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pedroshotwifey · 7 months ago

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To The Flame chapter twelve

Series masterlist

Pairing: Dark!Javier Peña x afab!reader

Chapter w/c: 2.6k

Chapter warnings: mentions of physical abuse, manipulation, mental abuse, steve and connie!!, fluff but like backhanded fluff?, Javi being a dick, alcohol consumption, mild description of injury

Chapter Summary: Javi takes you out on your date and you meet some potential friends

A/N: Hey, y'all! Super excited about this one! These character introductions mean a lot to this story. Hope you like it! (also sorry about not posting last week, pls forgive me ❤)

*****

“Shit,” you mutter.

You’re staring at yourself in the mirror, fixated on the ugly welt marring your right cheekbone. Your right eye is a bit swollen as well, but not too badly. You’re mostly worried about how the hell you’re going to hide the discoloring. Even with your makeup, it’s going to be a feat.

It makes your stomach twist up to remember last night’s events. You still don’t understand why you had chosen to freak out like that. It was completely immature and irrational. He was just worried about you and you chose to berate him for it.

Thankfully, Javi seems to have completely forgiven you for your outburst. He woke up as normal this morning, planted a kiss on your forehead, and made your breakfast. You smile to think about it. Despite everything that happened yesterday, everything today is back as it should be, just how you like it.

You sigh and turn the sink on. You’ll wash your face and get dressed, then worry about this monstrosity last. You’re excited for your date. Javi told you that he’ll be taking you to a small restaurant a few blocks from the apartment. He’s out running an errand right now, or so he said. He wasn’t very specific, but he did promise to be back in time for your dinner date.

You lean down and splash your face with the cool water, suppressing a wince as it hits your bruised flesh. You really didn’t realize the hit had landed that hard. You scrub it anyway, being careful to not press too hard. You don’t think Javi got a very good look at it this morning, which is probably a good thing. He’d likely be devastated to know he caused such an injury.

You finish washing your face and reach for your dress hanging on the back of the door. It’s one of Javi’s favorites, and you’re excited to finally have an excuse to wear it again. You slip it over your head and turn around to zip the back with the help of the mirror. You pull at the edge and smooth it out so it falls effortlessly just above your knees.

It’s a beautiful color in contrast with your skintone, hell, it’s a beautiful dress in general. You smile at your appearance in the mirror. It’s not often you feel confident, but this dress never fails to bring it out of you. Maybe that’s why Javi likes it so much, too.

You hear the front door open as you fix one of the sleeves of the dress, a smile spreading across your face at the sound. Javi calls your name in greeting and your stomach flutters.

“I’m in here,” you call back. His footsteps grow closer.

“You ready, sweetheart?”

You peek your head out from the bathroom, careful to hide your right side behind the door frame. Javi’s standing in the middle of the bedroom. He looks gorgeous—as usual. He’s wearing a blue button up with his jeans and his regular boots.

“Yup, I’ll be just a second.”

“Alright, baby, take your time. There’s no rush.” He sends you a wink.

You flash him a quick smile before ducking back in and cracking the door behind you. You pick up your compact and lean in close to the mirror. The first layer doesn’t do much at all. The second makes a small difference, and by the third, all that’s left is to touch up certain spots. Even then though, you know there’s nothing you can do about the swelling of your eye and one of the deeper bruises. You take a step back. It doesn’t look so bad when you’re not too close.

You sigh and finish up the rest of it, only putting everything away once you’re satisfied that you look pretty much normal. Like it’s any other date night. You turn the light off and step out of the bathroom.

“Javi?”

“In the kitchen, sweetheart.”

You follow his voice, finding him leaning against the kitchen counter and craning his neck slightly to look out the window.

You grin as you step into view, giving him a small twirl and watching his smile widen when his gaze lands on you. You do your best to hide your right side, but try to be casual enough that he won’t think that’s what you’re trying to do.

“You look gorgeous, baby,” he says, walking toward you with open arms.

You let him embrace you in a hug, wrapping your own arms around his middle as he presses a kiss to the top of your head. “Thank you, Javi,” you mumble into his chest.

He lets you go after a moment and picks something up from the counter.

“Here, hermosa, got something for you” he offers you the bouquet of flowers. You gasp, sure that it’s the most beautiful bunch you’ve ever seen. That must have been why he went out. You’ll really never get over how thoughtful he is. It must have taken him a while to pick these out.

You beam at him as you take them in your hand. “Thank you,” you say again. He nods at you, warmth in his gaze as he watches you softly sniff the flowers. You look up when he clears his throat.

“Wanted to say I’m sorry,” he tells you, eyes flickering to and from yours. You frown a bit.

“It’s okay, Javi, I was the one acting up,” you assure him. You don’t want him to feel bad over something that wasn’t his fault. Just thinking about it puts a bad taste in your mouth. He’s much too sweet of a man to ever think that he’s done something wrong. You’re the childish one who threw a temper tantrum for no reason. It’s not fair for him to blame himself for what happened.

He nods solemnly, giving you a soft smile.

“I think we were both in the wrong there, sweetheart. I just don’t want it to happen again.”

Now it’s your turn to nod. You’re beaming inside at the fact that everything seems to be back to normal, but there’s also a sudden threat of tears pricking at your eyes and you’re not sure why. You look away, refusing to let them fall as you busy yourself putting them into a vase.

“Let me just put these in some water, and I’ll be ready,” you say as you turn on the sink.

****

You’re walking out the door minutes later, hand in hand with Javi as you try to contain the smile on your face. You’re way too excited about getting out. A part of you feels a bit guilty about getting your way after last night, but you suppose that Javi would have told you no if he thought it was really a bad idea tonight.

You stay silent and let him lead you downstairs, and you actually have to bite down on your lip to keep from full-on grinning when the evening air hits your face. It’s not too busy of a night, not many people out on the street at all. Still, Javi holds you close to his side as you make your way to the restaurant he was telling you about.

It’s not far, maybe a four or five minute walk from the complex. It’s small and cozy, exactly what you would hope for. He keeps his hand on the small of your back as you go to sit at an empty table, pulling your chair out for you and making sure you’re comfortable before sitting down in the seat across from you.

You smile at him as a waitress comes by and drops off a couple of menus. She takes your drink orders—a soda for you and a beer for Javi. You busy yourself with looking over the food options, failing to notice the way Javi’s started to stare at you.

His hand comes quickly across the table, making you flinch from surprise when he grabs your chin and tilts your head enough to see your right cheek.

“What’s this?” he demands.

You wince, really wishing you could have avoided this. You should have kept layering your makeup.

“”S from last night,” you mumble, ashamed even though you know you shouldn’t be. You just don’t want him to see what physical damage he may have done. He’ll tear himself up over it.

But he instead snaps, “And you didn’t fucking cover it?”

You’re taken aback, your head snapping away from his grasp. Shame fills you. Why can’t you just do something right for once? Tears again fill your eyes, only adding to your shame.

“I-I’m sorry, Javi,” you say quietly, staring at your hands in your lap. “I was just really excited to go out and—”

He sighs and leans back in his chair, cutting you off from your pointless excuse. “Just make sure nobody sees it,” he tells you. “Do you have any idea what that could do to me in my field of work?”

You nod, sniffing as your ears burn with embarrassment. Here he is taking you out and you ruin it by making another stupid decision. At least you’re not getting angry again. You have enough sense to keep that at bay.

