plague.

a rival. clem can be competitive.

her drug dealer

someone she knows she shouldn’t hook up with and… does it anyways. like a friend’s ex or smthing. spicy <3

i welcome anything !

#seasintro #addiction tw #alcohol tw #drugs tw

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thewhumperinwhite · 5 years ago

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WKW: Magic Lessons Part Two

Previous: Teaser 1 / Teaser 2 / Presentable / The Lion’s Mane / To Bid You All Welcome: Part One / Part 2 / Part 3 / A Single Bed, A Door With No Lock / Sword Of My Fathers / Flashback: Little Bird, Part One / Little Bird Part Two / Stained Glass, Candles, Empty Stone / Magic Lessons: Part One / Magic Lessons: Interlude

Asher has a visitor.

TW for: underage whumpee; captivity; isolation; implied/referenced/threatened noncon; grooming; gaslighting and manipulation; Morden Crane’s Creepy Vibes

@faewhump @lollyxxxfem also hey if you wanna be tagged in wkw updates please send me a message specifically cause those are the easiest for me to keep track of <3

----

If Asher had known to expect the fall of his father’s house, if he hadn’t believed the lies the nobles and staff had raised him on, that the castle was impenetrable, that the walls of Colomur were unbreachable, that the Lion of Colomur was unkillable and the Lady’s magic unbeatable—even if he had known to expect anything, he would not have expected his chief complaint in the first weeks after the end of the world to be boredom.

It’s far from his only complaint, of course. There’s no abundance of food and he’s not felt really full since—well, since even before the siege, so probably in months, now. And generally when he sees the armed Leisevan soldiers in their black armor patrolling the halls of his father’s house he has to sit down quickly because he is immediately shaking from—well, partly anger, and mostly fear.

And occasionally he thinks of his brother’s blank face as he kneels before the Winter King; occasionally he thinks of the clothes they have made his brother wear before the court and all the things they might mean, each one worse than the last, and of how even if there was anything he could do to stop it Andry would not let him because his brother is determined to die for him whether Asher wants him to or not.

But even so, Asher is allowed one hour a day to see his brother, generally under the sardonically watchful eye of the Winter King’s Wolf, upon whom all the hatred in Asher’s heart is currently focused; and the minute Andry is out of his sight Asher begins to feel as though perhaps the world outside the single room they keep him in no longer exists, and maybe never existed.

The room itself is small, equipped with a bed, a small couch, and a chamber pot and washtub. There are two black-armored guards posted at the door at all times, but either they have been instructed not to speak with him or they don’t care to.

They have left Asher his clothes, including the jacket he was wearing when the siege broke, which is emblazoned with his father’s crest embroidered boldly across the back.

For reasons he has had no opportunity or reason to verbalize, Asher has spent the past three days unpicking it with his teeth.

Asher has no reliable way of telling the time, so even though he ought to know better, he looks up with real hope when the door opens, thinking it must somehow be his allotted time with Andry again. Then he freezes, and presses the ruin he’s making of his father’s crest face down on the floor beside him, without really knowing why.

The Winter King is standing in the doorway, looking down at him with tolerant amusement.

Asher has not laid eyes on Morden Crane since he was seated beside him at the banquet, and that was—at least two sunsets ago now. And, crucially, in public. Long before he can identify what he’s feeling, the Winter King smirks down at him—Asher is sitting on the floor in front of the bed, unwashed and really only half decent, at least by his mother’s standards—and plucks the jacket, which Asher has now spent unbroken hours ruining, easily from Asher’s relaxing grip.

The Winter King examines the jacket, smirk widening; mercifully it is now between his face and Asher and Asher uses the opportunity to scramble up off the floor and onto the bed in order to scoot back away from the Winter King as quickly as possible.

“Goodness,” Morden Crane says. “It may not be an elegant crest, but I wouldn’t have thought it as hateful as all that.”

He lowers the jacket to raise his eyebrows at Asher, and Asher can see the center of the embroidered lion’s face torn to shreds. He did it himself, but seeing it in Crane’s hands makes him immediately sick.

“Feeling a bit restive, are we, Prince?”

Asher glares up at the Winter King. The man is, as always, tall and handsome and immaculately neat, every strand of his long black hair in place, expression lightly amused but mostly serene and unbothered. Asher lifts his chin, determined not to be afraid. “What are you doing here?”

Morden sets the jacket on the back of the couch, patting it with mocking gentleness. Then he spreads his hands and smiles at Asher, his face mild and open and dangerous.

“I’m here to see you, of course,” the Winter King says.

Asher stares at him, alarmed.

“It occurred to me that you’ve had little room to run since our families have come together. A growing boy needs space to move about, I imagine.” Morden’s black eyes glitter, as if at a private joke at Asher’s expense. “Perhaps you’d like to take a turn of the gardens with me, Prince.”

Asher’s heart hammers in his chest. The knowledge that it must be a trap does him no good, because he cannot imagine what such a trap’s object might be. Andry, he thinks desperately, would know, would see immediately what the Winter King is playing at, but Asher has never been clever like Andry is, and the longer Crane stands before him the more he is certain of nothing except that he is afraid.

He shakes his head, because his tongue is too thick in his mouth to speak well.

Morden Crane looks at Asher, apparently without anger, and sighs a little. “Prince,” he says, “really. It gives me no pleasure to be feared and hated by those with whom I have no quarrel. Politics may have started us off on the wrong foot, but it needn’t make us lifelong enemies.”

“You killed my father,” Asher says flatly.

Morden sighs, making a conceding gesture with his gloved hand. “A difficult start, I’ll grant. My Harpy is excitable; her orders were to take the Lion alive. In fairness, you must agree the Lion’s temper allowed for little diplomacy.”

It is, in a terrible way, true. Even if Crane hadn’t ordered Audoine killed, Asher knows his father too well to imagine him being taken alive; he’d have died first out of spite alone.

It also barely matters anymore. Asher is too sick with worry about the living to question the treatment of the dead.

Asher shifts forward, gripping the edge of the bed, and meets the Winter King’s black eyes, as fearlessly as he can manage.

“Crane,” he says, and doesn’t shrink back when Morden raises his eyebrows at the address. “Answer, and don’t lie to me.” Asher cannot spot a lie like Andry, but he thinks he will know this, to his bones. “Winter King. Have you touched my brother?”

Morden blinks, and then bursts out a laugh, apparently startled, as though at a ridiculous question. “Me?” he says. “Darling. No.”

Asher searches the Winter King’s face. Morden lets him look, with nothing more than amusement.

“Then I’ll go with you,” Asher says, and hopes the condition is clear in his voice.

If the Winter King wants to walk to gardens with him—for reasons Asher can’t fathom, but which he isn’t naïve enough to imagine he will like—Asher can give him that, at least for now. Andry may be determined to die for him, but two can play that game.

Asher braces himself for some overt humiliation—Andry is never permitted to walk the halls without being leashed like a dog—but Morden Crane only glides serenely over to the door, nods when the guards snap to attention, and raises his eyebrows back at Asher, beckoning when Asher doesn’t immediately follow.

Asher approaches cautiously, and Crane gestures him ahead, the motion slightly too grand to be anything but mocking. Asher stares at the guards—if they are laughing at least he will know better what he is being led to—but they must be trained specially to show nothing on their faces, and their black Leisevan uniforms still send a shiver down Asher’s spine—enough that he takes half a step closer to Crane before he realizes what he's doing, and would stumble into the Winter King if Crane didn’t obligingly drop a black-gloved hand onto his shoulder to steady him.

Asher goes rigid at the Winter King’s touch, all thoughts of self-sacrifice driven immediately from his head by skin-crawling panic.

Crane withdraws his hand easily, and even steps back to give Asher more space, and his burst of laughter is harsh enough that it might actually be sincere.

“Relax, Prince,” Crane says. “Gakne knows I’ve no interest in touching you either.”

Asher takes a breath to try to slow his hammering heartbeat, ashamed of his own lack of resolve, and squares his shoulders, stands tall like Andry used to stand in front of their father.

Crane watches him with open amusement, and then turns and sweeps down the hallway, not even turning to see if Asher will follow.

Not that Asher has any choice, with the two guards still standing at attention mere feet behind him. He scurries after the Winter King, and leash or no he feels like a dog at heel.

After days in one room, the sunlight nearly blinds him, and he is immediately shivering in his tatty undershirt, no longer used to the autumn breeze. Crane has led him out a side door into the courtyard, and watches him shake with the same amused smirk with which he seems to look at everything, and Asher only barely keeps from glaring at him.

Then the Winter King says, “Here, boy,” and reaches for the jeweled clasp at his throat, and before Asher can protest, Crane has swung his great black cloak around Asher’s shoulders; for a moment the warmth is such a relief that he almost pulls it closer.

He remembers Andry’s bared shoulders in front of his father’s court, the jeweled band around his throat, Andry’s bowed head and shaking hands.

Asher shrugs the cloak off, hard; the material is thick and costly and it smacks heavily into the dirt, raises a cloud of dust.

He can practically hear Andry’s horrified voice in his head and knows he should stop before he’s gone too far to come back, but he has never been as strong as Andry. Asher spits at the Winter King’s feet, instead.

Then he stares up at the Winter King, who has raised his perfect brows very high, and prays he doesn’t die looking frightened.

Then the Winter King smirks again, and opens his gloved hands in amused surrender. “You’re welcome to freeze, if you’d prefer,” he says, and stoops easily to retrieve his cloak, folding it over his arm, as if to show off how little the cold bothers him, and turns to lead Asher through the garden.

Asher feels tears prick at his eyes, though he doesn’t know why. When the Winter King begins to pick his way through the flower beds, he follows.

----

Riding high on the aftermath of one of Thorne’s “lessons,” it’s easy enough for Morden to be merciful. And as no one else is present in the homely little courtyard garden to witness the child’s outburst, it’s certainly no skin off Morden’s nose. Quite the opposite, really.

Still, it’s a delicate situation, maybe more than he anticipated. The younger Prince isn’t so much older than his Thorne was, when he first found him; yet apparently a few years can make a world of difference in the attitude of a teenage boy. And, of course, his work with Thorne had the advantage of novelty: no one had offered Thorne a soft word or a hot meal before Morden; the little Prince, in contrast, has clearly been spoiled, by his brother if not by the dead Lion. It’s an entirely different proposition, really.

Still, Morden thinks, basking in magic like a cat in the sun, he can afford to be patient. The little Prince is only a backup, and Morden has plenty of time.

#the winter king's ward #whump #original whump #fantasy whump #royalty whump #captivity #isolation #grooming tw #manipulation #faux affectionate villain

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orangedodge · 6 years ago

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I've always felt like Aegon contrasted Dany much more closely than what you would expect from just a rival, almost more of a renunciation of her than a mirror. I've wanted to do a side-by-side rereading of both of them for a while now, to chart out the similarities, but hadn't had the opportunity to do so. Now that the show is out, I'd seen something of a revival of the discussions over Aegon's status as a fake Targaryen or a false construction of Dany's presumed destiny, and what that may mean for her arc going forward in the other version of the story. That gave me the motivation to spend a few days on my own reread, in a direction I haven't really seen yet, but have had on my mind for a few years now.

To an extent this project also ended up influenced somewhat by posts by khaleesirin and rainhadaenerys suggesting that Dany's arc is taking her away from Westeros and towards an Essosi ending, which is also my preferred ending. Where I am right now, while I do hold the minority position that sees the show as likely a one-to-one adaption of the ending GRRM provided HBO a decade ago, I also believe that a decision was made along the way to combine Dany and Aegon into one character. So part of why I'm writing this now is to show the lines between them making that possible, while also giving myself a template for separating Aegon and Dany later.

In my reading Aegon isn't here to show us a fake Targaryen, or to be exposed as a fake hero, and the question of whether Dany is therefore the “real” hero, or the true heir, isn't really relevant to what's been set up in the tale of Young Griff. His role is construed more narrowly than those wider considerations of prophesy and politics can allow. Rather I think is role is much more personal. When you compare the attributes that Aegon has been gifted with, to Dany's actual accomplishments, I think he's very specifically been lain out more as a fake version of Dany. He's a less substantive imitation of her, produced by Varys and Illyrio to fool the people of Westeros.

Everything he's been given is closely matched by what Dany has attained for herself, but without the work put in to acquiring it that might have taught him to respect his capacity to influence the world around him. And you can see this construction in everything from his educational background, to the Revenge-of-Mediocrity entourage that has been constructed for him, to the army he's just been given for his birthday. Even in the mere fact that he can just up and declare himself a Targaryen, at this late stage in the story, and reap the political rewards without consequence, whereas Dany has been hunted since the literal moment she was born for carrying that name.

This is going to be a bit quote heavy.

There are two quotes in A Dance with Dragons that I think show the big picture of what Varys has created particularly well. One a direct summary of who Aegon is, provided by Varys himself, and the other from Tyrion's narration as he witnesses Aegon's lessons. In both cases, though it may seem a stretch at first glance, you could change the subject from Aegon to Dany without a lot of work. (Which is what HBO seems to have done in their seventh season). The main difference between them is that Aegon has the performative aspects of his training down, while the presumed core lessons Varys meant to impart still elude him. Dany, on the other hand, had to find her own way, but ended up where Aegon couldn't go himself.

“Aegon has been shaped for rule since before he could walk. He has been trained in arms, as befits a knight to be, but that was not the end of his education. He reads and writes, he speaks several tongues, he has studied history and law and poetry. A septa has instructed him in the mysteries of the Faith since he was old enough to understand them. He has lived with fisherfolk, worked with his hands, swum in rivers and mended nets and learned to wash his own clothes at need. He can fish and cook and bind up a wound, he knows what it is like to be hungry, to be hunted, to be afraid. Tommen has been taught that kingship is his right. Aegon knows that kingship is his duty, that a king must put his people first, and live and rule for them.” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 1050).

“The lesson began with languages. Young Griff spoke the Common Tongue as if he had been born to it, and was fluent in High Valyrian, the low dialects of Pentos, Tyrosh, Myr, and Lys, and the trade talk of sailors. The Volantene dialect was as new to him as it was to Tyrion, so every day they learned a few more words whilst Haldon corrected their mistakes. Meereenese was harder; its roots were Valyrian as well, but the tree had been grafted onto the harsh, ugly tongue of Old Ghis. “You need a bee up your nose to speak Ghiscari properly,” Tyrion complained. Young Griff laughed, but the Halfmaester only said, “Again.” The boy obeyed, though he rolled his eyes along with his zzzs this time. He has a better ear than me, Tyrion was forced to admit, though I’ll wager my tongue is still more nimble.

Geometry followed languages. There the boy was less adroit, but Haldon was a patient teacher, and Tyrion was able to make himself of use as well. He had learned the mysteries of squares and circles and triangles from his father’s maesters at Casterly Rock, and they came back more quickly than he would have thought.

By the time they turned to history, Young Griff was growing restive. “We were discussing the history of Volantis,” Haldon said to him. “Can you tell Yollo the difference between a tiger and an elephant?”

“Volantis is the oldest of the Nine Free Cities, first daughter of Valyria,” the lad replied, in a bored tone.” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (pp. 204-205).

So there we have what both Varys laying out the criteria he wants his hypothetical perfect leader to match, as well as a rough idea of how Aegon's training has actually managed to proceed in real practice. What I've found more interesting than the question of whether or not Varys can deliberately social engineer a perfect king in this way—my uninformed lay opinion being that history suggests a hard no—is the question of why he was so fixated on these specific accomplishments.

To what extent do these attributes reflect the person Aegon has grown into, and what do his success and failures say about Aegon's role in this story? Because, as Aegon and Varys aren't actually real, the specific form Aegon's education takes isn't something that just arose out of happenstance. Particularly as Martin spent so much of Tyrion's early Dance chapters detailing it, it's being described as it is for a reason. I'm sure some of it's to contrast him with Rhaegar's real son, Jon (or other son, if you like), and his immediate rival for the Iron Throne, Cersei. But, even before you look at the multiple books of lead-in and set-up to Aegon's role in Dany's story, I think he's very clearly been set up as Dany's antithesis just from the above.

Why is it important, that Aegon receive this particular education? We know Varys believes him to have grown up scholarly, self-sufficient, and capable of performing to the Westerosi ideal of the warrior aristocrat, but I think that last one is more about ensuring the existing power structure accepts him as their own, and that he's capable of responding to a crisis adequately. It's more notable that his princely education seems meant to provide him with a cosmopolitan upbringing that would make him more receptive to the struggles of the common people. I think it's to this end that Varys believed Aegon should learn what it meant to be “hungry, to be hunted, to be afraid.” I think that's the core of what he meant to accomplish, and it's fairly clear that this goal was not met.

It all falls apart where Aegon has gone through life with Duck, a personal bodyguard, and Griff, who Tyrion—a man acquainted with Tywin Lannister—thinks is merciless and frightening, both always at the ready to smooth over any problems before he knows he has them. Aegon hasn't been allowed to meet new acquaintances and judge their merits for himself, he hasn't been allowed to go explore his surroundings, or to make his own decisions. He has a lord, a bodyguard, a teacher, and a priest to do all of that for him, and thus has failed to develop as either a proper lord or as an advocate of the common people.