You catch the waitress walking back with your drinks out of the corner of your eye and do your best to quickly collect yourself, giving her a warm, tear free smile when she sets your soda down in front of you. She smiles back and takes Javi’s order, which you order as well since you forgot to choose a dish for yourself.

You flash Javi a shy smile when she walks away, and, much to your relief, he gives you a small one in response. He’s still obviously not very thrilled with you, but at least he’s not straight mad.

“How have things been going at the house, baby?”

You know he means with renovations.

“They’re pretty good. Almost finished with all the painting and stuff. I might just need you to help me with some of the tile and cabinets.”

He nods. “Alright, I’ll see if I can get it done tomorrow.”

You nod back, trying not to be too tense. The conversation almost feels…awkward. It’s confusing. Luckily, the waitress comes quickly with your food, placing it in front of you and leaving you to it.

Conversation gets a bit better as the two of you eat. More casual and free-flowing.It’s not quite how it’s been the last few months, though. More like when the two of you had gone out together the first few times and had been a little shy. You brush it off though, sure that it won’t last too long. Even the two of you haven’t ever really been in a ‘post-fight’ situation yet, you believe that your chemistry is good enough for it to work itself out soon.

And it pretty much does by the time you’re finishing up your dinner. Javi’s smiling as you gush to him about a book you’re currently reading. It’s a very cute romance, one of the ones he’s brought you recently. He’s listening intently, happy to see your eyes light up with excitement.

The waitress comes back with the bill just as you’re telling him about the ending, and he hands his card over, along with a cash tip, as he continues to listen. It’s so nice to have someone who enjoys hearing about your interests. Before Javi, you can’t really remember having a person who would genuinely want to hear about your books.

You finish just as the waitress comes back, revealing the plot twist dramatically. His eyes widen with your reveal, both to indulge you but also probably a bit out of surprise because—in your opinion—it was a pretty insane plot twist.

But then his gaze darkens, pointed over your shoulder, and you frown.

“Javi?”

Your mouth is open to say his name, but it wasn’t you who said it. You snap your head around to see a couple walking toward you, the man smiling broadly. There’s a woman holding his hand, looking a little less enthusiastic than the man about seeing your husband.

You see Javi tense out of the corner of your eye as they reach your table. The man drops the woman's hand to round the table and clap Javi’s shoulder.

“What are you doing, you son of a bitch?” the man asks in a joking tone. “Thought you said you didn’t date.”

Javi’s jaw clenches as your brows furrow.

What?

“Uhm, yeah,” you supply, ignoring the way your stomach churns at the fact that he hadn’t mentioned you at all. “That may have something to do with the fact that he’s married.” You hold your left hand up, flashing your ring. The man’s light brows go up in surprise, a slight smirk overtaking his features. But then the smile drops and he shoots his gaze down to your husband.

“Well I’ll be damned,” he says slowly. “Didn’t think you were the type, Peña.” His tone is almost flat now. You don’t understand why it changed so quickly. Javi looks back up at him, a flicker of dark emotion that you can’t quite place showing in his eyes.

“Sweetheart,” Javi addresses you, keeping his eyes on the stranger. “This is Steve, my partner at work.”

He doesn’t talk about work much, but from what he’s told you about his partner, your understanding is that they get along pretty well. So you don’t quite understand the surge of hostility between the two of them right now.

You smile nonetheless, standing and reaching your hand out to him. You state your name. “It’s nice to meet you.”

He nods as he shakes your hand, giving you a tight smile in return. His expression is almost hard to read. He nods to the woman next to you. “That’s my wife, Connie.”

You turn to shake her hand as well, and you can tell you’ll immediately like her. She gives you a bright smile as well, telling you it’s nice to meet you. She seems very nice, but also like she wouldn’t be afraid to speak up for herself. You find yourself hoping that you’ll be able to see her again. Maybe be friends.

“We were just leaving,” Javi says from where he watches the two of you. Steve has taken a step back now, and is also watching you both with his arms crossed, though he doesn’t look mad, exactly. More like he’s contemplating something.

You frown though, having thought that you still had a little while before you had to go back.

“But—”

He flashes you a warning look, and you quiet down. Maybe you misunderstood him and he doesn’t like his partner. Either way, if he wants to go back, it’s probably for a good reason and you shouldn’t fight it. You nod at him instead, smoothing out your dress.

“Well, it was nice to meet you,” you say to Steve and Connie as Javi comes to your side and takes your arm in his.

“You, too,” Connie says, and Steve nods, another small smile offered as Javi starts to lead you out. You don’t turn to watch them as you leave, instead keeping your eyes on Javi, who has his on the exit.

“What was that about?” you ask.

He glances at you with a softer gaze than you’ve seen all night. Again, you can’t place the look.

“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart,” he assures you and kisses the side of your head. So you don’t.

When the two of you get home, Javi cracks open another beer and holds you on the couch until you both fall asleep watching TV.

*****

You for reading! Taglist is always open!

Series taglist: @corazondebeskar @yorksgirl @nerdieforpedro @axshadows @melaninmommy @survivingandenduring @kewwrites @oldenoughtoknowbettersstuff @callachloe @missladym1981 @sofiparallel @koshkaj-blog @sheepdogchick3 @movievillainess721 @jessie8605 @casa-boiardi @justlulu @iamsherlocked-1998 @hjzghi-b @solarecI1spe

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heyclickadee · 3 months ago

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More Massive Fandom Salt under the cut

If I see one more condescending post about how people who don’t like Tech getting killed off just don’t get it, I’m going to mcfreaking lose it.

Like, okay. I think Tech is alive. I think I’ve been clear about that. If I haven’t, then I don’t know what else to do. I actually even get why taking him off the board for season three could be a good move (give Crosshair time to decompress and Omega time to come into her own and be the hero of her own show, while also maybe setting Tech up for another plot line to come later), and think it’s possible that bringing Tech back later could actually work much better than what I originally wanted to happen. In fact, if it really is a fake-out I think it’s kind of immaculate. And I still get angry reading those posts.

Because, first, a lot of people upset by the handling of Tech from “Plan 99” onwards are upset because Tech meant something to them. It goes a lot deeper than just losing your favorite character. Tech was a fantastic piece of autistic representation and losing that hurt. Losing that and then never getting the catharsis that comes with on-screen emotional processing from the characters, no closure, no real in-show impact besides inconveniencing the others hurt even more. It left a lot of autistic people in the fandom feeling like we were told that we weren’t welcome in Star Wars at all.

And most of us still love the show! The Bad Batch is still my favorite show and I adore basically the entire thing up through season three, right up to the point where everything just kind of stops without resolving anything but Hunter and Omega, and not getting Tech back before the end hit me so badly that I almost dropped Star Wars completely. People are upset for a reason.

Second, I get that it can be annoying seeing criticism of your favorite show. I do. I actually disagree with a lot of criticism of TBB and do tend to get a little annoyed at certain takes. The other thing about the “Tech’s dead and that’s good”/“You thought Tech could come back because you were delusional” posts that makes me want to fight everyone, though, is that they tend to be incredibly dismissive. They’ll bring up arguments people made during the airing of the show for why Tech could come back, or arguments they made afterwards for why they thought he should have, and then either misunderstand or talk right past them.

It gives anyone who made those arguments, or who was upset by the ending, a general sense that we’re not being listened to. That people have already decided we’re irrational and that nothing we say or experience matters, that we saw patterns that weren’t there, or that we care too much about this specific thing, or that we’re being immature. Maybe. Just. I don’t know—consider for a second that a lot of the people who are most upset about Tech belong to the noticing patterns/caring a lot about specific things/dismissed for noticing things that are really there in real life/frequently infantilized neurotype. Again, there’s a reason some of us are upset and having a hard time with fandom right now.

I actually don’t have a problem with people thinking or making posts saying someone needed to die or that Tech “dying” was well handled as a death. I will always disagree, and I think we’re too close to the “bury your disabled” trope with most of the batchers for me to be okay with any of them dying like that, but one person will interpret fiction differently than another and I can’t and shouldn’t police that. I do, however, have a massive problem with the condescending way a lot of those posts go about it. Think Tech ought to be dead? Fine. Call anyone who thinks otherwise a child? Instablock, I don’t need that in my life.

#fandom salt #like #a lot of fandom salt #sorry it’s a salty day #I actually quite like the little corner of the fandom I’m in #y’all are great #but it’s rough out there

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dndeceit · 2 months ago

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I don't usually do a lot of analysis or theorizing, but I did have half of this written out after some thought moved me to do so a while back. And I saw a post today touching on some of the same things, so I thought I'd slap at least a half-assed completion of my thoughts and send it out into the world just to get it out of my drafts.

I always feel baffled by the interpretation of Virgil and Janus being "former villains" or having had a redemption arc, because I feel like there's a crucial point that has been missed.

The overall theme of the series is about accepting that people are made up of a bunch of messy and often contradictory impulses that nonetheless all serve a purpose. Overall, it's about finding a balance in our lives to settle these conflicts. Virgil and Janus were never villains, they were vilified and that's different. The "Dark Sides" arc is about understanding that treating these impulses as wholly "good" or "bad" is typically harmful.

Virgil's arc through the early series was, in part, about him learning to work with the other sides, but it's as much (or more) about the other sides learning to work with him. Anxiety doesn't just go away when you ignore it, you have to find methods of addressing it instead that are right for you. The reason Virgil and Roman butt heads so frequently is because Thomas's anxiety is a barrier to his self expression and his pursuit of endeavors (creative and interpersonal) that require him to take risks. In Accepting Anxiety, Roman came to understand how the awareness of those risks are essential for making it possible to pursue them effectively, and a part of what gives the achievement of them meaning.

In the same video he is introduced, it is explicitly stated that Remus isn't the real problem. The thoughts he represents are distracting and gross and unpleasant, but Patton and Virgil's defensiveness against the thoughts is what make them distressing. It's the moralization of them, the fear that they must reflect on Thomas in some way, that is hurting him. It's why one of the first things that Remus says (one of the few constructive things Remus has to say) in the episode is that repression is bad. And I imagine that, eventually, his arc as a side is going to touch on the exploration and expression of dark themes and thoughts as a source of catharsis, because one of his primary complaints is Thomas's insistence on keeping his influence out of his art.

If there's a redemption arc going on in SvSR, it's Patton's. Janus's acceptance into the group wasn't won by him changing. It was made by proving that he, by representing Thomas's most self-serving impulses, was necessary, and by extension proving that Patton's black and white thinking on the subject of selfishness and self sacrifice was hurting Thomas. (A life lived solely for the good of others isn't much of a life, you have to live some of it for yourself.)

My theory is that the remaining arc, for Orange, is going to be framed as a conflict between himself and Logan for very similar reasons. Logan's rejection of emotions (which he clearly has) are setting up against a character who likely represents either certain emotions which are viewed as disruptive (anger, or similar) or the consequences of repressing them (resentment).

Like Anxiety, feelings of anger or frustration don't go away by pretending they aren't there. If they aren't addressed, they fester. And just as with Anxiety, to process them in a healthy way you need to find a way to work with them.

Anger pops up in a lot of situations where it can feel irrational, even as we're feeling it. Ultimately, Logan can't "logic" Thomas's way out of feeling anything. However, leaning into Remus's area of his imagination in his creative life could provide an outlet for those feelings and provide catharsis that can help him work through them. (And, inevitably, Logan's "redemption" would likely relate to the understanding that some feelings have to be felt in order to be processed, however illogical or counterproductive feeling them may seem.)

#sanders sides #sanders sides analysis #sanders sides theories #misc #clearing out my drafts

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prettypeppermint · 1 year ago

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swan song.

for t. shelby. a continuation of 'the gift of silence. (how sweet the sound)'

Sacrifice was your greatest gift. It clung to your name like a drawn bowstring, pregnant with prospective yet surmounting to nothing. You gave to your family until their deaths pried your outstretched palms away; you gave to your future self through tired feet and hard-earned sweat. Now, you've given to Thomas Shelby. Your very own love language.

You would give just about anything to take it all back.

He was kissing you--tasting you. He was asking for more and more of you every day through his longing gaze and patient fingers. You hated making him wait for something unattainable.

He wanted you a certain way--pliant, moldable. Soft.

He wanted you only to take from you. He wanted to collect you piece by piece.

A giver and a God.

"Tell me," he muttered into your mouth, tasting the way your thoughts grew sour on your lips. He read you in a way not kindled through love but through years of hardened business.

You pulled away half-heartedly. Your mind wrapped around him and you needed air.

"Say you love me," you ordered, staring into the core of his glacier-capped irises. There was no hope--no apprehension. You've digested every unspoken word already. You knew.

He peered down at you through his heavy line of lashes. "What--are my acts of service not enough?" he said lowly, an air of an insatiated euphemism in his voice.

A swell.

A silence.

An atonement.

"I love you." His finger traced a lock of hair into the canyon of your ear.

"I don't believe you."

A scoff seared through his teeth--a breath through the cornice of his lips.

"I've been thinking recently. During the day; during the night"--you began walking aimlessly around his office, fingering book spines and swiping the dust off of ledges--"during that ungodly hour before work. And thank God I have, because now I know you've been lying to me."

Thomas analyzed you--dissected every syllable. He listened.

"When you look into my eyes, I see nothing but her in yours."

It always goes back to Grace.

The lack of pain in your voice irked him on a deep, almost irrational level.

"At first I was hurt--confused. But now"--you circled back to him--"now, I feel nothing. I am nothing." You waited for him to interject despite knowing he never would. Sometimes, you were too painfully clear of his character; of just how much control he had over you; of how many ways he could hurt you while protecting you--love you while losing you.

"Then I realized: I'd rather be yours than nothing. Isn't it sad--a lass like me? Maybe I should first learn how it feels to be my own--to know every crease of my skin and grow comfortable in my flesh how you've grown so comfortable in mine."

The man you loved, whom you had sacrificed for one final time.

Your muscles yearned to reunite with him, but you held your arms to your sides in protest. "Thomas Shelby, you love me how a man should, but not how a woman should feel loved."

And now you'll spend the rest of your life chasing a notion--a concept--made only somewhat tangible by a man who could give you no more than all of him. Now you'll lose yourself searching for someone to search for you. Now you'll see him in all the men who fail in forgivable ways and love kindly.

A piece of him you will keep; a piece of you he will throw away. Until the next.

"You love me," he states, seemingly unphased. "And I love you."

"You don't know what love is, Thomas. How could you, when you've never loved anyone more than they've loved you?

"That's the ultimate testament of the caliber of a man's heart. It was never me, Thomas. It's her name you whisper in your sleep. Hear it. Accept it. Remember my voice saying it. Cling to it for the rest of your goddamn life so you never tell another woman you love her again."

For the first time, he noticed, you sounded defeated.

For the first time, he saw the vices of Birmingham shade your rural clarity.