I think the language training has an interesting way of showing that. His learned proficiency in so many languages is an impressive scholastic accomplishment, and it shows he has a genuine aptitude for academics, as well as a willingness to dedicate himself to studies that he may personally find boring but necessary. But question of whether or not he's been trained to Varys standards' isn't to be answered by how well he speaks Valyrian, but by what lessons Varys actually hoped to impart unto him, and whether or not those lessons were learned.

This is where it's important to hold in mind that none of these people are real, and that their choices—particularly ones that Martin spends so much time elaborating on—exist in the context of his world building, and the story that he is trying to communicate. Scholarship isn't received well if in Westeros if it deviates from the mold of the traditional warrior aristocracy. As such, there is a risk of making him appear superfluously educated. Outside of HV, which may be the language of the aristocracy in Westeros, or at least of liturgy, none of these languages are spoken in Westeros.

They have no known tradition of literature, poetry, philosophy, or law linked to any of these languages. Being a proficient speaker of so many languages is impressive, but he aspires to rule Westeros, which has very little diplomatic contact with the rest of the world and no inherent need for the king to be capable of acting as his own translator, and he would have little need for anything except maybe High Valyrian in his typical administrative duties. I think therefore, the language training is a signifier of the kind of cultural and social conditioning Varys wanted to impart.

I would speculate that somewhere along the way, Haldon and Griff confused the desired end with the means Varys devised for knowing it was reached. I think knowing the languages of the Free Cities, after spending a lifetime sailing the Rhoyne, was a way for Varys to know that the lesson sunk in, and that Aegon had come to know the people of Essos, and thus might understand ordinary people as though he were one of them. He wanted Aegon to know what it was like to be afraid and to be powerless, like the common people of the Free Cities, so that he would come to Westeros as a sympathetic advocate. He wanted him to know how easily security and safety can be snatched away, so that he would respect the power Varys and Illyrio propose to invest him with. And this detail of Aegon's upbringing is specifically there as a parallel to Dany's.

The narrow sea was often stormy, and Dany had crossed it half a hundred times as a girl, running from one Free City to the next half a step ahead of the Usurper’s hired knives. - Martin, George R. R.. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) (p. 106).

After Ser Willem had died, the servants had stolen what little money they had left, and soon after they had been put out of the big house. Dany had cried when the red door closed behind them forever. They had wandered since then, from Braavos to Myr, from Myr to Tyrosh, and on to Qohor and Volantis and Lys, never staying long in any one place. Her brother would not allow it. - Martin, George R. R.. A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1).

It didn't really connect with me until this reread that Aegon's Valyrian lessons even include the dialects of Pentos, Lys, Volantis, Myr, Tyrosh, and then end with Meereen's. After the house with the red door was closed to them, Dany and Viserys lived at various times in Pentos, Lys, Volantis, Myr, and Tyrosh, and they lived in each for a considerable period of time (and since she's been back to Braavos at least once, its likely they've revisited the others as well). Only Braavos and Qohor are missing from Aegon's lessons. And by the end of A Storm of Swords, Dany's journey has finally brought her to Meereen. And just as Meereen is presumed by many to be Dany's last stop before returning to Westeros, Aegon's lessons end on the subject of Meereen, while he's on the outset of his own voyage west.

Does Dany also speak each of those languages as well? It's not fully confirmed, but we're told she knows what the people in the “alleys and wine sinks of Pentos” are saying about Viserys, and we see her making small talk with Illyrio's servants. We know she spent time with the sailors on the ships crossing the Narrow Sea, and exploring the camps that would spring up on the journey between Astapor and Meereen. Given how frequently Dany is said to have sailed the Narrow Sea, we can assume she's had some exposure to their common trade language as well. She liked to spend time exploring the market places of Myr, Lys, and Tyrosh, and we're given the same word as before, “alleys,” to remind us both that she was homeless, and was just wandering around, getting a street-side view of things, and not the more sheltered tour of Essos that Aegon was provided.

We learn in the third book that she knows the Astapori dialect, well enough to follow what Kraznys and the others are saying, and shortly after visiting Yunkai has picked up enough of the similar Yunkai dialect to get to know the freedmen, whose dialect is supposed to be mutually intelligible with Astapori, but otherwise extremely difficult to follow for Valyrian speakers without exposure to the Ghiscari dialects. She's fluent enough in both HV and Tyroshi that they're assumed to be her native language by other Valyrians, like the wine seller in Vaes Dothrak, who hears her as Tyroshi. Since Martin always specifies every instance where Dany is speaking the Westerosi language, her narration is probably being translated from one of these.

There's an odd connection with Tyrosh, between Dany and Aegon as well,

Tyrion turned to Young Griff and gave the lad his most disarming smile. “Blue hair may serve you well in Tyrosh, but in Westeros children will throw stones at you and girls will laugh in your face.”

The lad was taken aback. “My mother was a lady of Tyrosh. I dye my hair in memory of her.” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 131).

That Dany is assumed to be Tyroshi, and Aegon fakes being Tyroshi is probably not an intentional parallel, but is definitely the kind of thing you might work into your book subconsciously while parallels of this type are on the mind.

While Dany had a Dothraki language tutor, we know she picked up the language the same way she learned their customs, by exploring the khalasar and Vaes Dothrak. She seems to have picked up Meereenese fairly quickly as well, even though—according to David Petersen—it's meant to have wildly different syntax and noun genders. After only a few months she's at least comfortable enough to hold a conversation in Meereenese, translates what others are saying in her narration, and receives counsel from Reznak and Skahaz primarily in their own language whenever they're in private, and is capable of holding court and taking petitions without Missandei or one of her other aides translating for her (so it's unlikely that she's speaking a more commonplace prestige dialect).

Part of why it's hard to tell how many languages Dany speaks is that she doesn't actually distinguish dialects of Low Valyrian in her narration. She just calls all of them Valyrian, or “the Valyrian of the Free Cities” (which, after perhaps five rereads, I finally realized, to my embarrassment, was the key to the Astapor plot making sense), and doesn't really distinguish one from another in her narration, in contrast to characters like Arya, Tyrion, and Quentyn who do not have her experience living in the Free Cities, and who find it impossible to understand the Low Valyrian dialects that they haven't studied.

Prior to the publication of A Dance with Dragons, we never really had any indication that the differing dialects of Low Valyrian had any variety of mutual unintelligibility to one another, because we'd only known them through Dany's point of view, and from the points of view of characters who had no knowledge of LV at all. It was only upon Tyrion's journey to Essos and the introduction of Aegon that we learned that, outside of a few closely related dialects like Astapori and Yunkish, and those of the Disputed Lands, that they were generally considered to be different languages entirely. It's not until she's been in residence in Meereen for a few months that she starts referring to the Ghiscari dialects by their local names.

(Though granted, some of this could be that—prior to Feast Dance—Martin may not have fully decided on how to name each dialect, with (most notably) the decision to start naming the Astapor and Meereen dialects “Ghiscari,” as opposed to Valyrian, not coming until much later.)

In Dany's case, other than the Westerosi language, and Dothraki, she didn't have access to a tutor. There's a clear implication that she's always learning through direct exposure, and that her language fluency is the outward sign of her cultural fluency. That she was homeless during the years before she moved to Pentos (notably when she lived in Myr and Lys) increases the likelihood that she was exposed to the local language of each, and not a koine language, prestige language, or government language.

In effect, Aegon has replicated Dany's journey from a chair. He was tutored by a scholar, when Dany was immersed in her surroundings. That's not a mark against him, of course, and I'm quite jealous of his success. But he's learning in a sterile environment, isolated from anyone who hasn't been carefully vetted. He's traveled all around the Free Cities, but he was kept safe along the way, while Dany's hanging out in the marketplace exploring her surroundings and playing with the other kids her age.

Dany reads history books for fun, and enjoys listening to oral histories. She seems comfortable enough at it as well, we've seen her quickly scan over messages in court, and summarize them for everyone else, which is noteworthy in a setting where reading regularly enough to be confident in it is unusual even for lords and masters. She's notably one of the only two people in the series who clearly reads for pleasure, not just for administrative tasks, or because they're interested in learning. Those things are true of her as well, but Dany and Tyrion are the only characters who break opened a book to relax. And Dany has read enough books for it to become mundane enough to her that she can forget where she's read one thing or another.

For Aegon learning about the Free Cities disinterests him. Again, not necessarily a mark against him, we all have our own interests. But here again, Aegon is failing in the criteria that was designed around him, and it describes Dany better than it does him. It goes back to Dany talking with Illyrio's servants and Drogo's people, and the kids in the alleys of the Free Cities, and the pilgrims in Vaes Dothrak. She just likes learning about people. Dany learns about the new cities she visits by reading their books, listening to their histories and stories, and talking to everyone she meets.

Aegon doesn't seem to, and he's only really getting Haldon's own flawed perspective on history instead. How well is it actually researched? Tyrion seems to find a lot of holes, specifically because Tyrion has read many differing sources on individual histories, and has pieced together what he thinks is the best, most consistent, understanding of what actually happened. Haldon appears to be relying on only a single source, and is repeating what he was told. He's teaching to the test, in our parlance. Aegon doesn't really care about the history he's getting, and because of that, he hasn't really learned to challenge the information he's receiving, and just goes along with whatever sounds good.

It makes a degree of sense from his perspective. He wants to rule Westeros, not Volantis, or Slaver's Bay. So while he's dutiful to his lessons, we see that he treats them as a superfluous duty, something he's been told he needs to do to be king, and of no further value to him. To an extent I think this highlights Aegon as a wish fulfillment character of the fans, and a rebuttal to the impulse that Dany should just head west already and forget about Meereen. By doing just that, he's slipped into the role that the fans (and HBO) have always wanted for Dany, and potentially into the storyline that was reserved for Dany in Martin's original pitch letter.

“No tale. Simple truth. The why of it is harder to grasp. Sack Meereen, aye, why not? I would have done the same in her place. The slaver cities reek of gold, and conquest requires coin. But why linger? Fear? Madness? Sloth?” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 344).

Thus Dany's adherence to doing her duty to her people, at the cost of deviating from her “correct” role, is perceived as madness by Aegon's followers. As Aegon was raised believing it's his destiny to rule Westeros wisely and justly, both he and his retainers have no understanding of why someone so similar would take such a different path. Aegon has no interest in helping the people of the Free Cities or Slaver's Bay, nor do the men and women dedicated to seeing him succeed, and they cannot fathom a world otherwise. They're no different than Jorah counseling Dany to leave 80,000 people to starve and be enslaved, for the convenience of her own personal ambition. But unlike with Dany, Aegon isn't ultimately the one in charge, and even if he were, he doesn't have any information his counselors don't want him to have.

“Aegon knows that kingship is his duty, that a king must put his people first, and live and rule for them.” And he might at that, but he has a very narrowly construed conception of “his people” if so, limiting it only to his hypothetical future subjects. And his followers haven't gotten any such message, as shown by the way they treat the out group with suspicion and hostility, and will blindly take any opportunity to advance the time table of their invasion. Dany's people understand what she's about, as shown in A Dance with Dragons, and they do their best to carry on as she would when she's not there.

And its worse than just Aegon retinue being carefully vetted to make sure they're sufficiently useful and loyal. His private army was vetted as well, and not by him. Aegon does not know any of these people, he has not had a chance to win their loyalty, they have not had a chance to prove their worth to him. He doesn't really know anything about them, and neither does Griff, because he too has deliberately kept them at a distance in the name of protecting Aegon.

In comparison, Dany knows her subordinates personally. She talks with Selmy, Grey Worm, Marselen, Symon Stripeback, Tal Toraq, and Strong Belwas regularly. She appointed most of them to their positions when she accepted their service, and they're a regular part of her councils. She also personally negotiated for her alliances with Daario and Ben, and made the decision on her own to work with Skahaz and his followers, and to allow them to earn her trust. Should that seem purely a practical matter of their skill in military affairs, she also knew Rylona Rhee well enough to have been told her personal history, and to have had the opportunity to be impressed by her talent in music, and remembers the positions she took in their governing councils. And Missandei knows her well enough to comfortable with playing with and being teased by her, and to be trusted with bookkeeping and administrative work.

I don't plan to go into literally every case Varys cites of Aegon learning to work, but I found it somewhat interesting that he highlighted how Aegon “knows how to bind a wound,” given what he does with it. First aid is a good skill to have, especially in this setting, but the object of Aegon's training is for him to share the trials and pains of the commons. Knowing how to care for the injured is nice, but Aegon does so dispassionately, purely in his capacity as a claimant king. While he does good in giving the order that saves Tyrion's life, he takes little to no interest in the recovery of a man who nearly died fighting for him. If all you're doing is slapping a band-aid on them, and then leaving them behind, what are you really doing? It's better than nothing, and of course Tyrion is happy to be alive, but these are the easy chances Aegon has to form connections with his people and show them that he cares, and he doesn't take them.

Too many of the men they had sent into the camp had been stricken by the flux themselves. Others had been attacked on the way back to the city. Yesterday a wagon had been overturned and two of her soldiers soldiers killed, so today the queen had determined that she would bring the food herself. Every one of her advisors had argued fervently against it, from Reznak and the Shavepate to Ser Barristan, but Daenerys would not be moved. “I will not turn away from them,” she said stubbornly. “A queen must know the sufferings of her people.” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 521).

Jhogo sucked in his breath. “Khaleesi, no.” The bell in his braid rang softly as he dismounted. “You must not get any closer. Do not let them touch you! Do not!”

Dany walked right past him. There was an old man on the ground a few feet away, moaning and staring up at the grey belly of the clouds. She knelt beside him, wrinkling her nose at the smell, and pushed back his dirty grey hair to feel his brow.

“His flesh is on fire. I need water to bathe him. Seawater will serve. Marselen, will you fetch some for me? I need oil as well, for the pyre. Who will help me burn the dead?” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (pp. 523-524).

Doreah took a fever and grew worse with every league they crossed. Her lips and hands broke with blood blisters, her hair came out in clumps, and one evenfall she lacked the strength to mount her horse. Jhogo said they must leave her or bind her to her saddle, but Dany remembered a night on the Dothraki sea, when the Lysene girl had taught her secrets so that Drogo might love her more. She gave Doreah water from her own skin, cooled her brow with a damp cloth, and held her hand until she died, shivering. Only then would she permit the khalasar to press on. - Martin, George R. R.. A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 2) (pp. 145-146).

Dany on the other hand, is shown to actually comfort the people around her, even if she can't do anything but sit with them while they die. She justifies herself to her companions by citing her duty as a queen and as khaleesi, but it's clear she would have behaved the same way regardless. It's a sign that she actually cares about the people she's met along the way, above and beyond what is personally convenient to her, or even safe for her to show. Whereas with Aegon, like so much else about him, its just performative. You're alive thanks to the grace of the king, now off you go to make yourself useful to him.

Young Griff did not seem to share his misgivings. “Let them try and trouble us, we’ll show them what we’re made of.”

“We are made of blood and bone, in the image of the Father and the Mother,” said Septa Lemore. “Make no vainglorious boasts, I beg you. Pride is a grievous sin. The stone men were proud as well, and the Shrouded Lord was proudest of them all.” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 256).

Griff drew his longsword. “Yollo, light the torches. Lad, take Lemore back to her cabin and stay with her.”

Young Griff gave his father a stubborn look. “Lemore knows where her cabin is. I want to stay.”

“We are sworn to protect you,” Lemore said softly.

“I don’t need to be protected. I can use a sword as well as Duck. I’m half a knight.”

“And half a boy,” said Griff. “Do as you are told. Now.”

The youth cursed under his breath and flung his pole down onto the deck. The sound echoed queerly in the fog, and for a moment it was as if poles were falling around them. “Why should I run and hide? Haldon is staying, and Ysilla. Even Hugor.”- Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (pp. 260-261).

Dany had wanted to lead the attack herself, but to a man her captains said that would be madness, and her captains never agreed on anything. Instead she remained in the rear, sitting atop her silver in a long shirt of mail. - Martin, George R. R.. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) (p. 979).

As far as their ability to perform to the expectations of the men under their command and the people under their protection, insofar as their conduct on the battlefield is concerned, they both have the necessary performative aspects down. But while Aegon is a classic member of the warrior aristocracy, Dany's role is closer to soldiering, which is ultimately more useful to the people around her. She's not a glory hound and doesn't care about chivalry, she's strictly there to win, and to get everyone out of danger alive. This is a radically different mindset from Aegon, who just tells everyone who can't fight to get out of the way and take care of themselves.