Your voice sounded different without the usual fight in it; it revealed the exhaustion you forced down with cigarettes every morning and night. Suddenly the violet shadows under your eyes introduced themselves. Suddenly you looked 5 kilograms emaciated.

It was then that you became another woman in Thomas Shelby's life. You were no longer of the Kilkee coast or the sweetened countryside. You were ruined, and now you were just like the rest.

No girl who ever got tangled up in Shelby business ever makes it to London.

A swell.

A silence.

An empty impenitence.

"Goodbye, Thomas."

While he waited for you to fight for him, you once more decided to give.

Twice more, he took from you.

You wanted to feel his warmth against your lips once more. You had suddenly wished you'd savored your last kiss. "I hate what you've made me," you whispered.

He hated how the words sounded--how they tainted your tongue.

"You hate what you've become for me," he corrected.

You gave him a lonely, far-off stare, as if you were looking straight through him. He knew he had lost you.

You ignored his previous remark: "I hate how you made me think it was safe to fall in love with you."

You hadn't realized your eyes had welled up with an undeniable glaze until you felt a drop of glass wetness fall from your cheek. "I hate how you've turned me into another one of your women."

When Thomas didn't move, or walk closer to you, or even soften at your unraveling, you felt sour all over. Suddenly, you wanted it to hurt.

"No one has ever loved me in my entire life," you said to yourself, almost inaudibly. It sounded so ridiculously girlish and naive, unlike anything he had ever heard you say before.

A swell.

A painful one in the grit of your heart.

You felt heavy as you slowly turned and left his office.

†

He found you passed out in the chapel, your chest sprawled across the altar, your palms still clasped together in weak prayer. A mistiness clung to your eyelashes. He was once again reminded how much he loved how you looked in your sleep: like a soft lull of the shore had washed over you and cured a light peace into your soul.

He stood over you, counting your breaths and watching your lungs expand with life just to expel it. You smelled of ash and rosaries and beeswax. A tear rolled over the apples of your cheek and onto the peak of your nose.

"Silly girl," he rasped lowly before sitting on the floor and pulling your limp form into the cradle of his chest. His palm met the crown of your head to pull you further into his weight, his other hand hooking around the lonely bend of your waist. He felt his shirt seep with moisture, and he knew you were awake.

"She was a piece of my past I can't go back to take away," he said, his chin resting atop your head, voice bitter yet smooth like coffee on a good day, "But if any part of her had led me to you, I wouldn't go back to change a moment of it even if I could."

Your shoulders shuddered silently, and your sobs permeated directly through his chest and into his heart. He always knew just what to say, to the point it scared you.

"Give it time," said Thomas, petting your head in rhythm with your heart, "Give it time."

While you gave, he invested. He invested in all the times you've chipped away at yourself for him, and he kept them in his heart until the next time he would use them--like a business transaction.

But could you blame him for loving you how he knows best?

To understand his love was more than enough. Yet, your consistent upturned and empty palms rendered you greedy.

He collects your wet cheeks between his hands and brings you to look up at him. In his eyes, you saw the end of a road.

Was this all there was? Maybe so.

"Let's get married. Right here, right now"--he swiped his thumb across the slick of your undereye--"That way you'll be mine to keep. No more goodbyes."

You felt the Lord's eyes on your kneeling form. An odd feeling of shame and acceptance washed over you and clogged your chest.

It was then that you knew: loving Thomas Shelby was never going to be beautiful. It wasn't simple or painless or any of the things love should be. And it would never be the same kind of love that it was yesterday.

But what could you do? What could you do if you loved him nonetheless?

If you would always be loved how broken women are loved?

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maxdibert · 24 days ago

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oh more of sirius-bellatrix and regulus-narcissa parallels please! andromeda is also an interesting character for me sometimes i wonder as she was someone that grew up in such household what if she happened to fall in love with another pureblood would she be another ‘narcissa’? and a lot of people always automatically assume that before the marriage just like sirius that she was not a pureblood supremacist because she married a muggle-born but what if she was someone that somehow still aligned with the black family’ views but with ted tonks ‘he’s an exception’ but ‘rebellious’ enough to leave her privileges and then able to grow to changed her view after the 1st war and experiencing life with her family(tonks)

I honestly don’t think Andromeda was like Sirius. I also can’t really say how she was or how I imagine her because we know so little about her, but considering that she was in Slytherin, I’d say she probably didn’t have many issues with her family until she decided to marry Ted Tonks. Maybe she didn’t completely agree with her family’s ideas, or maybe she had never considered that blood supremacy was wrong until she started a relationship with Ted. Personally, I prefer this latter version, where she was probably a somewhat alienated person but without very strong convictions, therefore more open to other opinions, and that by meeting and falling in love with Ted, she made a decision. It fits much better with the role of the middle sister between two sisters with very strong personalities, while she had a softer one. But this is pure personal headcanon.

As for the parallel between the cousins, I’ve always thought Sirius has a lot in common with Bellatrix. Both are characters with extremely strong temperaments who hate with a passion and love in an obsessive way. Their feelings blind them. Bellatrix develops a personality marked by quite evident mental instability, which I believe stems first from her fanaticism and later from her years in prison, but her absolute loyalty to Voldemort and that obsession to please and go to the end for the person she holds as her reference is very similar to Sirius’s behavior with James, although Sirius does it in a less corrosive way. Sirius (like his cousin) is completely blinded by the memory of the person to whom he swore loyalty and fidelity. He committed to James in a platonic way, with James being his moral compass and at the same time the person he identified as his new family. Just as Bellatrix sees the Death Eaters as part of herself, the place where she belongs, Sirius does the same with James and everything he represents (the Marauders, the Order, Harry), and he does it in a visceral and totally irrational way that doesn’t heed any kind of coherent reasoning. At the end of the day, Sirius is a dog, and as a dog, he will follow his master to the grave and bite anyone he sees as a threat. To me, Bellatrix represents that darker and corrupted side of the Blacks, that vision of themselves as aristocrats with rights over the rest of the mortals—not just from a social perspective, like Narcissa, but also from a militant one. She is willing to kill and be killed for her ideals, just as Sirius is willing to kill and be killed for his. Both are aggressive, violent, and display a resentful and quite volatile, uncontrollable character. Only Voldemort can control Bellatrix, just as probably only James could control Sirius. They only obey their masters because they don’t recognize any other figure of authority. After all, they are both the eldest siblings.

In the case of Narcissa and Regulus, both are the youngest, and both are on the same side. But they not only coincide ideologically, but also in how they approach their political tendencies. Narcissa embodies the aristocracy that lives in a bubble and simply moves to maintain that bubble of privilege. She has been taught certain values that she doesn’t question, but she also doesn’t have an actively militant or bellicose attitude. She opines from the comfort of her home and is fine with others doing the work to uphold those values. She has a passive attitude, which I also see in Regulus, who probably joined the Death Eaters simply because it was expected of him and because he hadn’t questioned too much the extent to which his decisions might have consequences. Just like Narcissa, both are nobles who feel untouchable and don’t expect the course of events to turn against them. But it does. The events lead them to feel threatened and realize that the game of politics has consequences for everyone, and they are no exception—they aren’t immune to the war. And it’s at that moment that they see that something precious to them could be taken away by those who represent the values they once believed were in their favor. They don’t question their beliefs; they simply oppose those who represent them for strictly personal reasons. Neither Narcissa nor Regulus stop being who they are; they’ve always advocated for an individualistic view of the world, and when things individually go against them, they choose to act to come out as unscathed as possible and preserve what matters to them.