There's part of Dany that is tempted to put herself in direct danger at Meereen, but that's not about seeking glory—it's about feeling useful when there's otherwise no obvious place for her once her orders have been given. It comes after she'd stayed behind in the camp and faced the uncertainty of not knowing what was going on in Yunkai. It shows that she's not actually comfortable holding herself apart from others; if they're in danger, she feels that she must be in danger as well. And ultimately, she finds a way to still there with her men if anything goes wrong, but at a safe distance behind the lines, which is where someone in her position of leadership actually is most useful.

It's a bit more complicated in Aegon's case. There's an element of wanting to be useful as well, but it's also presented as more a manifestation of his untested youthful vainglory than anything. And it also goes to show how sheltered he's been by his retinue, who should have clamped that impulse down by now. There surely is a middle ground that could satisfy both Aegon's needs and those of his caretakers, if not their respective egos, but instead of reaching it they're kept separated by Aegon's impulsive need to prove himself, and Griff and company's need to keep him out of trouble.

He's not really Griff and Co.'s king, in essence, he's become their child, which might not be a problem in and of itself, except for the part where they're planning to launch an intercontinental war of conquest in his name.

Despite the incredible burden they're preparing for him to take up, Illyrio and Griff didn't trust him with Tyrion's identity, instead opting to allow potentially dangerous fugitive enter the inner circle and come along for the ride in secret. Aegon really needed to know, for his own ability to protect himself if Tyrion proved untrustworthy, that the man who lit Blackwater Bay on fire, and murdered both Tywin and (so is believed) Joffrey, has been sleeping down the hall from him.

But they don't trust him with that. They just let him think all is well, and everything will work out alright, and it's not long before we see he's come to rely upon and internalize that lesson beyond all reason. He really thinks Aunt Dany is going to just give him a dragon and beg him to lose half her men at sea too, just because Griff says she has to and Griff never lies. Aegon's insistence that everything will go according to his aspirations, is matched by Dany's constant introspection and fear of failure, and her early certainty that Illyrio was just having Viserys on. It solidifies the idea that Griff really is more of the father in this relationship than a trusted aide.

On the subject of being sheltered, I think there's a significant, widespread, misreading of Dany's backstory on this subject, that I'd like to address. She was not Viserys' shadow all of those years wandering Western Essos, or limited to seeing only what he allowed her to see. With all of the talk of her wandering alleys and meeting servants and merchants, her familiarity with the food and art of different city-states, and her confidence in exploring new venues on her own, she must have been more her brother's latchkey kid than his hostage. He was abusive and controlling, but he was also disinterested when she wasn't immediately useful to him, and was never organized or sophisticated enough to keep a close eye on what she was doing.

Young Griff arrayed his army for attack, with dragon, elephants, and heavy horse up front. A young man’s formation, as bold as it is foolish. He risks all for the quick kill. He let the prince have first move. Haldon stood behind them, watching the play. When the prince reached for his dragon, Tyrion cleared his throat.

“I would not do that if I were you. It is a mistake to bring your dragon out too soon.” He smiled innocently. “Your father knew the dangers of being overbold.” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 305).

The prince stared at the playing board.

“My dragon—”

“—is too far away to save you. You should have moved her to the center of the battle.”

“But you said—”

“I lied. Trust no one. And keep your dragon close.” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 309).

During the chess game, Tyrion gives Aegon intentionally bad advance about how best to utilize the dragon piece, in their game's current setup. Intentional comparison to Astapor? Dany knew how best to use her dragon, and wouldn't be dissuaded by the advisers who thought they knew best, and who thought they needed to control her. Aegon has his own ideas as well, but he discards them immediately just because Tyrion says so, when facing far lower stakes.

Aegon goes on to lose the game, which transitions into him making his ever first plan as king. It's a bad one too, and his supporters are all too eager to jump on it. It's an interesting transition; he's been their child sidekick for years, but the second he hits the right notes they expect of a king, they're willing to throw doubt and caution aside because he can look and sound the very part they've trained him to fake. They've just meandered around Volantis for years waiting for Illyrio to fix things for them, and when he can't, they jump on the first plan available, over all rational objections. Overly bold, just as Tyrion warned.

Dany, in contrast, abandoned Illyrio's plans at first opportunity and made her own way, with the support of the people who were there and able to work with her. She relies on her advisers, but the relationship is far more reciprocal than what Aegon has been allowed. Because of that, they can combine their individual strengths and perspectives, and arrive at a plan of action that's useful for more than merely indulging their own smug sense of Byronic pathos.

Yet they were all the horse she had, and she dared not go without them. The Unsullied might be the finest infantry in all the world, as Ser Jorah claimed, but she needed scouts and outriders as well. - Martin, George R. R.. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) (p. 574).

While Joso’s Cock and the other rams were battering the city gates and her archers were firing flights of flaming arrows over the walls, Dany had sent two hundred men along the river under cover of darkness to fire the hulks in the harbor. But that was only to hide their true purpose. As the flaming ships drew the eyes of the defenders on the walls, a few half-mad swimmers found the sewer mouths and pried loose a rusted iron grating. - Martin, George R. R.. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) (p. 986).

While Dany can also be described as “bold” and aggressive, as Tyrion dismisses Aegon, she's not overly-so. Dany is aggressive, but it's a methodical, considered, aggression. Aegon losing half his men is specifically tied to both his reckless lack of planning, and his YOLO driven assumption that everything will just work out on its own to give him a throne. Dany, meanwhile is someone who knows the cost of even a single failure and knows she can't afford to have one, and so she knows to gain as much information and leave as little to chance as possible.

At Yunkai she treats separately with the leaders of each of the forces charged with the city's defense, to gauge their personalities while they're isolated from one another, and she has her bloodriders thoroughly scouting out the physical location at the same time. During the long march to Yunkai, she's shown to have interviewed everyone she had access to with experience related to the Wise Masters.

It took an hour to work out all the details. Now begins the most dangerous time, Dany thought as her captains departed to their commands. She could only pray that the gloom of the night would hide her preparations from the foe. - Martin, George R. R.. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) (p. 581).

And only after this preparation does she actually commit to a plan to defeat the city and free its slaves, and not only does she pull out a fairly complicated plan, but does so after rigging the game for herself as thoroughly as possible. She gives the Yunkai'i and the sellswords both different—false—timelines, gets the Second Sons drunk, uses the campfires of her noncombatants to mask a midnight attack, and relies on the psychological effect that charging Dothraki will have on poorly trained conscripts. And, remember, she didn't actually need to do any of that. She almost certainly would have won either way, but she wanted to win as decisively as possible, to keep herself and her people in the best possible situation going forward.

Judging by the amount of time they're planning out the battle, we can also determine that it was an extended back and forth between the group, and so we see Jorah, Grey Worm, Rakharo, Jhogo, and Aggo are all trusted with a great deal of trust, as well as autonomy, once it's time for them to move.

I have to admit that prior to this reread I'd never been fond of the taking of Meereen, which seemed to attributable to luck for my taste, and didn't appear to work well as a follow-up to Yunkai and Astapor. But I'd failed to really account for the sheer scale of Dany's entourage, which had so many tens of thousands available, that it's not luck at all that one of them would just happen to be familiar with Meereen's sewers. And with the distraction provided by assaulting the harbor, and through her use of fire arrows to ruin the night vision the city's defenders, it was a fairly safe plan. They either made it into the city, or they'd just be left to wait it out in a sewer until everything was over.

More importantly, I'd neglected the relative lack of importance of the sewer infiltration in my previous assessment. She didn't actually need it at all, but was happy enough to take the advantage as it presented itself. Altogether it paints a good picture of a woman who really puts in the work at gathering information, fostering relationships, and taking advantage of the expertise of the people around her, to ultimately manufacture her own luck just by reaping the rewards that her own conduct puts her in position to find. Her initial liberation of Slaver's Bay works to one of Dany's biggest strengths as a leader: she's never found an advantage she was too proud to take, and she isn't afraid to look greedy by taking too many.

And a lot of Dany's advantages come from being a good judge of character and talent, and being generally good at knowing how much to trust the people around her, and how to sort out responsibilities appropriately.

“No. Hear me, Daenerys Targaryen. The glass candles are burning. Soon comes the pale mare, and after her the others. Kraken and dark flame, lion and griffin, the sun’s son and the mummer’s dragon.” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 166).

For Dany, here are just a small selection of the people who gravitate towards her. Ironborn, Dornishmen, Westermen, Stormlanders, Valyrians, and red priests. Marwyn as well, in A Feast For Crows. You can probably throw in Benerro and Volantis as well, on the basis of the widow of the waterfront (“Oh, I think it will be war as well, but not the war they want.”) as well as the show's consolidation of all of the Volantene characters into Kinvara. This is basically every major group represented, of the cities and nations we've visited personally, or who have had direct impact upon the story. She's made contacts nearly everywhere, and where she hasn't, she's sufficiently inspired the people around her that her story has encouraged others to seek her out as well.

Dany and Aegon both draw followers heavily from the dispossessed, but notice that Dany's people tend to be drawn from one of two groups: people who want something to believe in, and people with nowhere else to go, who are in search of protection. Aegon's people are generally those with no other options at all, and those searching for revenge out of bitterness and spiteful nihilism. These are a group of people who just weren't good enough for their aspirations, resent their failures, and are looking for one last wagon to hitch themselves to.

Griff was incompetent and ineffectual as Hand of the King, and dreams of being Aegon's very own Tywin. Haldon wasn't good enough to graduate his university, and spends his days spitefully challenging total strangers to trivia contests, and threatening them with death when he loses. Should these boys really be educating a king? Yes, Dany has awful people in her retainer too, like Jorah Mormont, but she doesn't blindly and incuriously trust them to have her best interests in heart. She gives them clear, specific, instructions and carefully keeps watch on what they do with them to see how much trust they deserve.

Outside of maybe Duck, and Septa Lemore, Aegon's men have no higher aspirations, just romantic visions. They've all given up on that. It's no wonder that half of them end up missing in a storm, and it's surely no accident that Tyrion doesn't belong with them. I talked earlier about how poorly positioned Aegon and his supporters are to take advantage of one another in a mutually beneficial way, and I think the short argument between Lemore and Griff over the Golden Company is further instructive.

“We have gone to great lengths to keep Prince Aegon hidden all these years,” Lemore reminded him. “The time will come for him to wash his hair and declare himself, I know, but that time is not now. Not to a camp of sellswords.”

“If Harry Strickland means him ill, hiding him on the Shy Maid will not protect him. Strickland has ten thousand swords at his command. We have Duck. Aegon is all that could be wanted in a prince. They need to see that, Strickland and the rest. These are his own men.”

“His because they’re bought and paid for. Ten thousand armed strangers, plus hangers-on and camp followers. All it takes is one to bring us all to ruin." - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 336).

These are strangers. They don't know Aegon yet. He's just been given these men. The appendix actually calls them of “uncertain loyalty.” Given House Blackfyre's association with the Golden Company, we might ascribe the company's saying, “beneath the gold, the bitter steel” as well, to be a way of saying both of them are an off-brand imitation.

It also reminds me a bit of Stannis' fake lightbringer, and the hints regarding Drogon. Aegon's almost certainly going to end up with the sword, Blackfyre, and Dany just happens to have a dragon that breathes black fire, and is associated with swords. He's even introduced as a puppet dragon in Dany's Clash chapters, in contrast to Dany's mythical role of the Last Dragon. Aegon's a fake, and to show that his retinue has literally been gilded over. It's also surprisingly reminiscent of Viserys and his golden crown. And like Viserys, what are these men actually worth to anyone?

From that day to this, the men of the Golden Company had lived and died in the Disputed Lands, fighting for Myr or Lys or Tyrosh in their pointless little wars, and dreaming of the land their fathers had lost. - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 86).

I ask, what have the Golden Company ever actually accomplished? They have had some early successes in the Stormlands, true, but it's hard to know how seriously to take that when the Stormlands have been leaderless and at war for years, and everyone who knows what they're doing is either in King's Landing or the North. And I somehow doubt that they're going to do a prudent job of governing the fiefdoms they're seizing.

The Golden Company have a fearsome reputation, but it mostly extends from sacking their own client for failure to pay, and of taking control of disorganized pirate bands in the Stepstones. How much of their reputation is an authentic reflection of their skill, rather than a product of the same grand guignol that built Gregor Clegane's? Their real record has been one of pointless little wars, failed invasions of Westeros, and kicking down at people who can't defend themselves. And they seem to be playing a shell game with the three cities of the Disputed Lands, with how often their contract changes hands, and how rarely they're ever called on to do anything in that conflict.

They found the Golden Company beside the river as the sun was lowering in the west. It was a camp that even Arthur Dayne might have approved of—compact, orderly, defensible. A deep ditch had been dug around it, with sharpened stakes inside. The tents stood in rows, with broad avenues between them. The latrines had been placed beside the river, so the current would wash away the wastes. The horse lines were to the north, and beyond them, two dozen elephants grazed beside the water, pulling up reeds with their trunks. Griff glanced at the great grey beasts with approval. There is not a warhorse in all of Westeros that will stand against them.

Tall battle standards of cloth-of-gold flapped atop lofty poles along the perimeters of the camp. Beneath them, armed and armored sentries walked their rounds with spears and crossbows, watching every approach. - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 339).

We have ten thousand men in the company, as I am sure Lord Connington remembers from his years of service with us. Five hundred knights, each with three horses. Five hundred squires, with one mount apiece. And elephants, we must not forget the elephants. - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 345).

Black Balaq commanded one thousand bows. In his youth, Jon Connington had shared the disdain most knights had for bowmen, but he had grown wiser in exile. In its own way, the arrow was as deadly as the sword, so for the long voyage he had insisted that Homeless Harry Strickland break Balaq’s command into ten companies of one hundred men and place each company upon a different ship. - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 876).

A third of Balaq’s men used crossbows, another third the double-curved horn-and-sinew bows of the east. Better than these were the big yew longbows borne by the archers of Westerosi blood, and best of all were the great bows of goldenheart treasured by Black Balaq himself and his fifty Summer Islanders. - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 876).

I've always found the structure of the Golden Company interesting. So we have a force of 10,000 men consisting of 24 elephants, 1,000 archers, and 1,000 knights and squires, with the remainder appearing to be infantry with spears. Within the archers alone, we see the important thing is highlighting that they've drawing influence from each of Westeros, the Dothraki, the Free Cities, and the Summer Islands.

Doesn't this sound a bit familiar? Dany also starts off with 1,000 armored guys with bows riding horses, courtesy of her alliances with Daario and Ben, and with around 8,000 to 10,600—the numbering gets weird whether the trainees are included or not—guys on foot with spears. So visually, the Golden Company and Dany's forces are roughly the same idea, developed convergently.

She later gains 2,000 more mercenaries from the Windblown, and “several hundred” pit fighters. Later on she'll also have nearly twice as many infantry as she did when she set out from Astapor, when somewhere around 10,000 freedmen have added to the initial group Unsullied. That's again, visually similar to the Golden Company, and it's the force whose loyalty she earns as an indirect consequence of not peacing out to Volantis to join up with them.

Throughout her time in Meereen the leaders of those thousands of freedmen are fleshed out as they gain more experience as well as become influential among Dany's people. While Aegon is given 10,000 men and wanders off to Westeros right away, Dany wins the loyalty of her own 10,000, and stays with the people she's grown to feel responsible for. While Aegon loses half his men right away, Dany at least doubles her forces right away, putting her in a better position to accomplish her immediate goals than Aegon in his.

The size of Dany's forces continually increase while Aegon's continually divide and split apart, and there's a general theme of different groups of people coming together within the traveling city that's sprung up around Dany's person. The Brazen Beasts are formed from equal numbers of freedmen and shavepates. We don't really know how many there are, beyond there being enough to secure a city with a population likely in excess of 1 million, and to defend its walls during a major siege.

Barristan has 26 squires with him by the end of A Dance with Dragons. Three in particular are highlighted, the Red Lamb, Tumco Lho, and Larraq, are all former slaves who become knights. What's to notice about these three? They're all slaves—presumably from Meereen—but the Red Lamb is originally from Lhazarene (Dany's primary ally in the region, whose support she negotiated), Tumco is a pit fighter, and Larraq was one of the slaves of Meereen. All three are slaves, but within them we see a microcosm of her support from Lhazar, the freedmen, and even the reluctant, sometimes fraught, support she has among the pit fighters.

Dany starts off with a similar army to Aegon, but her's grows, because it's actually not just an army. Dany's freedmen are their own community.

The raggle-taggle host of freedmen dwarfed her own, but they were more burden than benefit. Perhaps one in a hundred had a donkey, a camel, or an ox; most carried weapons looted from some slaver’s armory, but only one in ten was strongenough to fight, and none was trained. They ate the land bare as they passed, like locusts in sandals. Yet Dany could not bring herself to abandon them as Ser Jorah and her bloodriders urged. I told them they were free. I cannot tell them now they are not free to join me. She gazed at the smoke rising from their cookfires and swallowed a sigh. She might have the best footsoldiers in the world, but she also had the worst. - Martin, George R. R.. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) (p. 574).

Her host numbered more than eighty thousand after Yunkai, but fewer than a quarter of them were soldiers. - Martin, George R. R.. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) (p. 775).

Aegon's army is Dany's army—the difference is that Dany gathered her force herself, and it's primary purpose has developed into protecting the greater community that's formed around it. Aegon's army is only there to conquer Westeros, and someone just bought it for him. If Dany finds herself in need of a specialization that goes outside what Grey Worm and Daario can take care of, she has tens of thousands of people on hand to ask. When it's time for Aegon and his men to go to Westeros, they just ask the first people they meet to give them boats, and hope they don't sink, because that's all they can do.

Therefore to be more precise, we must compare the Golden Company not to Dany's army, but to Dany's khalasar, as her fighting force has become indistinguishable from her nation by the time she reaches the gates of Meereen. When adding in the freedmen and women bearing arms to the Unsullied and the sellswords, you even have the noncombatant section of the the camp in a similar proportion to that of a Dothraki khalasar. When standing before the gates of Meereen, Dany thinks to herself that the Great Masters do not treat her comunity with the same respect that they would treat a khalasar, showing where her mind is. When she resolves to stay in Meereen, she looks back and realizes “[she has] been more khal than queen.”

Her Mhysa identity itself is also linked directly to Dany's status as khaleesi. The moment she was hailed as Mhysa was the moment the freedmen ceased to be a burden and became her people. It's important therefore to note that there is actually no conflict between Dany-as-Mhysa and Dany-as-the-Dragon. Rather, they are intrinsically linked, as Mhysa is directly intertwined with Dany's identity as khaleesi, and the freedmen with her khalasar, which are both made possible by the power of her dragons.

Rather, this trio identity of Mhysa/khaleesi/Dragon is directly in opposition to Dany as Daenerys I, that is, Dany-as-Queen, the aspect of herself that still works to benefit the privileged few at the top of the social and economic pyramid, that compels her to make an effort to treat with the Great Masters. This struggle can be seen even in Dany's name, which in A Dance with Dragons, for the first time, swings back and forth in her narration between Dany and Daenerys, rather than Dany being dominant as in past volumes.

And for once, this aspect of Dany is closely paralleled with, rather than contrasted by, Aegon in his own quest to retake the Iron Throne for solely his own benefit and that of his elite supporters, with provision to the common people made on a case by case basis only. Dany's ongoing struggle throughout Dance is in effect a struggle to resist the temptation of becoming like Aegon, which is the same as becoming her show counterpart.

I don't think it's fair to judge her too harshly for her works with the Great Masters, even if they do represent backsliding onto the wrong path. Even as a homeless teenage war orphan, with no formal education, she has a lot of experiences to learn from and to unlearn. And as she has no one to lean on with experience in the right direction, her politics have by necessity been made up on the spot, guided only by experience and her own moral clarity.

I'd like to cite @khaleesirin on that note, who summarized Dany’s tendency flesh out her principles from her experiences better in the linked post.

Because Dany is the closest thing we really have to a character whose headspace we can insert ourselves into, I think we've developed a collective tendency to forget that she's been forced to make things up as she goes along. Her path forward is a bit sloppier than we're used to seeing in this type of fiction, but she's definitely moving further along it all the same, as experience forces her to fine tune her way of doing things.

There had been a throne there, a fantastic thing of carved and gilded wood in the shape of a savage harpy. She had taken one long look and commanded it be broken up for firewood. “I will not sit in the harpy’s lap,” she told them. Instead she sat upon a simple ebony bench. It served, though she had heard the Meereenese muttering that it did not befit a queen. - Martin, George R. R.. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) (p. 980).

Dany's bench is seen as less queenly, and that seems to be exactly the point in having it. She had correctly identified the throne as an inherently oppressive construct. She is again being “more khal than queen” to her people. What I think is interesting about that conflict is how it's a development upon what Dany's already learned from her time with the Dothraki. When Drogo resided in Pentos, he held court in his manse not unlike any other magister. When Dany resides in Meereen, she does so in one of their pyramids, and holds court in the style the Ghiscari seem to, albeit with her own twist to show her alignment with the freedmen. But then once that's done, it's back to the felt coats and painted leather vests, just as Drogo kept his own customs on the road.

Khal Drogo is, admittedly, a surprising model for a lefty revolutionary to pattern herself on, but I think the important thing is less his example, and more that he and his khalasar provided her with a new set of rules to explore herself within. Knowing them gave her permission to live among her people, putting on the face she needed to guide them to safety, and to allow herself to be called upon through a criteria other than blood and birthright. As for the rest, there's still more room to grow, and I think it follows that when Dany leaves Slaver's Bay, whether she follows the show's course or not, she's inevitably going to be more Nymeria than Aegon.

The first thing Dany ever did as a conquering queen, by the way, was take one look at the throne she'd won, and order it destroyed and replaced with a nice bench. Just saying, I don't think Drogon is destroying the Iron Throne as his own political thesis in the books.

So what are we left with when we consider the case of Aegon? He's a manufactured hero, he's been handed the key to a grand destiny, through no merit of his own, and he's been set up to fail spectacularly. That would normally imply that a real hero needs to emerge, the woman whose destiny he's stolen, coming to power through the longer rode that Aegon ignored. But it's not necessarily true that just because common storytelling logic dictates such an outcome, that it will come to fruition.

It seems odd, and I think necessarily unfulfilling after five full novels, to think that we may be presented a succession of failed heroes, only to reveal the real hero, and then pull the rug out from under her as well in the end. Yet it isn't inconceivable that Martin would invoke the same bait-and-switch multiple times to diminishing returns—after all, consider that Quentyn's story, exploring the trauma of war, was already presented to us, with greater detail and closer and more personally, through Arya's time in the Riverlands—but it would feel like a tremendous waste of time, and hard to square with how disconnected Daenerys' arc has been from the other characters.

After all, she doesn't think she's Azor Ahai Reborn, or the Prince that was Promised. Unlike the fans, she's only vaguely aware that these things exist, and has been spending most of her time trying to end slavery. I do wonder, when I look at Aegon, if he exists so that there will be someone on hand to fulfill Daenerys' original purpose as the warlord who invades Westeros after years of infighting. Do we actually need two characters for that? There is, of course, an element of wishful thinking, but I'd like to think Martin's realized that Dany's character has grown too far from her original design.

Aegon is false because his path is false. And if his path is false, than that implies that kingship itself is the false path. We've seen Dany move further away from the Iron Throne throughout her arc, both geographically, and sociologically. When she finally has a taste of being queen, she's miserable, and can't stop reliving her past actions—as Mhysa, as the Mother of Dragons, those actions that brought her to where she is—as ones inherently in opposition to the idea of being a queen. Unless Dance truly is just a course correction document, made to transform Dany (and Jon, and Tyrion) into different characters, it strikes me likely that Aegon's purpose is to show the reader that Dany is right to move on and break free of what she's been taught is her duty to House Targaryen.

Aegon wasn't just accidentally set up as her negative. I've always thought, or at least since Dance that her arc was taking her away from Westeros. Her fate seems as though it should be tied to Essos, with her people—specifically that nomadic city of freedmen and Dothraki that she's adopted as her own. Why abandon that? Why introduce these flawed analogues for Dany—Viserys, Aegon, arguably Stannis—only to have her make their mistakes and lose everything she's found? A dark arc is one thing, so is a brief layover in Westeros for humanitarian purposes, but to abandon everything and just become Aegon is to render both of them red herrings.

A Dance with Dragons ends with her dispirited, dejectedly realizing that Meereen was never her city, and resolving to go to Westeros. But this is her lowest moment, a few books away from the future conclusion of her journey. The resolution seems as though it should be for Dany to realize that while Meereen isn't her city, the people who followed her there from Yunkai are still her people.

#daenerys targaryen #aegon vi targaryen #aegon blackfyre #asoiaf

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morphituu · 6 years ago

Text

Milagro

Chapter 4: “Manifest”

Ch: 1 - 2 - 3

In uncertainty, he ran his tongue over his clipped tusks, reading each seed packet critically, but this had been the third time he’d done so and he still wasn’t any closer to deciding on one. It wasn’t that he worried about the possible challenges with growing watermelon, it was the damn brands; two of his favorites.

Nick chuffed, shuffling the packets with averted eyes a few times before dropping one into the cart filled with large potted plants Callie had chosen, and placing the other back on the shelf. He looked down- nope, that wouldn’t do. He switched his selection, fighting the impulse to shuffle all over again.

He looked up from his dilemma when Callie turned the corner, a hand on her ever growing stomach and less tension in her shoulders.

“Much better,” she sighed, reaching for the water in the cart.

“At that rate you’re gonna be back in 10 minutes,” he avoided eye contact when he said that, knowing she’d have a placid stare ready for him.

“Or cause your monster baby is sitting on my bladder,” she piped, fiddling with the long, spear like leaves of the plant she’d chosen and delicately tucking in the star like one of the other two she planned to hang from the ceiling beside the sliding glass door.

“Which is why we shouldn’t’ve bought those newborn onesies…” he trailed off, an irked groan coming from her.

“Oh my god here we go again,”

“She’s not gonna fit in them,” Nick argued, firm on this side of the debate they’d had countless times.

“We don’t know how big they will be, so shut it, chato,”

“Keep callin’ me that and I’m gonna stick somethin’ in your mouth.” he said against the shell of her ear, but a quick swipe of her hand pushed his face away before he curled a strong arm around her neck to pull her back in, half-hearted shoves against his chest doing nothing.

Callie only allowed them to complete their purchase until after an associate had guaranteed none of the plants they were buying were harmful to a dog that had an odd obsession with chewing on flowers or greens, even though Nick had assured multiple times he’d Googled it before they even made it to the store.

Walking became a little slower every week that passed, not only because of Callie’s sore back, but for the impressive size of her 17 week belly that had her officially waddling beside him through the parking lot. That also meant when she hoisted herself into the truck now, his hand stayed on her back, ready to catch her if she tumbled. Being so small never posed such a threat.

“To T-Mobile?” he asked as he turned the engine, grinning at her sheepish nod.

“Hopefully it’s just the screen,” she mumbled, looking at the poor state of her shattered phone. “Guess I should invest in one of those Lifeproof cases,”

“Callie proof,” he ribbed, but she couldn’t really disagree with that. Throwing her phone across the room in attempts to simply pull it from her back pocket was an everyday occurrence.

A clustered fluttering stirred in her stomach, and a stifled groan snagged Nick’s attention as she shifted in her seat. “I’m gassy.” she admitted shyly, so he rolled her window down.

↠

Nick eyeballed the shredded, frying tortillas she flipped and stirred, his mouth watering even with lime and tajin coated jicama between his jaws. Just the smell of the blended tomato, onion and garlic was enough to make him groan in anticipation, and he’d even laid the eggs out beside her when the time came to fry them for the chilaquiles.

He popped another piece of jicama in his mouth, wincing at the particularly sour piece.

“Can you start making this everyday?” he inquired over her shoulder, offering her a piece.

“I’m already getting too chubby,” she chewed, pouring the contents of the blender into the pan. Nick’s excitement was evident as he observed, nearly done with his bowl. “I thought my jeans didn’t fit because of my stomach, but I think it’s my ass,”

“I like your big ass,” he kissed her cheek, and she snorted.

“Pervert.”

↠

She could sit and watch this for hours.

Callie never grew tired of watching Nick work on his garden, especially under the sun, shirtless and wearing those old stained and faded jeans he’d had longer than she was around. They hugged those toned thighs deliciously and hung low on his hips, effectively dampening her panties everytime he wore them. Add in a little bit of sweat shining off those chiseled muscles across his back and arms he worked so diligently to build up the past few years, and she had her very own private show from the comfort of their backyard.

Nick liked lap dances, and she loved watching him garden.

She sipped her iced tea, finding herself unbearably thirsty when he stood and walked to the shade of the overhang she laid under, eyes roaming his brawny body up and down as he stuffed his gloves in the pocket of the jeans.

“Should have watermelon in a few months,” he informed, reaching for her cup before sitting by her legs.

“Just in time for summer,” she noted, sliding down her seat when more gas fluttered through her stomach. He hummed as he drank, rubbing her thigh when it stretched across his lap.

“Still feeling dizzy?”

“Only when I stand up too fast,” she soothed, her hand falling to his shoulder when he leaned in towards her stomach.

“Why you harassin’ mama? Huh?” he interrogated playfully, her stomach bumping his nose when she stretched to alleviate more gas that never seemed to actually pass. “I was ready to know what the sex was yesterday,”

“Getting impatient?”

Nick nodded, half a frown curling his mouth. “I wanna meet her already,” he mumbled a little sadly, his palm drawing wide circles over her distended stomach.

“I want her to cook as long as she needs to,” she played along.

Nick grinned. “I’m kind of excited you’ll pop earlier than expected,”

“That’s not a for sure thing,”

His brows perked up, his fingers drumming against her stomach when he said, “Tell that to the little thing 4 weeks ahead of schedule,”

The probe had made multiple passes over the same spot, effectively panicking Callie when the doctors eyes stared unblinking at the monitor, her expression a look into her thoughts she couldn’t decipher.

“Is it alive?” Callie blurted, and Nick grabbed her hand when she tried to sit up.

“Yes- oh goodness, I apologize. Yes it’s alive,” Dr. Sangui assured, pausing to rest a hand on Callie’s thigh. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,”

Callie’s head fell back, hands cupping her head. That engulfed her so rapidly it made her lightheaded. Nick also- his forehead dropped to her shoulder, squeezing her arm in comfort as that momentary torment drained from their system.

“After all the time it took to find you I thought we’d been too late,” Nick exhaled, holding his head in his hands, then holding Callie’s as she slipped her palm into his.

“Oh I understand, it’s hard to find high-risk OBGYN’s that specialize in halflings,” Dr. Sangui sympathized, taking a few shots of the ultrasound. “It’s been about 3 weeks since you’ve seen the doctor that referred you?” she asked, and they both nodded.

“Why the concern?” Callie asked, looking back to the doctor who was still circling in tight swipes over her stomach, her Doctors neat brows curling critically.

Dr. Sangui’s lips curled up in a tender grin. “Your little one looks to be about 4 weeks ahead of schedule,”

The couple studied her words a moment before Callie sat up on her elbows, head tilting before finally saying, “What?”

She turned the monitor, revealing an impressive full body side profile of their baby wiggling in her stomach, and Callie’s restive expression softened before the doctors long, thin finger started pointing to the fuzzy image.

“You can see here- see? Those little hands and fingers? That level of development is normally a milestone at 21 weeks, but the biggest indicator is it’s size. At 17 weeks we’d expect about 5 inches in length, but this little ones already at 9 and around 13 ounces,” she explained, dragging the probe to highlight the little hands they could see curling into fists.

“Does that explain why my back hurts so much?” Callie was distracted when she asked, admiring her lively baby.

“You’ve definitely got a big baby coming your way. At 21 weeks you’d see babies at around 10 ounces,” she reflected out loud, her other fingers tapping thoughtfully against the carob skin of her chin.

“But, it’s okay? Even though it’s growing fast?” Nick asked.

“So far so good. It’s growing closer to the rate of an Orc which is expected since the father is, but I don’t see anything out of the usual even for a halfling. I think an ultrasound next week will solidify my assumption that you’ll have a sooner due date than expected,” she elaborated, helping her sit up. “That being said, this adds a little more caution to be had since you’re already a high risk pregnancy,”

“How’s that?” Nick asked.

“Labor will be something up for discussion,”

“I wanted a natural birth,” Callie reminded.

“Which I’m not against at all, cause, goodness- more power to you, but with halflings, medical intervention may need to be taken. I’ve had many patients who’ve tried delivering vaginally and the baby’s become stuck in the pelvis because of their size. That being said, a woman's body is capable of amazing things, including natural births to large babies,”

Nick cringed a little; imagining a baby that big was… scary, honestly. “So this is… generally normal?” he asked, and she nodded encouragingly.

“Normal Orc gestation is only 7 months. It doesn’t surprise me that the baby is growing faster, I just didn’t expect to be doing a scan on such a developed one when the chart said 17 weeks,” she laughed, her voice harmonic. “But it's a common hiccup in changing doctors. 12 week scans don’t give all that much insight, especially under a nurses scrutiny,”

Callie back tracked, her hand raising. “You said growing closer to the rate of an Orc? I thought they aged slower,”

“Adults age slowly,” she rolled backwards to reach for a laminated chart from the counter, wheeling back before Callie and swiping her coily hair from her cheek before pointing to the illustrations that timelined an Orcs pregnancy. “Orc growth in the womb is rapid if you take into account the shorter pregnancy terms and size at which Orcs are born, but after birth they age relatively close to humans but reach sexual maturity much sooner than humans. 9 or 10 is the normal age for their first heat cycles to start, and the progression of their aging drops dramatically in their early 30’s,”

“You didn’t know that?” Callie poked Nick, but he shook his head.

“I knew pregnancies were quick but I didn’t think it’d equate to you,” he shrugged.