I really enjoy thinking about the dynamics of dysfunctional families because there are always parallels between their members, no matter how much they hate, distance themselves from, or separate from each other. It’s inevitable because, in the end, blood calls to blood.

#sirius black #regulus black #narcissa malfoy #bellatrix lestrange #bellatrix black #narcissa black #andromeda black #andromeda tonks #black family #black family meta #harry potter headcanons #harry potter meta #the noble and most ancient house of black

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standfucker · 1 year ago

Text

Engravings

inspired by the following comment on my last SH fic:

Couldn't stop thinking about it, which eventually led to this.

Characters: Sanji

Reader: GN, they/them

Word Count: 6.2k

CW: Hurt/Comfort, SH, SH scars, auditory hallucinations, PTSD, mental institution-related trauma. No shipping, ace-friendly

Summary: It’s Sanji. You’re immediately, wholeheartedly certain. It’s Sanji, and he knows.

AO3 Link

"I’m listening to everything / please, tell me everything"

Nothing’s happened.

The sea is calm, the sun is shining, and the breeze is strong. All in all, a great day for sailing.

Nothing’s happened…

No recent squabbles among the crew, no surprises from sea beasts, no battles with pirates or Marines.

There’s no reason to feel the way you do. No trigger or logic to it. But you feel it anyway.

It’s like there’s an invisible filter over everything. Nothing looks different. Things sound different, though. The sounds of the waves and wind, the snapping of sailcloth and rope, the din of the crew’s voices. All of it wavers, like someone has their hand on a universal volume dial, yanking it back and forth at random. Sometimes the sounds are piercingly loud, like they’re right next to your ears, making you resist the urge to cover them. Sometimes the sounds blend into the background of everything else in a low, dull hum–so distorted that you have to focus to parse what’s being said to you.

The sound issue is your second tip-off that you’re having that kind of day. The first is the sense that the Sunny feels too small. And, crushingly, overwhelmingly, it feels like your fault. Irrational, but you can’t shake it. Really, it’s stupid: On the outside, it just looks like you’re hanging out next to your crewmates, making idle conversation. Inwardly, there’s such a deep feeling of guilt for just being there that you’re ready to throw yourself overboard.

You try to cope. You really do. You make an effort, mentally talking yourself through it.

I am allowed to take up space. I am allowed to exist.

You want to cry. You want to get down on your knees and beg for forgiveness. It doesn’t make sense, and there’s no cause you can identify. You feel like you’re going to throw up.

No one notices. How could they? Your mask is calm smiles and practiced eye contact, formed with easy jokes and interest in what the others say. Your mask is years in the making, thick with each layer you’ve added to seal in the cracks. It’s heavy and ugly, but it keeps you safe.

I am allowed to exist.

There’s no danger. You can’t explain why your fight-or-flight response is going off. There’s something wrong with you, and no one can see it because the problem is deep in the wiring. You can’t even see it. But you can feel it, and it feels so god-awful you don’t know how to endure it.

You feel yourself shaking from head to toe, so much so that it’s hard to keep your balance. But when you look down, your body is completely still. The noise around you blends together and buzzes like static, harsh on your ears. Then it gets louder.

I am allowed to exist.

You want to crawl in a hole and hide.

I am…

You excuse yourself–casually, collectedly–and head for the ship’s interior. You know what you’re going to do before you even start moving, like the decision’s already been made for you. A certainty that settles in your system, something to hold onto. The background noise grows even louder.

You stumble into the bathroom. As soon as you shut the door, all sound cuts out.

You can’t hear anything. Not even the sea, nor the creaking wood of the ship. The room shifts, draws away from you until you have tunnel vision. Your vision warps, then focuses on the cabinet above the sink until you can see nothing else. Just like before.

It’s been a few weeks since the last time.

The background noise slowly picks up, but it’s distant, like you’re hearing it coming from a different ship. You reach for the cabinet.

What are you doing?

You open the cabinet. It’s organized so each crewmate’s stuff is clustered together, with the common items at the bottom. Your gaze passes over your deodorant, your nail clippers, your toothbrush, and settles on your straight razor.

Aren’t you too old for this?

You take your razor. From the common items, you take a bottle of alcohol. You fold up some tissue paper.

What would the crew think?

It’s hard to ignore the thoughts. But like any bully, they usually go away if you don’t give them energy. Usually.

The razor’s weight in your hand is comforting. It shouldn’t be, but it is. You unfold it, wipe down the blade with some alcohol. Then you lift up your sleeve and slide it over your shoulder.

This stretch of sea has been balmy. With the pleasant weather, you’ve worn a t-shirt, the short sleeves going just less than halfway down your arm. Underneath them, high up on your shoulder, are the scars. Faint and healed, a few shades lighter than your skin tone. Noticeable in the light, but that’s why you don’t participate in the group baths.

The background noise gets louder again. You think you hear shouting, faintly, but that’s normal for the crew. It barely registers over your heartbeat.

Your heart is beating harder than before, dull thumps in your chest that seem to echo. Anticipating, ready.

Everything is going to be okay.

Finally. Finally. A hurt you can make sense of. Small, controlled. Yours.

There’s supposed to be a rush, you’ve heard. You don’t feel one. But there is a difference. The tunnel vision stops, the filter lifts. The world snaps back into place, the sound goes back to normal.

That’s when you really notice the shouting, no longer muffled by brain static. Something’s off. You focus. It doesn’t sound argumentative, like Zoro and Sanji. Nor is it playful, like Luffy or Franky’s might be. It’s startled and panicky, immediately grabbing your attention and making your adrenaline surge.

A second later, you hear an echoing BOOM, followed by an ear-splitting crunching of wood. It’s a sound you recognize, one you’ve heard before–a cannonball tearing into the ship.

You’re under attack.

For just a moment, you stare at your equipment, caught off guard. Then you pull yourself together–take your feelings and compartmentalize them for later dealing with–and tear out of the bathroom, dropping the tissue in the process. Your pistols are in their case, in the sleeping quarters. You need to get to them before you can join the fight…

The enemy pirates are strong–for a New World crew. Unfortunately for them, they’re completely outclassed by Luffy alone, much less the combined strength of the Straw Hats. Still, the numbers favor the enemy, and the battle is tiring enough to be distracting. Enough so that you forgot about what you were doing before it started. It’s only an hour into helping Franky patch up the ship, when you feel your shirt sleeve catch on your scabs, that you remember.

Then you realize you left your equipment out in the bathroom.

The razor. The alcohol. The bloody tissue paper.

Panic floods your system. You drop your tools and jump up as if electrocuted, all but flying to the bathroom. Has anyone used it since the fight?

Please no, please please please be wrong.

You kick the door open. It bangs harshly against the wall.

The equipment is gone. Your stomach sinks.

No no no no no.

You open the cabinet. Everything’s been returned to its place. Your straight razor has been folded and put away, as has the alcohol. The used tissue paper is gone. Not in the trash, either. Whoever it was must have discarded it in the toilet.

No no no no no!

Who?

Who was it? You run through the possibilities in your head. Zoro? No, he wouldn’t clean up after someone else’s mess. Neither would Nami. At least, not for free. And what about the rest of the crew?

Whoever it was, would they even know what they saw? Surely they’d just think you cut yourself shaving. That was the only explanation, right? Even if the patterns on the tissue paper were distinct, the stains shaped into blurry, beaded lines–unless they had done it before, there’s no way they’d know. Right?

This time, when you shiver, it’s for real, not just a figment of your imagination. What would happen if you were found out? At best you’d be kicked out of the crew. At worst…

I’ll get locked up again.

You feel ill. Dizzy and nauseated with the prospect. You try not to spiral, try to get a grip before panic can take hold. The best you can do is to close the door behind you, sit on the floor, and take deep breaths.

You’re not sure how long you’re there–minutes, hours–but you don’t get up until someone knocks on the door.

“You almost done?” Usopp calls from the other side.

Swallowing hard, you find your voice. “Yeah. Just a sec.”

Usopp doesn’t so much as give you a second glance when you pass him. It’s not him.

You’re hypervigilant the rest of the day, scrutinizing every action, every word from your crewmates. Nothing seems different, but that only makes you more paranoid.

Nami offers you a tangerine. The simple action sets off a cascade of racing thoughts: Is she trying to make you feel better? Because she knows? Did she tell anyone? Did she tell Chopper? Luffy?

Every interaction is like that–an innocuous action that makes you flip out internally.

Franky gives you a gift: A cute little wind-up frog toy, made from scrap metal. He says it's to thank you for helping with repairs. You scan his face, but he’s only grinning proudly. Not Franky, either.

Zoro invites you to drink with him. Brook plays a song you like. Robin hands you a book she’s just finished, saying it might suit your tastes. Nothing unusual, but enough to make you second guess everything. Each time, you cling to your mask, holding it so tightly to your face that you can barely breathe.

The next day, Sanji cooks your favorite meal for dinner. That wouldn’t be too weird, except you know for a fact that your favorite involves pricy ingredients that he prefers to save. You know this because he mentioned it, years ago, when he was teaching you how to make the dish.

You and Sanji had joined the Straw Hats at the same time. Two weeks before Luffy had shown up, you had tried and failed to dine-and-dash from Baratie. Zeff forced you to work to pay it off, plus an extra week to “teach you a lesson.” That was when you got to know Sanji. Unlike the rest of the chefs, he wasn’t mad at you for what you did. He even taught you some of the basics of cooking. As the only soft presence on the floating restaurant, you grew attached, and that feeling of reliance never really left since then. You were drawn to his air of confidence and self-assuredness, but mostly to the fact that he never hid who he was, even when who he was could be straight-up idiotic at times. But you still respected that about him.

You always liked to hang out around the cook, helping him prepare meals with what you learned at Baratie. You both fought well together, having each others’ backs in battle despite your different fighting styles. It was safe to say that he was your favorite crewmate, and though you weren’t sure what he thought of you, you viewed him as your closest friend.

So you really, really don’t want it to be Sanji.

You appraise his expression, his movement, his actions. It all seems normal, on the surface. And yet, it feels off somehow, but you can’t tell if that’s just the paranoia speaking.

“How is it?” Sanji inquires.

You stare for a second. It’s not a question he usually asks–he knows it’s your favorite and he knows you think it’s amazing. Maybe it’s just your imagination, but the smile doesn’t seem to reach his eyes.

“Delicious, as always,” you say. Your own smile lights up your face, the way you’ve carefully practiced. “What’s the occasion?”

He pauses, rubs the back of his neck. “No reason, really. I just thought that it’s been a while since we’ve had it.”

That evening, you’re alone at the port side of the ship, leaning against the railing and looking out at the night sea. Sometimes it helps with your racing thoughts. This time, it does nothing. Nothing keeps you from fixating on the situation. You feel like you’re hanging by a thread, like at any moment you’ll get kicked off the crew, and then your whole world will unravel. And it’s entirely your fault.

The questions won’t stop repeating themselves: Who was it? Did they know?

Behind you, someone clears their throat. You whirl around a bit too quickly and steady yourself with a hand on the railing. Sanji’s standing there with his hands in his pockets. Something about his posture sets alarm bells off in your head. He’s too stiff, trying too hard to appear composed.

“Hey, Y/n,” Sanji says gently, “can I talk to you about something?”

It’s Sanji.

You’re immediately, wholeheartedly certain. It’s Sanji, and he knows.

You gape at him for a moment, then collect yourself. The mask comes back on.

“Actually, I’m pretty tired. Gonna turn in for the night. Tomorrow, okay?” you dismiss, and go to walk past him.

“Wait a second, Y/n,” he reaches to grab your wrist, but you yank it away before he can.

“Don’t!” you snap, stepping back, then quickly correct yourself. “I mean–don’t surprise me like that! We’ll talk tomorrow. I really should sleep...”

Sanji frowns, hand slowly lowering, and you make a hasty retreat.

The rest of the week is torture. You’re constantly avoiding Sanji wherever possible. He doesn’t strike up conversation when the others are around, which only makes you more certain that he knows. You ensure that you’re never alone with him, and if he does approach you by himself, you make yourself scarce. It becomes harder and harder to hide that you’re avoiding him. The crew takes notice–it’s not difficult considering you and Sanji are normally close.

Zoro’s the first to say something.

“Oi, Y/n. Did you have a fight with the cook or something?” he asks bluntly.

“No, we didn’t,” you reply.

Zoro’s eyes narrow slightly. “Well, you’re both acting weird.”

Some of the others are looking your way, now. Anxiety sours your stomach. You hold your mask steady as he continues.

“You’ve been kind of flighty lately. And he’s oddly subdued,” Zoro says, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, since he’s finally quiet for once, but it’s annoying. Would you just talk to him?”

“Uh…yeah, sure thing.”

Obviously, you don’t talk to Sanji. You keep evading him at every turn, only growing more distressed with each passing day. You know you can’t dodge the issue forever, but the moment you stop is the moment you’ll get kicked off the crew or worse, and that thought makes you want to die.

But the Sunny is only so large, and eventually, Sanji manages to corner you one night at the bow of the ship. You have your back to the figurehead, throat dry as you face him. Brook is up in the crow’s nest, keeping watch. Everyone else is asleep. It’s just you two, and you know you’ve run out of luck.

“We need to talk, Y/n,” Sanji says firmly.

Your throat goes dry. “Now?”

“Right now. No more running,” he says, taking a few steps closer. “I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer honestly.”

There’s no getting out of it anymore. “...Alright.” you say. Your heart pounds harder, palms growing damp.

Sanji takes a long drag off his cigarette, then stubs it out–that’s when your adrenaline really spikes, when you know you’re in for it. He looks you in the eye.

“Should you have access to firearms?”

The question hits you like a brick, stunning you into wide-eyed silence. You open your mouth, then close it, unable to respond for a second.

“...What are you talking about?” you try.

“Given how you’ve been avoiding me,” he says coolly, “I think you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“I’m–I’m not following.”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Y/n!” he snaps, and you cringe. “Of everything you’re hiding, this is the one thing I’m going to find out. I’m not asking. You’re going to tell me or I’m going to tell Chopper. So answer me, right now: Are you safe around guns?”

You can’t take another step back, but you instinctively try anyway, your heel scraping the wood of the ship. But there’s nothing you can do. The mask crumbles, years and years of desperate crafting turning to dust in an instant.

“God, Sanji,” you respond, “what am I supposed to say to that?”

“The truth,” he says.

“And if you didn’t like my answer, what would you do? Take them away from me?”

“Yes.” His tone is unyielding, his eyes hard.

Yours start to sting at the corners. “And what after that? You’ll have me–” you bite your tongue to keep the tears from forming, “–you’ll have me kicked off the crew?”

“I never said that,” he says stiffly, “you don’t get it–”

“You don’t get it!” you bite back, voice rising. You lower it before continuing, “you don’t know anything.”