“What about halflings?” Callie turned back to Dr. Sangui.

“Genetic testing after birth can tell us at what percentage they inherited and in turn be able to give us more insight to how they’ll age,”

The couple nodded thoughtfully, taking in all the information they’d been withheld from in their search for a specialist. Neither knew there was such contrasting differences in a crossover pregnancy, but above all, it gave them peace of mind knowing what to expect.

“I always thought I was bigger than I was supposed to be,” Callie mumbled, Nick nodding in agreement. Both of them had noticed that but figured it was just because he’d make big babies. “But everything is okay? It’ll all be okay?” Nick squeezed her thigh reassuringly.

“From what I see, everything is moving beautifully, so I have no reason to be worried about your progression even if you’re ahead of schedule. If you don’t have any further symptoms out of the ordinary, I’d say your body is handling it very well,” her doctor held her hand, reassuring Callie with a gentle smile and honest words. “We’ll start ultrasounds for cervical length next week. We might as well keep them weekly- you know you’re high risk for gestational diabetes or preeclampsia, and we also don’t want the baby to have developed rapidly and your body overfiring and sending you into preterm labor or struggling to catch up if it reaches term sooner,”

“What would happen if any of that happened?”

Her doctor sighed, clasping her hands. “If you went into early labor, there’s medications that would hopefully halt it, but you’d likely be kept in hospital for observation,”

“What if I went into labor tomorrow- I’d have to stay till it’s fully grown?” Callie barked, but she raised her hands calmly.

“Like I said, it all depends on how the pregnancy progresses. Above all the baby decides when it’s done cooking and every halfling is different. So stay calm, drink lots of water and keep exercising. I have no reason thus far to think you wouldn’t go home with a healthy baby and a somewhat decent recovery at the end of a seemingly normal pregnancy,”

Callie’s brows rose unenthusiastically. “Somewhat decent?”

“First time recoveries are always tough. Add in a big baby, it gets tougher,” she explained, lips quirked to the side.

Nick ran his hand over his head, suddenly having multiple things to keep him paranoid at work instead of just one. “So we’re just playing the waiting game?”

“More or less, which in that sense isn’t any different from other pregnancies. You’re doing good, Callie. Everything is normal so far,” Dr. Sangui encouraged, handing off their fresh batch of ultrasound scans.

That eased some of the couples momentary concern, and then Nick’s head perked up. “Does that mean if we wanted we could know the sex?”

Callie’s doctor nodded, one eye closing as she pondered. “You technically could’ve known 3 weeks ago.”

Nick looked to Callie, but she shook her head, turning his hopeful smile into downcast brows and a deep frown.

“Still might decide to cook longer,” she reiterated, smoothing her hand over the back of his head while he placed long smooches against her stomach. Inwardly, she hoped for that. She didn’t know if she could stand seeing their baby in the NICU hooked up to endless wires if her body betrayed her again.

He shrugged. “Either way, as long as it’s healthy,” he turned his head to rest his cheek there, looking up at her. “She’s gonna be so pretty. Just like her mama,”

Callie blew a short raspberry, giggling when he leaned up to press his mouth softly to hers again and again. She held his face, thumbs tracing his handsome cheekbones as he caressed her lips delicately, moaning softly under her delicate touch.

“You tryin’ to be all sweet and stuff?” she whispered against his eager pecks, noticing the shift from tranquil to starved in his amber eyes, the soft scrape of sharp teeth across her lips when he opened his mouth wider to taste her tongue stirring a low moan. Splayed fingers traced to the back of his head, keeping him locked against her.

“Tryin’ to get in your pants is more like it.” he slurred, conjuring seductive giggles when his touch traced upwards along her inner thigh.

↠

“I did! I swear I did,” she laughed, pushing against his bare chest as he looked at her suspiciously.

“And you never said hi?” he teased, earning another attempt at a smack on his chest, but he caught the blow.

“Well you were working so excuse me for being polite, officer,”

“Mhm,” he exhaled, an arm draping under her bare breasts and half his face disappearing beside hers in the lush pillow. “What kinds of calls were these that you stalked me on?”

“Mm,” she pondered thoughtfully, the plump bottom lip she worried between her teeth making Nick lick his own. He wanted to nibble on that lip again. “The one I remember best was at Fifth and Westlake, and the dude had an entire intersection stopped because he was throwing a sword around,” she explained, fingertips tracing the muscle of his forearm. Nick’s interest pulled from her mouth to settle on her sleepy caramels, recalling the start of that strange day years ago.

“You were there for that?” he asked.

She nodded. “I was with my mom next door getting tortillas,”

He adjusted his head. “You saw me arrest him?”

“Mhm. And I remember thinking, damn that ass looks good,” She laughed when he pinched her naked hip, pulling her writhing body closer to his. “And I remember how out of place you looked,”

His brows wrinkled drowsily.

“Like, you wanted to fit in but couldn’t just walk up and join a conversation, not even with the other Orcs around,” she said plainly, turning and stuffing a pillow under her stomach so she could face him and draw the pad of her thumb back and forth across his chin.

Stirring those repressed emotions from lonely days made him shift uncomfortably.

“That was the only time you saw me?” he asked.

“A few other times here and there, the occasional YouTube video. Not constantly until you started coming into the store though. Otherwise you never would’ve noticed me,” she smiled.

“Oh I noticed you. If we would’ve bumped into each other during work I probably woulda been fired trying to track you down,” he chuckled.

“What if you would’ve been cuffing me when we met?”

“Woulda fucked you in the back seat,” he sneered, blocking her hands when she swatted at his face playfully. “Look at us now,” he added lovingly, tracing the curve of her side down to her hip, squeezing as her knee slid up his bare thigh.

“You fit in the world now,” she said softly. Her caresses had already been beckoning him towards her, electrifying his body that’d seemingly just been spent minutes before.

“Only cause I found you in it. I couldn’t have kept going without you,”

“No, you got up everyday and did it. You started it and you’re finishing- I’m just here to cheer you on,” she insisted, and he found himself drowning in the sincerity of her balmy caramel eyes as he kissed her, sitting up on an elbow to lean over her deliciously writhing body.

“Still,” he argued, dragging his fingertips from her knee down her inner thigh as they spread, smirking at the soft shake of her whimper. “Everything was because of you.”

↠

He stood after he finished pulling his Nikes on, returning to their room where she was still sprawled naked across the bed, pillows stuffed around her stomach and limbs with hair fanned around her head like wild vines.

He peppered kisses across her face until she stirred, her hands finding him.

“I’m leaving,” Nick finally placed a soft kiss on her lips.

“Be safe,” she mumbled sleepily, her cheek squished when he gave her another hard one. “I love you,”

“Love you.” He stood straight with a groan, leaving her to melt back into the blankets and pillows as he headed for the front door with his bag in hand. Pucca was given a few messy face rubs when she stretched upwards onto his stomach at the door, and sweetly instructed her to watch over mama while he was away.

At the precinct, he always parked farther from everyone else. A far corner where no one else preferred to leave their vehicles because of the distance to walk, but after years of people opening their car doors into his and riddling his truck with dents and scratches, he now carried the habit with him everywhere he went unless Callie was tagging along.

He made idle conversation with a few friendly officers at the front desk who asked how Callie was doing, one of the men who was an impressive father of 6 daughters offering that if he should have a girl, he could have the mountains of hand-me-downs he and his wife didn’t know what to do with. Nick considered it, and would most likely take him up on the offer. He couldn’t be convinced otherwise that they weren’t having a girl at that point.

Walking into the lockers, he found Sergey, already clad in uniform and tying his boots. His nose scrunched when Nick walked by.

“You did not shower afterwards?” the young Orc griped.

“Says the one who came in for a week smelling like a closed room after an orgy,” Nick retorted snootily, rousing a loud chuff from Sergey, but Nick threw one right back at him alongside a cocky grin.

“Could y’all stop flirting please.” A sour officer commented as he walked by them, smirking to himself.

But the Orcs had the last laugh when they both chuffed loudly in unison, startling the paler man who turned to glare at their toothy sneers.

↠

“No listen,” Nick interrupted, holding up his green tea smoothie. “People that go for Chivas are always fucking hot heads,”

“The hell you say!” Sergey defended heatedly.

“Case in point,” Nick noted, slurping the drink as he sat deeper in the seat, the two waiting for someone to whip around the corner of the street frequented by speeders.

“Oh shut the fuck up, how does Callie put up with your bullshit?” Sergey lamented, staring at Nick critically.

“Cause we like the same team,”

“Which is?”

An arrogant smirk was his answer, but it took Sergey a moment to decipher the expression, and it was a long eye roll when it finally clicked.

“You are not for América,”

“Got an official jersey at home,” Nick boasted, his smug smile from ear to ear. “My baby’s gonna have a little one just like her daddy,”

“You’re a fucking disgrace,” Sergey took a hearty bite of his chicken wrap. “It’s not too late to convert, you know,”

“Callie’s father would murder me if I came over wearing an opposing team's shirt.”

↠

Their nightshift consisted of a few speeding tickets and nothing more by the time their clock ran out, and they were sat back in the locker rooms, changing from their finely ironed attire. Nick always enjoyed taking the vest off; even upon requesting the next size up when more muscle bulked his form, his dimensions didn’t work well with the constricting material.

“Take it easy, old man.” Sergey patted his shoulder after he’d finished changing, but Nick only chuckled, finishing pulling off his boots.

Your mom wants us there by 11 on sunday, read the message from Callie, pinhead sized sprinkles falling onto the screen of his phone once outside. Nick dug in his bag for his beanie, slipping it over his head before replying.

Wear sweats so you can pig out then. my dad's gonna expect your salsas too

He shoved his hand into the pocket of his shorts, pressing the unlock button on his car keys, but his truck didn’t chirp when he did so.

Nick stopped once he looked up from his phone.

The drivers side door was thrown open, the hood popped, and anything inside had been thrown about. Papers, wires, anything that could fit into a compartment was tossed into seats or on the floor, and upon stepping closer, the car seat had also been knocked off its base and was on its side.

Nick spun, wide eyes glaring over the parking lot, anywhere a head could’ve been secretly watching him.

Cautiously he approached the truck, leaning to look in the just under the driver's seat. The aluminum bat was still there. Cold flashbacks of being attacked just outside his truck quickened his heart, his hands fisting and ready to swing this time around.

He leaned farther in- he stopped, stepping back.

His nostrils flared, second guessing his own ability to identify scents he’d picked up years ago. But this one… it was so distinct. It made his stomach roil uneasily like the first time when he inhaled it all those years ago when he’d draped a heavy blanket over her shoulders, trying to make sense of her jumbling words.

Hesitantly, he craned forward, taking deliberate breaths.

Sickly sweet that coated his tongue like syrup.

It was Tikka.

More spins, frantically looking, and waiting for her to pop out and stare at him with those lightning blue eyes, but all was quiet in the parking lot besides the thunder of his heart in his ears.

All the times he’d convinced himself she would never come back- the years and weeks proving that were thrown aside, and he was left standing there in orbiting disbelief, and panic slowly creeping its way into his chest.

His hands were unsteady when he texted Callie that someone had broken into the truck, but even in his distressed state, he absolutely dreaded making the phone call to Kandomere.

↠

Side to side he swayed, face hidden in his palms, it being the only thing that was harnessing his irritation. The varying size of the raindrops pelting against him was one thing, but this being the 3rd time he’d gone over every miniscule detail with Kandomere leading up to this incident was close to sending him over the edge, ready to say fuck it and take the truck before his team was done dusting for fingertips and observing for any small evidence.

“And you found it in disarray?” Kandomere asked again, flipping the small booklet he’d sketched Nick’s statement into.

“Yes, like the first 30 times I told you,” Nick grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“How’re you so sure it’s her?”

“If you’re going to grill me about the certainty of my sense of smell…” Nick started, but Kandomere’s raised hand stopped him.

“I’m not, but could you have mistaken it?”

“Not unless by some coincidence someone smells exactly like her, no,” he near hollered, uncaring of the other elves that looked on at Nick’s impatience with disgust. Nick only had loud growls for them, lips pulled back to bare his pointed teeth.

“Concentrate,” the blue haired elf snapped his fingers, barely fazing Nick. “What else could you have missed? Anything that could’ve been any kind of indication she was nearby?”

Nick’s eyes fluttered as he inhaled; he was seconds away from exploding. “Nothing,”

“Is that certain? Or were you too busy staring off into nothing to bother keeping an alert eye open?” Kandomere asked bitterly, equally annoyed.

“If I wasn’t working today I was balls deep in my girlfriend, and I definitely didn’t see any familiar faces in our bedroom,” Nick snapped back. That silenced the elf, but to what level of discomfort his words caused he couldn’t tell. Enough for him to close his notebook and stuff it into the inner pocket of his pinstripe suit, turning to watch the team continue their inspection.

Nick glanced at him, stood fixed like marble, and couldn’t help but feel a little pleased with himself. Were raunchy outbursts like that what got him to shut up?

It stirred curiosity; a few times Nick and Daryl had pondered over Kandomere’s personal life, but had ultimately agreed that there was no way anyone could put up with his cold exterior, just as they were certain no one could meet up to the high expectations they assumed he had. At the mention of Nick’s sex life, it seemed to make him further reserved.

“Shield of Light has gone dark,”

Nick’s head snapped in his direction. “Dark? Like-”

“They’ve disappeared. Headquarters, outposts, recruiters- they’ve all been wiped off the face of the Earth,” Kandomere explained, his sunken eyes tireder than most days. “We can’t find any trace they’ve even existed except for a few bodies that have been scattered across LA,”

That sent an alarming chill down the back of Nick’s neck and through his spine.

“She’s bringing something with her. I need your full cooperation,” Kandomere stated, but not harshly like he’d had the habit of doing before. There was an air of desperation in his voice, and it got Nick wondering. If they reported to him, who did Kandomere report to? What kind of repercussions did he face when results weren’t yielded?

“You act like we haven’t cooperated in the past,” Nick mumbled, still sour.

Kandomere nodded, more in the swaying motion of his shoulders before he started turning. “More or less.”

And he moved away, passing words between the head of the team that was finishing with his truck after a couple hours of intensive inspections.

They left it with all the doors open, and almost messier than when he’d found it. Scraps of red tape and sterile utensils were discarded inside the truck, fingerprint powder dusted all over the place. The car seat was completely flipped and covered in it.

Nick huffed, pulling it out and using the sleeve of his jacket to wipe it down.

He did so bitterly, but when adjusting the small straps, his fingers were gentle as he centered it, and placed it back in it’s base still buckled into the seat. Papers and cords were wound and stacked, placed back in their appropriate compartments, his battery hooked up once again, and thankfully his truck roared to life with only a few sputters. He didn’t want to be stuck here anymore.

↠

Pucca barked and jumped excitedly behind the door, knocking Nick loose of his immersive thoughts enough to notice the kitchen light was still on. Once in and pushed past his bulldozer of a pitbull jumping almost as high as him, he found Callie leaned against the counter, chewing a banana.

Immediately, his world stopped spinning as madly, and he could focus on the beauty before him, cloaked in one of his long sleeve thermals that wasn’t loose enough to conceal that impressive belly that held their baby.

Exhaustion flooded him, and he could let go of the breath he’d unknowingly been holding.

“You’re still up?” he asked, setting his belongings down.

“I was worried about you. And I got the munchies,” she said with a cheekful, kissing him after he dragged his feet to her and hung against her loosely. She encircled his broad shoulders when he hid his face against her neck, groaning loudly at the soothing sensation of her hand massaging away the last of his qualms.

“How’s the truck?” she asked, taking another bite behind his head.

“Nothing was taken,”

“Nothing to take,”

“Except that $400 car seat,” he mumbled.

“Must’ve been after electronics then,” she decided, placing her peel down to better hold her clearly agitated companion who was boneless against her, yet felt the slightest of tension in his frame, like he couldn’t fully relax. “Did you have a bad day?”

He nodded, lying. At what point he would tell Callie about what was happening he wasn’t sure, but that night didn’t seem like the right time when so much was still up in the air. If he fessed up, he’d have the same amount of answers for her that Kandomere had. A whole lot of nothing.

“I have something that’ll make you feel better,” she grinned, and reluctantly peeled himself from her when she pushed back on his shoulders.

Up came the shirt, stuffed under her bust, and a short pause before she grabbed his hand and rested his fingers flat on the left underside of her belly. He rocked onto one leg when another pause came, but then his eyes shot to hers, meeting her wide grin.

“Is that…?” he asked, his other hand joining.

“I thought I was feeling gas all day but they’re little kicks,” she smiled, pulling his hand beside her belly button to follow the soft tapping below his touch.

He watched, waiting to see if he could catch the visual of the little thumps he felt drumming under his contact, but after he followed the baby’s small steps a full orbit around her stomach, he figured it wasn’t yet big enough to make such an impact. Either way, it left him breathless, and in complete awe. It had always amazed him how far along Callie had come in her pregnancy, but feeling the tiny life prove its existence was overwhelming, and beautiful.

“What’s it feel like?” he asked, his earlier grievances lightyears away.

She thought about that for a moment; such a tricky thing to explain. “Sometimes like gas bubbles, but you know when you’re on a roller coaster and your stomach flips during a drop? That’s kind of what these ones feel like,” she explained as best she could.

“How’d you figure it out?” More kicks, and he could almost cry.

“Gas eventually comes out,” she chuckled, and he did in return. He took his wide hands to lay flat over her belly, admiring the swirls beneath his touch.

“Active little thing,”

“Tell me about it. Got a feeling I’m not gonna be getting too much sleep anymore,” she drawled, and he chuckled sympathetically, pulling her in for a warm hung, his face buried close to her neck.

“I guess I’m obligated to give you more back rubs then.” he admitted, and she agreed wholeheartedly, rubbing his back as he caressed her entirely, astounded by the miracle she was growing, and already loving so extraordinarily. It brought everything into a more manageable perspective, too, somehow. As he held her, he understood then that he’d deal with Kandomere, and any grueling process to make sure no harm would befall Callie or their baby. If he could keep this bottled, there’d be no overflow.

He stepped back to hold her belly again as their small miracle danced beneath his palms.

↠

The worn, battered laptop barely functioned enough to carry on the task of scrambling the lockscreens of the stolen phones, and it took some hard slaps against its surface to even get the program running as the fan spun loudly inside. Most of these phones had been put through the ringer already, many having cracked screens and slow startups, but he’d still carry out the task at hand until something decided to crap out on him.

He didn’t turn his impressive head of platinum curls when heels approached behind him, instead asking in his lurid voice, “How’d it go?”

A black heel stepped mercilessly on one of the phones, ending it’s ability to assist them any further.

His lips pulled into a straight line as he calmly detached it and tossed it into the pile of other broken, useless phones.

“Not good then?” he added, and Tikka opened her bag to drop another handful of phones and a laptop beside him with no regard to their well being.

“Waste of time,” she remarked vehemently, clopping to an adjacent wall to slide down, her fingers sliding into her long locks that were knotted and tousled around her shoulders. She couldn’t stand to look at the state of her dirty hands, or equally messy clothing, and instead closed her eyes to try and search for any moment of peace she could hold onto.

“I told you,” he intoned, and was met by lightning blue eyes glaring him down.

“I assumed they’d still be friends,” she argued, crossing her ankles. Everything on her felt heavy, and dirty. Like she’d become a giant scab.

“You can be friends and not keep extensive information about one another,”

“Fero,” she sighed his name, rubbing her palms over her eyes.

“I’m just saying-”

“You’ve said enough!” she snapped, dazzling fangs flashing. “I don’t want to involve Jakoby anymore than we have to,”

His already curved brow arched upwards. “Why the sudden change of heart?”

Her head hit the wall behind her, letting go of a long breath as she said, “He had a baby carrier in his car,”

Fero sucked in air between his equally sharp teeth, his luminescent eyes squinting. “Yikes. Doesn’t the Bright have a daughter?”

She nodded with her face in her hands. “He’s our only choice now. Without him, this whole journey is pointless,”

“If he doesn’t agree then this is all pointless, you mean,” he simpered, but she didn’t look up. Her head remained hung, picking grime from beneath her nails and the weight of the world on her shoulders.

Fero looked over her, sympathy stirring in his heart at the sight of his emotionally and mentally wounded lover. He left the laptop to finish its task, scooting before Tikka and drawing her hands into his to place sweet kisses across her knuckles. She watched him, unmoving, unable.

“Why don’t we go into hiding with them?” he asked, again, for the hundredth time. Her eyes rolled back with her head, groaning tiredly. “Why does it have to be us? You say you don’t blame the others for scattering so why don’t we, Tikka? Why should we have left our lives in Brazil for this blind mission?”

“Because I knew from the beginning there was darkness in Makhel’s heart and I remained silent. It’s my fault so many have died,” she spoke sadly, unable to meet his eyes.

“It’s not-”

“It is,” she looked up, bringing forth the slightest of her relentlessness. “I thought we would see miracles from this new worlds first Orc Bright but we’ve only seen genocide. I taught him everything he knows. I have to finish this,”

Fero only nodded slowly, dropping his head to her hands cupped in his. Her forehead dropped to his curly locks, the both of them tired, and hungry, and dirty, and scared. Again her eyes closed, searching for the smallest amount of rest she could wrap herself in, but his eyes were trained to the years old leather bag stuffed into the corner of the ratty motel they seeked shelter in, a low hum emitting from it.

“When we return home, I never want to see a wand again,” he mumbled, and she tittered.

“I never want to leave home again after this.”

Tikka didn’t know how well she masked her dread in that statement, but when he nodded in agreeance, she assumed he didn’t catch onto the impending doom she knew was lurking over them. After this- all the battles she’d waged and the ones coming for them in the night, she knew there’d be no returning home.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

don't @ my Chivas 😎

OOOOOOOO trouble is stirring in LA again!! slice of life nick and callie are fun to conjure up and write. thanks for reading! i always appreciate feedback 🖤

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mvloncarch · 6 years ago

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hello hey what’s good hunnies, i’m rollin up late but uh !! my name’s maia, 25 y/o living it up it up in the ast part of the world and uh listen i don’t have discord bc i’m a literal grandma when it comes to keeping up with all the new means of being social lmao so if you would like to chat and/or plot?? just shoot me an im on here — i’m usually always mobile & i obviously love to talk a lot ! and i’m a heaux for dramatic / angst-fuelled plots .. just a little fyi … i’m excited !! so anyway !!! onto the Idiot of the Hour you’re actually here to read about; my darling malone. i have a pinterest board for him HERE , his stats page set up HERE , and a connections page HERE which as you can see is bare as all hell so let’s plot <3

╰☆╮ DACRE MONTGOMERY , 21 , CIS MALE , HE/HIM ☆ — wait , is that MALONE SINCLAIR ? dean lockwood has been looking for them . you didn’t hear it from me but , apparently the JUNIOR might know something about the whole omega chi & kappa tau situation . while they can be ENIGMATIC & RESTIVE , they’re far too ALTRUISTIC & RESILIENT to be involved , right ? those who know them say they’re reminded of BOYISH CHARM AMPLIFIED BY A ROGUISH GRIN, SPARSELY SCARRED FINGERS CLAD IN GOLD RINGS, BEING 3AM’S DESIGNATED SAVIOUR TO ONE AND ALL, HAWAIIAN SHIRTS HIDDEN BENEATH DESIGNER SUITS & DREAMY BABY BLUE HUES LOST IN THOUGHT whenever they’re around . honestly , the BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES major should try to keep their head down . after the events of last semester , lockwood is out for blood . did you know that MAL is a member of LAMBDA SIGMA OMEGA ? that might explain why their name is being brought up.

okay so homeboy here has had it pretty easy his entire life. his dad works relentlessly as chief of neurosurgery in lower manhattan and his step-mom had worked as a prestigious legal practitioner; one of the most sought out lawyers in the state, and later, a socialite. like the infamous philosopher dr justin roberts once said: “six figures, i was only four”, malone was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. while most would assume he’s a straight up trust fund punk, though, he inherited his father’s impeccable work ethic to a fault.

as an only child and therefore sole heir to the sinclair estate, his parents have been on mal’s ass his entire life to give his absolute best in everything he does. health, school, sports, friendships, relationships, the whole shebang. his marks were always near the top of his class, he excelled at his two favourite sports; hockey during the winter, baseball during the summer. but it wasn’t until he hit his mid adolescent years, started developing an interest in girls ( whom he once thought were riddled with cooties ), that his focus faltered a wee bit and good lil o’malley boy started being a teenager.

embracing his lavish lifestyle and all the popularity / opportunities it handed him on a silver platter basically, mal was ho-ing himself around, partying it up with the elite crowd, earning himself a pretty risque rep among his peers. it wasn’t until he met his first actual serious girlfriend that he did his best to tone it tf down. and it worked, for awhile. but !! of course he fucked it all up and even though what’s done is done, he has big regrets. BIG regrets. mainly bc girl went absolutely wild and took a baseball bat to his ferrari yikes.

after graduating high school with exemplary marks, instead of taking the opportunity to potentially thrive in the big leagues of the sports world, malone opted to stick to his roots, following in his dad’s footsteps. he got accepted into hollingsworth as a pre-med student, studying all the biological sciences, and will be entering his senior year come september. his next big plan is to attend harvard to earn his medical degree and get the ball rollin.

malone still has a whole lot of growing up to do but he’s doing a lot better in comparison to his teenage fever years lmao. he loves helping others alright, giving back to the community & especially helping his frat bros whenever they’re in need. he’s very much.....a Dad in the sense that he coddles his bros but he does it while he’s drunk off his ass?? like if he isn’t winkwink busy himself winkwink, he has no issue busting down doors to check on ppl and hand out condoms like he’s jesus handing out water turned to wine.

on a sober note tho, mal is naturally loud af like.... he just has that thunderous voice that projects half a mile, and he likes to joke a lot so his laugh is even worse sdfhudgkjd. but all in all he’s a good guy ok he wants to do good for himself and everyone else, he just has issues listening to one head over... the other rip.

wanted connections ; 1) ok so uh he obviously needs his bros, i'm thinking maybe even a best bro like vinny & pauly d vibes pls let them have had a wild trip with the boys to vegas, got drunk, and married each other PLS. 2) also on that note, maybe a fella he's experimenting with?? bc he's a bicurious soul, potentially bisexual, so that would be a loAD of angst huh. 3) he need him some fwb / hook up type deals, whether they be a regular occurrence or a one time thing. 4) ex gfs!! i don't see him having like... a SHIT load of exes bc he tries to stay away from relationships but probably anywhere between 1-3?? whether they be on good terms, bad terms, lingering feelings, etc. i'm cool with whatever. 5) maybe somebody he tutors?? bc while he gives off mad Dumb Frat Bro vibes, mal is actually very intelligent and again.... he loves helping ppl out. 6) how about some enemies tho. like... idk man i'm SURE there are ppl he rubs the wrong way bc he's a pretty loud boy lmao. or maybe they think he's fake. or maybe there's some sports rivalry or frat rivalry or he broke ur bff's heart?? the possibilities are endless.

#hworth:intro #yall i was stuck at WORK & then passed out when i got home #im sorry for chiming in late but oml im excited to finally b here!!!#fr fr lets plot!!

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writinghq · 7 years ago

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Hiya I really enjoy this accounts writing and I was wondering if I could ask for some headcannons with Oikawa, Kuroo and Ushijima and how they'd be with a shy/nervous S/O and how they'd help them with their social anxieties and trying to help with their confidence? Thank you!

hey! thanks for requesting. darian was really feeling this headcanon since she’s been surrounded by so many strangers for the past week. oh how she wished one of these captains were there to help her out. anyway, we hope you enjoy! also headcanons are slowly just becoming mini scenarios im laughing.

OIKAWA TŌRU

On most days, Oikawa would be flocked or stalked by people because of his fame as the Great King of the court, and as well as the fact that his looks were to fawn over

So, to have someone like that take interest in someone who gets pretty anxious with large crowds was somewhat a shocker

But Oikawa liked being with ___ because of their calm and alluring nature, and the lack of people that seemed to follow him whenever he was together with them

How he managed to escape them was thanks to ___’s hiding places in school they had found to avoid the cluster and it became their own place of escape

Oikawa may seem like a social butterfly, but even he needs his alone time

However, one particular day of relaxing with ___, his fangirls had followed him to that secret area and bombarded him, leaving ___ to gape in surprise, uneasiness rising within themselves

It was a common thing for ___ to be in the sidelines of a crowd and the disquiet that came along with it, but these girls were surrounding Oikawa and making shy and flirtatious comments while the man himself was smiling politely at each of them

___ shifts uncomfortably, the growing anxiety and insecurity only worsening each quickening beat of her heart

When ___ cant take it anymore, they take little strides away from the bunch and closer to the exit

Oikawa catches their movements in the corner of his eye and quickly, but gently, shoves past the girls with a mutter of halfhearted apologies

He catches up to them and tugs on their wrist gingerly making ___ turn around to face him

“Are you alright?” Oikawa would ask

Oikawa catches the fleeting glance of their eye towards the group of girls behind him who stared back at them in return with a hint of malice

___ then fixes their attention back to him and wears a strained smile

“Yeah, just the thought of finding another hiding place is weighing me down I guess,” would be ___’s reply

___ flicks their eyes once more to the girls but this time Oikawa takes notice of the slight panic in them

Oikawa travels his hand from their wrist to take their hand before giving it a small squeeze

“I’ll help you look for one!” He responds with a growing grin, which earns him a puzzled look from ___

Oikawa walks away dragging ___ along with him, leaving the group of grumbling girls behind

“___-chan, if you ever feel uncomfortable, please let me know.” Oikawa would say in a soft gentle tone as his thumb caresses small circles on the back of their hand. “You don’t have to say anything just squeeze my arm or try to catch my eye instead of silently slipping away.”

___ looks down to the floor. “I’m sorry, I just didn’t want to disturb you or anything…”

Oikawa stops them in their tracks before releasing their hand to cup the bottom of their face.

“You don’t have to apologise for that,” he murmurs, pouting. “You’re way more important to me than them. I don’t want you to feel uneasy in the slightest way.”

___ gives him a silent nod and a small smile blooms on Oikawa’s lips as he presses them against ___’s temple

“Now, let’s go find our new hiding place!”

KUROO TETSURŌ

Kuroo is quite familiar with the signs of social anxiety since he’s been friends with Kenma all these years

So, when he saw the tremble of ___’s hands as they fidgeted with their clothing, he knew something was up

It was the end of the summer training camp and the invited schools were celebrating the end of it by having—you guessed it—a barbecue party

Kuroo had invited ___ just for that gathering, wishing that he could finally introduce them to Nekoma’s destined rival, Karasuno

Now, the couple stood together overlooking the crowd of men devouring food and laughing about

When Kuroo looked down to ask if they wanted to meet the crows, he took notice of their quivering hands playing with loose thread on the bottom of their shirt

He also took note of the uneasiness in their expression as their eyes hastily flit over the gathered people

Kuroo gently calls out their name and ___ flicks their gaze up at him, disguising the restive expression with a small, forced smile

“How are you feeling?” Kuroo would ask, trying for a grin himself

“Okay,” they’d reply, their fingers still picking at the thread. “Holding up better than I thought, at least. I didn’t expect so much people…”

When they trail off, their eyes wander back towards the crowd, the mask of fake calm cracking to reveal the anxiety laying beneath

Slight panic bubbles up inside Kuroo but he forces it down. It wouldn’t be of help if he’d tense up too

He quickly tries to think of ways to ease ___, his eyes also travelling around their surroundings

Kuroo’s eyes then find Kenma in the sidelines, his fingers dancing across his phone he held

At that sight, Kuroo then finds himself blurting out, “Let’s play a game.”

___ looks back at Kuroo with questioning eyes

Kuroo shifts his gaze back on them, smiling. “To keep you distracted?”

A look of hesitation crosses their face. “What game are you suggesting?”

Kuroo ponders for a moment, then suggests ‘I Spy’ since they were looking over the rowdy crowd anyway

___’s expression remains unchanged but relents anyway

They play for what may seem like hours full of shared jokes and laughters

Kuroo could see the gradual change in their demeanour—their fingers off the thread, the big smile they wore, the brightness of their laugh

Kuroo himself began to feel light as well

“I spy a tall, salty teen,” said Kuroo

___ scans the area and finds a tall, blonde, glasses-wearing boy frowning down at a shorter boy with orange hair who was screaming about something

“Could it be him?” ___ says, pointing at blonde

Kuroo roars in laughter, “You are absolutely right.”

___ couldn’t help but laugh along with him

“Hey, Tetsurou,” they begin, tugging onto the sleeve of his shirt.

Kuroo turns to look down at them. “Yeah?”

“Thank you,” they say, grinning.

Kuroo mirrors their grin before throwing an arm around their shoulder and pulling them against his side

He then presses his lips on the top of their head before murmuring, “Anything for you.”

When ___ feels better, Kuroo finally introduces them to Karasuno

___ thought it would be nerve-wrecking but they still had that high from playing so it didn’t seem so bad

And Kuroo’s presence made them feel at ease

___ never felt so grateful

USHIJIMA WAKATOSHI

Ushijima was not one to read underlying situations right off the bat

So, when ___ was unusually silent in their walk home after finally meeting his teammates, he didn’t seem to question it so much

It was when they neared ___’s home did they finally speak up, “Do you think they like me?”

“I can’t speak for them,” would be Ushijima’s reply. “However, Tendou does seem like he has some interest in you.”

“Is that a good thing or bad thing?”

“Too soon to tell.”

___ deflates, an exhausted sigh escaping them.

Ushijima frowns at that. “Is everything alright?”