“I know you’re cutting.”

You flinch. The words sting. It’s not a pleasant sting this time. You turn your head, unable to look him in the eye.

“It’s just…” Sanji says, and there’s a touch of hurt in his voice, “after everything we’ve been through, I thought you trusted me.”

“I do,” you say automatically.

“You have a funny way of showing it.”

That stings even deeper. You shake your head. “I do, Sanji, but this is different.”

“Why?”

“It’s none of your business!” you bite. Bile rises in your throat at your venom; you hate being callous.

“My friend’s hurting themselves,” Sanji replies thinly, “that makes it my business.”

“That isn’t how this works!” you argue. “You don’t get to know everything about me just because you don’t like this!”

“Don’t I?”

“No!”

“You don’t feel safe with me.”

That one’s like a punch to the gut. You can’t tell what’s worse, the words themselves or the way he’s looking at you. That one hurts the most, because it’s true.

“...No,” you say after a moment, then steel yourself. “You’re right. I don’t. I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Sanji, please.”

“Don’t you plead now,” Sanji says, his tone hardening. “Don’t you put me in this position, Y/n.”

“I don’t have a choice, Sanji. I can’t. I just can’t.”

“Why?”

“Sanji!”

“Why?!”

“Because last time I trusted someone with this, I lost everything!” you blurt out. “I was institutionalized, okay?! Locked up! Is that what you wanted to know? Are you satisfied now?”

Your words echo in the silence that follows. He stares, jaw dropped slightly. You’re shaking, for real this time, and the words pour from you like a dam unblocked.

“You don’t know how humiliating it is, Sanji, to have the strings on all your clothes cut off, to be given only felt tip pens to write with, to not have doors, to have a scheduled bed time. To have all your choices taken away.” Your vision blurs as you continue. “I couldn’t do anything. It was like a prison. The other patients didn’t give a shit. The staff definitely didn’t give a shit. And all the while, they drained me of all my savings, until I didn’t have a single berri to my name. Then they kicked me to the curb. The one who reported me didn’t want to be associated with a crazy person. Neither did the rest of my friends. I was homeless. I had no one and nothing! That’s why I fled my home island, and that’s why I tried to dine and dash at Baratie.”

Sanji looks taken aback. He blinks quickly, then stares down at the deck. “What would you have me do, then?”

“This is supposed to be private!” You cover your face, fighting back tears. “You need–you need to keep your mouth shut and mind your business! I don't want anyone’s ‘support.’ You were never supposed to know.” You take a shaky breath and lower your hands. “If you really care, you’ll keep it to yourself, you’ll forget what you saw, and if you tell anyone…I won’t stick around to make the same mistake twice.”

Despite what you say, you already know it’s too late. There’s no going back, and now that he knows, it’s only a matter of time until you’re left behind. You bite your tongue to keep from crying at the thought, but you have to bite harder this time. The tears keep threatening to spill anyway, until you’re tasting iron.

Sanji is quiet. He pulls out his cigarettes and lights one, not speaking until after he takes a drag. “…Do you regret joining the crew?”

“Joining the Straw Hats was the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” you say honestly. “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.”

“But you aren’t happy, are you?”

“Multiply something by zero and you get zero, right?” You look away, guilt eating at you. Experience tells you that no one wants to hear this. “I’m not trying to sound dramatic. I just… I don’t work right.”

“I don’t think you’re being dramatic.”

For some reason, that, more than anything else, breaks you. The first tears slip past your defense. You say nothing, lower lip trembling.

Sanji takes another slow drag of his cig and exhales away from your direction. “I don’t know how I missed it.”

“I do,” you say. “At the hospital, they…” the words die in your throat as the memories surge forward. “They…they…” You can’t finish, but tears begin streaming down your cheeks. You shake your head. “Let’s just say, after that, I learned not to ever give anything away. Never again.”

“They did something to you.”

You barely nod. Already you feel yourself slipping into a flashback, feel the nurses holding you down and the needle jabbing into your flesh.

“I’m sorry,” Sanji says, taking a step toward you, and then another, until he can reach out and gently touch your forearm. The touch brings you back, grounding you so that you’re back in the present. But the gentle action, and Sanji’s soft expression, only makes the tears flow faster, makes your nose run. You shrug.

“It must have been scary.”

Slowly, you nod again.

“Will you answer my question, Y/n? Please?” Sanji asks. “Please, I need to know you’re safe around guns. Will you at least tell me that much?”

You swallow the lump in your throat and wipe your face. When you answer, you look him in the eye so he knows you’re telling the truth. “Yeah. I’m… Yeah.”

Sanji sighs, his shoulders sagging with relief. “Thank goodness. Okay. Can I ask you something else?” At your nod, he goes on. “How long have you been feeling like this? Before the hospital, I mean.”

“...Since I was young,” you sniff. “I’ve been ‘coping’ on and off for years.”

Sanji sticks his hands in his pockets. “Okay. Can I see?”

“What?” The question catches you so off-guard that you stop crying. “I’m–I’m sorry?”

“You’re not going to show Chopper, right?” Sanji says. “So–”

“You’re not gonna tell him?” you cut him off, surprised.

“I haven't decided yet,” he admits. “I don’t want to go against your wishes, Y/n. But I don’t know the extent of the damage. Just… Just, let me see?”

“No.” You’re shocked at his audacity. What’s he thinking? Of course you can’t do that.

“I won’t judge. I swear, I just want to know you’re okay,” Sanji says.

“You can say that, but…” you rub your arm. “Be real. You’ll never look at me the same way again.”

“It won’t change how I think of you.”

“It will!” you shout, then lower your voice. “It will, forever. There’s no going back once that line is crossed and you see me for what I really am.”

He frowns. “Which is?”

“A freak!”

Neither of you say anything for a moment. Then you shake your head again. “I’m sorry, Sanji. But a guy like you–strong, handsome, confident–you wouldn’t understand.”

Sanji gets a weird look on his face, one you’ve never seen in all the years you’ve sailed with him. He looks to the side, then down, then up. His drags on his cigarette become long and harsh, finishing it in three breaths. He lights another, making a face. Then he nods to himself, like he’s decided something.

“Okay,” Sanji says. “There’s something I want you to see.”

You frown. When Sanji puts his hands on the hem of his pants, you frown deeper. He pauses.

“Um. Just trust me, okay? I promise I’m not doing anything weird–just wait a sec.”

He slides down his pants, and you have no idea what’s going through his head until his pale upper thighs are exposed. Then, finally, you understand, and you cover your mouth in shock.

Both of his upper thighs are covered in a myriad of scars. There must be over a hundred, clustered just above where shorts would hide them. Most of them are big, inches long and criss-crossed with each other. A few are keloid scars, thick and raised above the skin.

Your stare could burn a hole through his flesh. Slowly, you look up at him. Sanji has a faint blush on his face, looking sheepish.

“Guys like me can be freaks too,” he says simply.

You’re in complete disbelief. You keep looking back from the scars to his face. It’s too much to process–where would you even begin? Sanji, of everyone on the crew–Sanji’s like you? Brave, unwavering, gallant Sanji? Of everyone? When you don’t respond, he speaks again.

“See, Y/n? You’re not alone.”

Tears sting the corners of your eyes again. You find your voice. “Yours are old.”

“Yeah. I got lucky. Had someone’s support.” Sanji smiles slightly, in a way that he only does when thinking of…

“Zeff?”