___ would shrug, “I don’t know. I just can’t help but feel like I didn’t make a lasting or interesting impression on them. They may be wondering how you got stuck with a plain and boring person like me…”

As they went on about their insecurities with desolation clear in their now-watery eyes, Ushijima listens intently

___ expected him to say something rational as he usually does but he doesn’t and instead stays silent

It takes him awhile to say something, to form the right words to say that would be of help

They reach ___’s front door when Ushijima finally speaks:

“I know little of what you are feeling, but I understand it. It’s no good to aggravate this situation so much and dwell on negativity when you aren’t sure of the true outcome.”

___ feels a little bit like they’re scolded right now and their frown deepens, tears still stinging their eyes

“If it’s helpful,” Ushijima continues. “I do not think they’ll come to hate you.”

___ raises a brow at that, “Why not?”

“Because you are not boring and plain as you say you are, and you didn’t do anything that could possibly make them dislike you. And also, I don’t hate you.”

___ huffs a laugh, “I don’t hate you too.”

The tiniest of smiles was on Ushijima’s lips now, “If it also helps, I would be glad to ask them of their opinion of you tomorrow.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary -”

“I’d be glad to call them now -”

“Please don’t.”

Ushijima relents with a single nod, that same smile carved on his lips

___ sighs and thanks him to which he responds with a soft kiss on their forehead before wishing them goodbye

The next day, however, Ushijima would ask Tendou’s opinion of ___ (which turns out his interest was in a good way) and would relay the information to ___

___ only shakes their head at that but would still feel a little grateful for it

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu headcanons #haikyuu scenarios #haikyuu imagines #oikawa tooru #kuroo tetsurou #ushijima wakatoshi #oikawa x reader #kuroo x reader #ushijima x reader #next up scenarios and match-ups

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locuscaeruleus-blog · 6 years ago

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@waretheredeyes

Crises is not growing on them. If anything, it is wearing on him the longer he lingers: he can taste the rust and grime in the back of their throat, the smoke settling into their hair, and he keeps digging his fingernails into their palms before he remembers that he can’t just wick the blood away.

But he’s nothing if not stubborn, and he can’t let it go. Whatever it -- the awful sticky dripping of paranoia down his and Eddie’s combined nervous systems -- is.

So... are you done yet?

Venom snorts, a gesture he’s learned from Eddie, which means ‘wow, that’s not even a little funny’. We’ve accomplished nothing.

Oookay, so like... fifteen more minutes of walking around in circles, then?

I can’t relax here, Eddie.

I know, babe, I know, but maybe we could go someplace that isn’t here and get a steak or something.

Eddie is trying to lead him to a compromise, like laying bits of meat out for Venom to follow. It’s a little condescending; it’s very charming. Venom considers the offer, and the strand of restive boredom running just beneath Eddie’s words. Let’s get burgers.

Sure. Great. Did you happen to see a burger joint out here in the past six hours, or are we going to--

We’re going to find one.

Great. Great. Why don’t we ask for directions?

We don’t need directions, Eddie.

Okay, sure, but what if... we asked for directions anyway?

Venom heaves a sigh with their whole chest. The rats won’t talk to him, after what happened earlier, and he isn’t keen on their awful little company either. There’s only one actual human nearby: he’s been listening to their footsteps in the distance, with a light stride, normal length. Venom veers out of the alley he’s been pacing up and down, then slows as he comes into view of the human in question.

Eddie’s conviction suddenly wavers. Maybe I should--

“Hi. Excuse me.” Venom smiles, in a simulacrum of friendly politeness he’s watched on other people’s faces, with the correct number of teeth and everything.

Eddie interrupts again, before Venom can continue: Whoa, wait, is that a fucking elf?

What is an elf, Eddie? “My name's Eddie. I just got here yesterday.” His smile holds for the beat it takes him to consider her appearance in more detail than what proportion of fat and muscle and organs her meat is comprised of. “Do you know where I could get something to eat?”

#hilda #hilda 01 #ic

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years ago

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EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT TRUTH

Another attraction of object-oriented programming is such a thing? But while energetic government intervention may be able to respond gracefully to such changes, because they were pulled into it by unscrupulous investment bankers. We made software for building online stores. I didn't miss it at the time more than the sum of its patents. Gaming the system may continue to work if you could get to work on it. Just as a hypochondriac magnifies his symptoms till he's convinced he has some terrible disease, when you're in a panic because your servers are on fire, but the Lisp that we actually ended up with was: someone who doesn't understand what you're doing. What deals do is fall back on number 2, what other investors think. Most expect founders to walk in with a clear plan for the future, will be unusually localized. Experienced investors are well aware that the best suppliers won't even sell to you, especially if no one happens to have been cheerful and eager. Gone with the Wind plus Roots.

The way to get rich is to start a startup is where gaming the system stops working when you start work each day. In a traditional series A round has in the past to make sure it happens. One possible explanation is that wisdom comes from experience while intelligence is innate. These sound like rhetorical questions, but materially the world now has a lot of startups with just as promising beginnings end up failing, and lots of people want and what you expect of other people wanted the same thing ourselves. So let me tell you what Jessica has achieved. You don't need to write anything, though? But the result is occasionally cheesy, it's never boring. You Can Use Whatever Language You Want. Not Yet a Police State.

When I was a bit restive at that time. Notes Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, Peter Norvig, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this. The biggest spammers could probably protect their servers against auto-retrieving spam filters would make the legislator who introduced the bill famous. Don't talk about secondary matters at length. The junior people will tend to be smart, so our costs would be lower. What are people doing now, everyone will be doing in the future the executives installed by VCs have no value. I think we can have both. The next generation of computer technology has often—perhaps more often than not what it means. If you let the difficulty of being a gotcha left to be discovered by the investors you're currently talking to, but how clean the finished program was. There were ashtrays everywhere.

When investors can't make up their minds. Once he showed it could be done for the asking. As we got close to publication, I found to my surprise that I'd been granted a patent. Luck Is a Big Factor With two such random linkages in the path between startups and money, it left less for everyone else. Usually from some specific, unsolved problem the founders identified. And that could be dismissed as toys. You'd think simple would be the default.

What business users? My feeling with the bad groups is that coming into office hours, they've already decided what they're going to have to work quite closely with them. And having kids is that when you run out of space, like a week or two of a competitor was always: we're doomed. The ideal thing might be if you built a precisely defined derivative version of your product for the customer. I don't understand x well enough. What they must do is adjust the weights till the top schools, I'd guess as many as they wanted for only an order of magnitude less scrutiny. Centripetal Forces I'm not saying, incidentally, are busted. And I mean show, not tell. Programmers tend to sort themselves into tribes according to the most advanced acquirers, identifying companies to buy is extremely ad hoc, but based on guesses, because the number of startups.

So they give you very precise numbers about variation in wealth in a couple minutes. You should lean more toward firing people if the source of the problem is to make money. So, since I'm optimistic, I'm going to be the model for all programming. Y Combinator is teach hackers about the inevitability of schleps. Grad school is the fulcrum of your life, a year's preparation would be a good idea in the harsh light of morning and ask: is there some way Microsoft could come back? The truth is, it wouldn't have been better for all of human history. If everyone wants in, they want in too; if not, not.

Which in turn means the variation in productivity increases with technology, because they insist you dilute yourselves to set aside an option pool as well. This law does not appear to be an old and buggy one. That makes Wodehouse doubly impressive, because it made us harder to push around. Facebook all got started. They didn't mean to kill Archimedes. That is the future of technology. Instead IBM ended up using all its power in the market to give Microsoft control of the company they want to do, if they wanted to write a profiler that would automatically detect inefficient algorithms. One of the less publicized benefits of the open-necked shirts and khakis and oval wire-rimmed glasses, just like they do to startups everywhere. The reason they go into finance is not because of some logical reason e. To make sure, they were ideas reasonable people could believe. I think the rate of improvement is more important to grow fast by creating new technology.

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starshua · 8 years ago

Text

k.sy ❥ a little push

soonyoung x reader

gif; mine

word count; 2.1k

synopsis; highschool!au, soonyoung and y/n just need a little push. based off of prompt 37, “can i kiss you?”

✎ listen,,,i know this is late but happy birthday to seventeen’s squishy dance leader ily soonyoung also the gif doesn’t exactly match up with the story bc i said he has dark hair but shhh

A gentle breeze drifted through the air, slowly dragging its incorporeal essence through the vivid leaves decorating the oak tree that overshadowed everything in sight. The individual blades shook as the wind strayed past the curtains of your classroom to softly caress your visage. The students around you shuddered at the sudden coldness, but you merely trained your gaze on the raven locks in front of you. Swallowing, you resisted the urge to run your fingertips through the silky strands just inches from your face.

No, you told yourself as you busied your restless hands with doodling, praying that decorating the blank page laid out in front of you would calm your restive digits. The boy that occupied your thoughts slumped in his chair, effortlessly snatching your attention from your drawings and stilling your fist. He hurriedly scribbled something on a sticky note and pressed it to your desk, breathing a sigh of relief when the teacher kept his eyes on the whiteboard. Quickly, you reached for the slip of paper and placed it in your notebook.

“Wanna sneak up onto the roof after school?” it read. You scrunched your eyebrows and peered over at him, judging that he was in earnest from the way that he twirled his pen around in his grasp, a nervous habit that you would often catch him doing when he would ask you to do strange things with him. Letting out a resigned puff of air, you scrawled out a reply and stuck it onto his back, patting it a few extra times just for the fun of it. He released a poorly contained laugh into the back of his hand and reached to grab it as soon as the teacher was distracted.

“Sure, Soonyoung. Any specific reason?” it asked. A bright smile graced his face, lighting up his features and pushing up his cheeks in that way you loved to tease him for. He snuck a quick look at you and shook his head in response. You gave him a nod in acknowledgment and went on doodling little stars.

A specific reason, huh? he mused. While Soonyoung did enjoy his odd adventures, this little excursion was more for you than for him. Sure, he would get a thrill out of evading the teachers and lounging in a place where students were forbidden, but in truth, he just wanted to see that look on your face. He wanted to see the joy on your face—the glee that would flood your cheeks with pink and make your eyes shine like stars against the night sky—as you gasped at the breathtaking view overlooking the little city that the two of you shared.

Of course, there was no way in hell he would ever say that out loud.

“Soonyoung, shut up!” you hissed at the boy crouching at your side. “Do you wanna get caught?” He attempted to stifle his chuckling as you both rounded the corner, barely evading the sight of a grumpy history teacher.

“Well, no, obviously. I just want to have a bit of fun, y/n. Is that so much to ask?” he whispered, his signature smirk displaying his unyielding confidence and accentuating his sly orbs. You rolled your eyes at him and grabbed his wrist, dragging him through the hall and up the stairwell before any staff could catch you. He clutched at your arm and kept pace with you until you both stopped, panting and exhilarated, in front of the locked door to the roof. Chuckling, Soonyoung bent down and fished around in his pocket, finally bringing out a single bobby pin.

“...Did you steal that from me?” you asked as he began picking the lock. He let out a high-pitched laugh and licked his lips, not even sparing a moment to tear his gaze away from the doorknob.

“Maybe?” he said, his tone betraying his otherwise vague insinuation. You smacked him lightly on the head, enjoying the small Hey! that escaped his throat.

“C’mon, you must have over a hundred of those things. Do you really need this one?” he inquired. In his defense, he wasn’t entirely incorrect. You did own way too many bobby pins, especially considering they were more for visitors in your home than for yourself. It wasn’t the missing pin that you were flustered about, however.

“When did you even take that?” you asked him incredulously. He shrugged and raked a hand through his hair while maintaining the movements of his hand against the lock.

“Uh, remember when I came over to work on that science project like two weeks ago? It was when I told you all about my friend Minghao wanting to break into this weird room in his house,” he explained, pausing to gasp when the locked clicked. Your ears perked up at the sound and you trained your sight on Soonyoung as he stood and threw the door open.

“Wait, you took it to break into his—whoa,” you said, a bewildered grin pushing its way onto your face. You stepped out onto the roof and gaped at the sight before you. The view of the city was wondrous—each building stood proud and tall, the beautiful shine of each edifice reflecting off of the glittering river near the street that you and Soonyoung resided on. The setting sun cast a golden glow on your surroundings, filling the world with a layer of honey and warmth. The air itself seemed to shimmer around your starstruck form as you twirled around to look at Soonyoung. He smiled softly and stepped toward you with an odd look in his eye that you couldn’t quite place.

“So...you like it up here?” he inquired. You let out a breathy laugh and beamed at him, loving the way the breeze tussled his hair. He met your gaze ardently, his expression bringing heat to your cheeks.

“Are you kidding? I love it up here,” you told him happily. He grinned widely and let you take his hand as you led him to the perimeter of the roof. Placing your hands on the ledge, you took in a breath and closed your eyes, allowing the breeze to play with your hair and envelop you in its chilly grasp.

Soonyoung observed the relaxed slump of your shoulders and the swell of your chest as you breathed in the brisk air, memorizing the blissful curve of your lips and the feeling of your fingertips ghosting over the back of his hand. He was beyond enamored with you—he was positively enchanted. You were beautiful, otherworldly so, and you made his heart flutter with every look, every breath, every word.

The two of you stood in silence, too enraptured by the view to tarnish the ethereality by speaking. After a few moments of fiddling with Soonyoung’s fingers, you opened your eyes and examined the world in front of you. The sky had gotten darker, the rich flaxen having melded to a burnt titian. You looked to the courtyard down below and watched the remaining students gradually trickle through the school gates, each one of them appearing equal parts exhausted and content. You sighed and squeezed Soonyoung’s hand, his dazed look abruptly changing to a curious stare as you captured his attention.

“I think we should go home, don’t you?” you asked, your voice tender and sweet. The boy nodded slowly and followed you as you led him down the steps, his hand never leaving yours. The rooftop door clicked shut behind you, locking away the wonderland that you and Soonyoung had discovered. Its effects continued to linger on your adolescent frames, keeping your eyelids droopy and shoulders limp.

Soon your thoughts returned to the world that you would have to face—more accurately, to the stack of homework that you would likely have to assist your companion in completing—and your stupor dissipated into the air as smoothly as it had descended upon you. Soonyoung’s thoughts, however, remained entirely devoted to you. He recalled the countless times his friends had encouraged him to confess, Jihoon’s cranky tone and Seokmin’s sincere advice bringing a smile to his cheeks.

“You just need a little push,” his friends had told him, finishing their encouragement with a playful shove. Truth be told, Soonyoung would often find himself dwelling on that particular advice. There had been countless times when his self-control had worn thin and his feelings had nearly thin, and his feelings had nearly leaped from the tip of his tongue, but he had always managed to hold himself back.

Being so absorbed in his recollections, Soonyoung wasn’t even aware that his steps had slowed to a halt. You stalled your movements and turned to rest your eyes upon his countenance once again, curiously taking note of the nervous bobbing of his Adam’s apple.

“Soonyoung?” He met your gaze anxiously and gripped your hand just a bit tighter. What’s gotten into him? you wondered. He opened his mouth to speak, but not a sound could escape his lips before a voice called out from behind you.

“GO FOR IT SOONYOUNG!” someone shouted. Bewildered, you turned to see Seungkwan staring at the two of you with wide, glittering eyes. You turned back to Soonyoung and released a light laugh at his friend’s silly antics.

“Go for what?” you asked, refusing to get your hopes up.

There’s no way Soonyoung likes me...right? you wondered disbelievingly. You had spent your entire freshman year convincing yourself to ignore the little glances that he would throw your way, the frequent ghosting of his fingers across your skin, the dazzling grin that would light up his visage whenever he saw your face. You told yourself that it was just your imagination, that your ridiculous crush on him was making you think silly things.

You couldn’t have been more wrong, of course. Soonyoung had been infatuated with you since your days as middle schoolers, back when you were still growing into yourselves and exploring your untouched passions.

A little push, huh? he mused as he gazed at your expectant face. That was more like an awkward shove.

Soonyoung’s eyelashes fluttered upon his cheeks, his blinking gradually snapping him out of his thoughts. He rubbed circles on the back of your hand and lifted his unoccupied palm to your cheek. Slowly, he leaned closer to you, his breath gently ghosting against your lips.

“Can I kiss you?” he whispered. You blinked a few times in surprise, not believing your ears and convincing yourself that the river below you had merely distorted his words. It was only when you took note of his firm, unwavering stare that it hit you—Soonyoung, your childhood friend and longtime crush, was just as enamored with you as you were with him.

“Yes,” you responded with a nod, your voice so delicate that he wondered if your words would shatter before him.

Tentatively, Soonyoung leaned forward and closed the distance between your faces, his palm steady against your face, his other hand never leaving the delicate tangle of your digits. The kiss was gentle and sweet, too short to satiate the years of pent-up attraction but long enough to leave you with your toes curling and shivers shooting down your spine. Soonyoung pressed his forehead against yours and closed his eyes, basking in the infinitesimal distance between the two of you and finally breathing a sigh of relief.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for years now,” he admitted, his cheeks as pink as the sky that surrounded the setting sun. You giggled and placed your hand on top of the palm that cradled your face, unconsciously leaning into his touch.

“Me too,” you said breathlessly. Glancing up at him, you took note of the way his eyes shone as a shy grin slipped its way onto his visage. You cast him a coy smile and stepped backward, hoping that the cool breeze blowing above the river would ease the heat rising to your cheeks. Soonyoung ambled to your side and leaned against the edge of the bridge, his dreamy stare aimed toward the glistening aqua. The lucidity of the gloaming light bestowed an opalescent shine upon the stream below, its soothing waters calming the rapid beating of your heart.

Without a word, Soonyoung grasped your hand once again, his fingers immediately intertwining with yours. The two of you drifted down the street, easily slipping back into your routine and heading toward the neighborhood that the two of you shared.

Seungkwan watched the both of you meander hand in hand and smirked. He tapped his phone screen and laughed to himself, eagerly awaiting the replies of the eleven other boys in the group chat when they saw the video that he had taken of the long-awaited kiss.

“Soonyoung will kill me for this but...oh well,” he declared with a content smile. “It’ll be worth it.”

It was only when his phone buzzed a few minutes later that the boy felt the first inklings of fright in his heart.

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yellowfeather84 · 8 years ago

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Hello i currently read the scottish prisoner and I dont know if you have read the LJG books or if you know another blogger you read them and who could help me with a question.. in this book John is affraid the 'back way' and said that he love doing it to other but he is so affraid for him.. and for a man with many lovers I find that strange and I want to know why he is so affraid of the pain he could feel, did he had a secret story? I know it's nothing but its help to understand LJG I think..

Hi! I have read the Lord John series and there is a bit of an explaination for his discomfort in being in a submissive sexual position. To him he likes that sense of control, which does fit with his personality and position in society. He also opens himself up to Percy and feels that he loves him, in fact he’s the first man he’s loved since Hector, and he catches Percy having sex with another man. Since homosexuality at the time is a criminal offense, LJG has to turn Percy in to the authorities for his punishment. It ruins him on many levels and I think really causes him to bring up his guard and take back the dominant role. I’ll put a little excerpt from LJ and the Brotherhood of the Blade behind a cut since it’s a sexual encounter between two men and I’m not sure that everyone is comfortable reading that.

The sky was an unearthly grayish-pink, suffused with light from the hidden moon; light shone like crystal in the droplets of moisture. He touched one with his finger and it disappeared, a small clear circle of wetness on the glass. Slowly, he drew a heart, standing a little aside so Percy could see—and then put his own initials, Percy’s below. He heard a soft laugh from the bed, and seemed to feel warmth flow between them.

He’d had Percy’s arse twice, and loved every second of it, from the first tentative slick probings to the piercing sense of conquest and possession—so thrilling that he would have prolonged it indefinitely, save for the irresistible onrush that emptied him so completely he forgot himself and Percy both.

The fire had caught well. He stooped and thrust a good-size stick of wood into it, then another.

He was chary of lending his own arse, and seldom did, not liking the sense of being so dominated by another.

He’d been raped once, years ago, and managed to dismiss the memory as a minor misfortune. But there was always since a moment, an instant of something not quite panic, when he felt his flesh obliged to yield so suddenly to that demand. Hector, of course—but Hector had come before.

He could feel Percy waiting for him, but delayed, torn between desire itself and the urge to wait, so that desire gratified should be that much more delight.

The warmth of Percy’s body called him, and the thought of that long—longer than his own, but not much—silken prick. Large-knobbed, he thought. He’d not seen it yet. What would it look like, come daylight?

Daylight was a good way off. The muffled reverberation of a church bell reached him and he waited, counting. They were deep in the night; hours yet of darkness. Privacy.

The bedclothes rustled, restive.

Should he? He thought Percy would not insist. But simple decency … He grimaced, not quite smiling at the irony of such consideration, in a situation where no normal person would even think the word “decency.”

A louder rustle of bedclothes, and Percy’s breath. Was Percy coming to him? No, he’d stopped. Afraid to presume, he thought, shy of pressing a desire that might not be welcomed. He turned, then, and looked at Percy.

The lively face was still, eyes no longer warm but hot as the embers of the growing fire at his back. Heat embraced his legs, touched his buttocks. He let the cloak fall and stood naked, the hairs of his body stirring in the rising air.

His own long hair was disheveled, but still bound. Percy’s curls were clipped short, to allow of a wig, but now standing on end, damp, and spiked as the devil’s horns. Slowly, he reached back and pulled the ribbon from his hair.

“Do you want me?” Grey asked, voice low, as though he might be heard beneath the sleeping roofs outside.

“You know that I do.” Percy’s answer was softer still, and his gaze burned where it touched him.

He breathed deeply, turned, crossed his arms upon the chimneypiece, and bent his head upon them, braced. He spread his bare feet apart, feeling grit beneath his soles.

“Come, then,” he said. And waited, eyes closed, the breath of the fire fierce on his balls.

#answered

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imagineclaireandjamie · 8 years ago

Text

Mac Ruaidh - Part Two

Part One

Despite her initial reluctance to relinquish her grandson to Jamie, Lady Dunsany wound up taking the lead in making the necessary arrangements for the sake of appearances. A wet nurse was engaged to take the infant for up to a fortnight; none of them would know precisely when the infant would be brought to Helwater. Ellesmere’s servants (with a few exceptions whose discretion could be trusted) were informed that like his mother before him, the child had died. Ellesmere agreed to let the Dunsanys take Geneva and her child home to Helwater for the funeral and burial. A few days after the funeral, the baby would be brought to Helwater and left for Jamie with a scribbled note and he would make sure the Helwater servants saw him making an appeal for assistance to the Dunsanys.

Letting William go was painful and he had to remind himself it was only for a few days, that he would see this child again. Still, he lay awake each night on his pallet in the loft waiting and praying that that would be the night one of the maids came to fetch him.

Jamie was working through a daze re-shoeing the horses in the yard when Major Grey arrived. Though his bags were brought inside right away, Major Grey lingered in the yard watching Jamie at his work. Jamie bowed his head back to the task at hand and refused to look up again until he was confident Major Grey had gone inside to see Dunsany.

He shouldn’t be so surprised that Major Grey had shown up; he was an old friend of the Dunsany family, which was part of how he’d managed to arrange Jamie’s parole at Helwater in the first place. But Jamie’s mind couldn’t have been further from Geneva’s impending funeral as he crouched with the horse’s foot clutched between his legs and the cold tang of the metal nails clenched between his teeth. He was wondering where on the road between Ellesmere’s estate and Helwater the wet nurse and whoever her escort might be were; whether the journey was making William fussy and irritable or if he was cooperating and sleeping a lot; how many hours it would be before the tight knot of anxiety in his chest would loosen.

Jamie didn’t see Major Grey again until Geneva’s funeral. Jamie attended the funeral along with most of the estate’s staff, standing towards the back of the crowded chapel; he had no difficulty seeing the proceedings. Under normal circumstances, he would have followed along with the service adding his own silent prayers and making note of the differences between this Protestant service and the Catholic ones he knew better. There were more than enough similarities to make up for the differences.

A young mother dead in childbed; her child gone with her; a grieving husband and family mourning her publicly. A heavy feeling of disgust settled in Jamie’s stomach; aside from the first, Geneva’s funeral was both echo and mockery of what his own mother’s had been. William lived though only a handful in attendance knew. Her parents’ and sister’s grief was real enough but Ellesmere sat stone faced, staring at the coffin and undoubtedly judging the soul that used to belong to the body within. Guilt swept through Jamie for he had been so quick to do the same with regards to Geneva. He would try to forgive her for his son’s sake and would beg her forgiveness for the fact the boy could not know her or even know of her. He hoped that made them even.

I’ll raise him as best I can, he promised her silently, and I’m sorry, but there’s only one way I ken how. It's no the way ye would have wanted, but he’ll be loved. And someday… someday I’ll try to bring myself to tell him the truth. And with the minister’s final prayers, Jamie tried to set Geneva Dunsany aside for good.

Major Grey found Jamie in the crowd after the service had finished when everyone was lingering, uncertain what to say to the grieving family, unwilling to be the first to leave.

“It was good of you to come,” Grey said, making an awkward start.

Jamie grunted his agreement as he moved to find a way out of the crowd, the rest of the servants and staff having drifted out before the service had finished in order to prepare the house for the gathering of guests who would linger for hours or––in some cases––days.

“Are you feeling all right?” Grey asked, his eyes narrowing as he took in Jamie’s haggard appearance.

“Tired is all, sir,” Jamie responded with a curt politeness intended to remind Grey of the company around them. “Ye’ll have heard of the storm we rode through to reach Ellesmere. The carriage was stuck often and it was cold and weary work dislodging it. I’m still recovering and actually ought to be getting back for a rest while I can.”

“Of course,” Grey relented. “I will speak to you sometime before I leave.”

“How long are ye to stay?”

“Just a day or two. I want to be sure the family don’t require anything of me before I return to London.”

Jamie nodded but an acquaintance of Grey’s appeared and struck up a conversation with him assuming Grey had simply been giving instructions of some sort to Jamie.

Relieved to be free of the large group of mourners, Jamie slipped away to the stables where there were a multitude of guests’ horses that needed to be tended before their owners could begin departing. It was the kind of busy work that distracted a person from their thoughts and Jamie relinquished himself gladly to the monotony of movement that exhausted his body so that come nightfall he lay on his pallet in the loft and finally fell into a light but restful sleep.

The following afternoon Jamie was returning with the line of horses from one of the distant paddocks when he noticed the horses increasing restiveness as they drew closer to the house and stables. One of the kitchen maids emerged from the stable with her hands on her hips and crossed to Hughes with a question. Hughes started to shrug then spotted Jamie and the maid’s head spun in his direction.

His heart began to pound and his palms to sweat as he continued toward her at a steady and reluctant pace, all his energy focused on maintaining an air of ignorance, all his mind in chaos as he yearned to have the charade over with so he could be alone with his son in his arms.

“You’re needed in the house MacKenzie,” the maid called when he was closer. Hughes trailed behind her already reaching for the horses’ line while Jamie headed for the nearby trough to wash the dirt from his hands. She followed him with growing impatience. “There’s a message along with a uh… well, you’d best just come and see.”

The maid was close to running but Jamie’s stride was long enough for him to keep up without looking worried or in a rush.

Silence fell in the kitchen when Jamie finally appeared on the scene. A space had been cleared on the table; meat, herbs, and a few vegetables pushed aside in various states of preparation so that a large basket could rest in the middle, away from the edge.

The housekeeper stood beside it wearing an authoritative posture. She held out the opened envelope for Jamie to take as soon as he was close enough. He frowned at the broken seal and peered over the edge of the basket to see William wrapped securely in several layers of blankets, his face barely visible and his nose rosy from the chill in the air outside.

Turning his back on the basket, Jamie pulled out the note and skimmed it, already having a vague idea of what Lady Dunsany would have written for the wet nurse to copy before delivering the child to Helwater. He was pretty sure the housekeeper could read and wondered how deep into the household the note’s contents had already managed to spread.

Setting the note aside, Jamie reached into the basket and pushed the blanket aside so it was clear of William’s face. Relief washed through him as he saw that the infant appeared to be in good health; he wasn’t pale or feverish or clammy and his face had lost the squashed appearance of the recently birthed. Jamie slipped his hands around the tightly wrapped body and lifted it out. Jarred by the sudden movement, William’s eyes flew open and Jamie could feel the baby’s limbs fight against the blanket that kept them tight against his body. A startled cry escaped the bundle and the housekeeper reached instinctively to take the child and calm him but Jamie moved William out of her reach and settled him in his own arms.

Reassured by the solidity of resting in Jamie’s arms and against his chest, William’s cry weakened to a whimper and then faded as Jamie began whispering to him in soothing Gaelic, the vibrations of his low voice radiating through his body. William looked up at Jamie with wide eyes, his mouth forming a startled ‘O’ that made Jamie chuckle.

“What’s happened here?” Lady Dunsany asked as she followed a maid sent to fetch her into the kitchen. She paled for a moment when she saw Jamie holding the baby but quickly recovered.

“I believe I’m goin’ to need to have a word or two wi’ yer husband, my lady,” Jamie said in a way he hoped didn’t sound two practiced.

“What’s this?” Lord John asked coming in behind Lady Dunsany.

Jamie felt a nervous chill creeping up his spine as he watched Grey’s eyes widen momentarily with shock; his features remained unaltered as he looked into Jamie’s defiant face.

“May I see that?” Grey asked indicating the note.

“Lord John, please,” Lady Dunsany said with quiet firmness as Jamie yielded the slip of paper. “This is not the place to be doing this and it’s a matter for my husband to deal with, at any rate.”

Grey looked up from the note and at Jamie again then to the child in his arms. William wriggled a bit and grunted before passing a bit of gas. Jamie struggled not to smile at what appeared to be the babe’s opinion of such scrutiny.

“You are right, of course, my lady,” Grey finally said. “Please, allow me to help you carry your things into the library while your mistress fetches her husband.” He reached over to the table and lifted the basket.

“Thank you, sir,” Jamie said with formality before following Grey out of the kitchen.

He wanted to reach out and take Grey by the collar, push him up against the wall of the hallway and lay into him for interfering; point out that no one beyond Dunsany was supposed to know his full background and that Grey’s assumption of authority in the kitchen threatened what anonymity using the name Alexander MacKenzie gave him. But having William in his arms was more than deterrent enough.

The babe was starting to squeak and grunt again, this time clearly with hunger behind it. How long had it been since he’d eaten? How long would it take till Lady Dunsany could get a wet nurse to the house? What was it Jenny used to give the bairns to tide them over if she couldn’t nurse right away?

Grey strode into the library with Jamie a few steps behind him and dropped the basket on the floor by the desk before whirling around and shutting the door.

“What’s going on, Jamie?” Grey asked, his voice a harsh whisper. “I don’t for a minute believe that you got some random local woman with child the way this note suggests. Not without the household servants knowing about it and if they had suspected something and were gossiping about it, Tom would have heard and informed me.”

Jamie remained silent, turning his attention to William and walking towards the light of one of the windows, swaying as he did and calming the hungry child. William blinked against the light then sneezed.

“What makes ye so sure he’s no mine?” Jamie asked quietly.

“I know you, Jamie. You wouldn’t take advantage of some unfortunate or… or misguided young woman like that,” Grey insisted. “You’re too noble… too noble for your own good,” he added, under his breath.

“There’s much about me ye dinna ken,” Jamie murmured letting William take the end of his finger in his hand. The babe shifted his head towards the finger, mouth gaping, ready to feast. It took a few tries for him to get the finger in his mouth. Jamie hoped the brief washing he’d given his hands on the way inside had gotten that finger clean enough; he could hear faint echoes of Claire scolding him about how sensitive infants could be to those germs of hers.

“MacKenzie,” Dunsany said as he and his wife slipped into the library. “Lord John,” he added, clearly startled. “Thank you for keeping MacKenzie company just now. I think––”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I think you and I both know that whatever is happening with this child concerning MacKenzie is my concern as well,” Grey interrupted with the clear intention of taking charge and a brief glance to Lady Dunsany, uncertain how much she knew of how and why Jamie had come to be a groom on the estate. “Now, as I’m sure your wife informed you, the note claims that MacKenzie is father to this child but it’s clear that he can’t possibly raise the boy here under these circumstances. If you require assistance, I can help arrange for the boy to be sent to his family in Scotland. Presumably he has family who would be able to care for the boy until such time––”

“No,” Lady Dunsany interjected. She had already drifted to Jamie’s side. “That won’t be necessary. MacKenzie can stay here with the baby so long as he’s in our employ. I’ll send to town to inquire after a wet nurse and you can be moved into the house; the child cannot be raised in the barn.”

Grey turned a confused look to his hostess as she reached for William and brought him to her shoulder, a hand caressing the back of his head.

Understanding dawned in Grey’s face and he looked first to Dunsany and then to Jamie for confirmation.

“Ah, yes. Well… I suppose that changes matters… I’ll leave you to your arrangements,” Grey stammered, heading for the door but throwing Jamie a look that indicated there were still matters the two of them would be discussing later.

But the reluctance Jamie felt over the prospect of that discussion faded as he watched Lady Dunsany with tears in her eyes cradling her grandson. He couldn’t begrudge the Dunsanys for the comfort they found in the child but neither was he blind to the difficulties that lay ahead as far as drawing boundaries for how William would be raised and their role in his life. Grey could be an important ally for him when the time came for him to take William home to Scotland. He hoped for all their sakes that a balance could be struck that would enable them all to live in peace for some years to come.

#;mod lenny #Mac Ruaidh AU #jamie keeps william #canon divergence #alternate universe #featuring: john grey #featuring: the dunsanys #not everything I was planning to have in this chapter #but it got too long so the rest of that will wind up in part three

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