“Yeah. He eventually found out.” Sanji laughs nervously. “At first he freaked out. Thought I was using kitchen knives. After he calmed down, he told me…he told me he wouldn’t abandon me over that, because what kind of parent would that make him?” His expression wavers like he’s trying not to cry.

You, on the other hand, start crying again the moment you hear the word “abandoned.” You realize that’s precisely how you felt back then.

Sanji grabs your shoulders so you look up at him. “You’re not getting kicked off of the crew.”

“...I’m not?” you ask, voice small and pathetic.

“No. I promise.” Sanji squeezes your shoulders reassuringly. “No one else needs to know. But, Y/n, I’m not going to leave you to deal with this alone. So, will you show me?”

“...You won’t tell anyone?”

“I won’t. I swear on my honor. This stays between us.” He lowers his arms.

You bite your lip, sniffing. You shut your eyes, mustering up your courage, and nod. Sanji waits patiently as you breathe slowly to steady yourself. You hesitate before peeling back your sleeve, exposing your upper arm.

He’s quiet as he inspects the damage. Unlike his old scars, yours have yet to finish healing, still in the scabbing stage. A ladder of thin, dark red lines decorate your upper arm and shoulder. You look between your cuts and his scars. Yours aren’t as deep as what Sanji had done, which you feel weirdly ashamed about.

Sanji’s hand comes up, hovering over your cuts like he’s going to touch them, but then he rests it on your forearm instead. Despite the clear evidence that he won’t judge you, you’re still self-conscious, so you break the silence.

“The scabs catch on my sleeves,” you say awkwardly.

Sanji nods. “I had to bandage my thigh so it wouldn’t bleed through while I was working. It always felt so…”

“Stupid,” you both say. Then you both smile at the unexpected camaraderie.

“What’s really stupid is how long I went thinking I was the only one,” you say, “and all this time, you…” You gesture vaguely.

“Can you do something for me?” Sanji asks. “Whatever you’re using–I’m not going to take anything from you. But in exchange, I want you to talk to me. We can talk in the galley, when it’s just us two.”

“I don’t know how to talk about it.”

How could you, after what had been done to you? After everyone you used to trust turned their backs? Knowing that Sanji understood you couldn’t fix the mental scars left behind by others. You could try to rationalize it, but just thinking about discussing the past made your throat dry up.

“If I told you about mine first, would it make you more comfortable?” Sanji offers.

You balk. “You–you don’t have to do that.”

“I don’t mind, if it means helping you.” Sanji says earnestly. “You can tell me anything. I won’t judge. How could I? We’re the same.”

Something broken inside you changes right then. Deep engravings fill with gold like broken pottery, sealing some of the cracks in your soul. Unmasked and exposed, Sanji sees into you, and he doesn’t waver or turn. He smiles, gently and softly and lovingly. Your eyes fill with fresh tears.

Sanji holds out his pinky finger. “Freaks?”

You smile from ear to ear, even as the tears start flowing again, and lock pinkies with him. “Freaks.”

So caught up in the moment are the two of you that neither one notices when Zoro appears until it’s too late.

He’s further down the deck, but standing right under one of the ship’s lights, so you can see him smile. “Hey, you guys are–” he starts, then notices Sanji’s pants. His smile instantly turns to a look of indignation, then rage. “What the hell?!”

Sanji scrambles to pull up his pants as Zoro charges.

“What the hell are you doing to Y/n, you creep?!” Zoro yells.

You hurriedly pull down your sleeve and move in front of Sanji, holding your arms up. “Wait a sec, Zoro!”

“I-It’s not what it looks like!” Sanji cries.

Zoro screeches to a halt right in front of you, but then stretches over your shoulder to snarl at Sanji. “You better have a good explanation for this, shitty cook!”

You grab Zoro’s arms to hold him back. Not that you could ever hope to overpower him, but you know he’s too brotherly toward you to push you out of the way. “Zoro!”

“What?” Zoro turns his focus on you, “what did he do? I’ll kick his ass for you, Y/n.”

“No, that’s–”

Sanji interjects, “I didn’t–”

“We were…”

Zoro relaxes somewhat, now frowning and looking at both of you weirdly. “What exactly were you guys doing?”

Really, being in the middle of the night, it’s not a good look. You and Sanji are both caught off guard. Fumbling hard, you both speak at once.

“I was looking at a fungal infection!” you say.

“They were removing a tick!” Sanji says at the same time.

Both of you glance at each other.

“Tick,” you correct.

“Fungal,” Sanji says.

Zoro blinks. “A fungal tick?”

You both just nod.

Zoro stares between you two, then relaxes. “Oh... Okay. Good of you to not wake Chopper.” He nods and turns, leaving the two of you to it.

So flooded with relief are you that it’s staggering. You mentally thank the stars that Zoro is a simple and straightforward type of guy.

You and Sanji watch Zoro walk away. Once he’s out of earshot, you both look at each other.

Then you both burst out laughing.

“Oh my god,” you breathe, clutching your chest.

Sanji wipes away a tear. “That was close, huh?”

The laughter dies down into giggles before you calm yourselves, grinning at each other. Then you’re both throwing your arms around the other in a tight embrace, squeezing like you’ve never been hugged before in your lives. You bury your face in Sanji’s chest, he rests his head on yours. Your fingers dig into the other’s clothing, soaking in the warmth and the comfort that you could only get from someone who truly understood. You stay like that for a few minutes, quiet, close, and held.

“Are you sure?” you whisper after a minute. “That you want to deal with this? With me? What if I never get better?”

“Nothing’s set in stone but the poneglyphs,” Sanji replies, running a hand over your head so you look up at him. “Our future hasn’t been determined.”

“Our future?”

“You and me and the rest of the crew. There’s still time to grow, and to change.” He holds the back of your head tenderly.

“When does that time run out?” you ask, uncertain.

“It doesn’t.” Sanji smiles down at you. “As long as we’re alive, there’s another chance. That opportunity is always there.”

You smile back, then press your face into his chest again. Sanji squeezes you tighter.

“Tomorrow,” you mumble into his shirt. “Let’s talk tomorrow. I’m tired.”

“I bet.”

“I never want to hide from you again.”

You feel Sanji kiss the top of your head. “And I never want to make you cry again.”

“I want to tell you everything.”

“I’ll listen.”

You both stay like that for a while longer, each second spent there healing something within yourselves.

It will take weeks to figure out how to talk about your troubles. When you’re up for it, you talk in the galley as Sanji cooks, you helping him out as usual with prep and cleanup. It’s even longer before Sanji learns everything. In the interim, you become the only Straw Hat to learn of Sanji’s past before he ever gets a wedding invite.

Like worn muscles rebuilding, like bone regrowing stronger, the scars you’ve revealed to each other, both physical and mental, strengthen your bond more than anything else ever could.

"let it out, let me in, take a hold of my hand / there's nothing like another soul that's been cut up the same" -Handwritten, The Gaslight Anthem

#one piece x reader #sanji x reader #reader insert #one piece imagines #zen writes

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wolf-tail · 2 months ago

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General Frustration With Helluva Boss

Sometimes, dealing with Vivziepop media is exhausting. One one hand, you have the violent irrational hateboner for anything and everything she's ever touched that a lot of people, especially on tumblr, have. It feels less born out of actual criticism and that weird flavor of "ouroboros snake eating it's own tail" cringe culture that a lot of people (mainly tumblr users) feel for anything that reminds them too much of their middle school selves. Like, ya'll picked Hazbin over South Park in the "worst cartoon ever" pole. South Park, the show that made antisemetism cool to hundreds of white tweens. That South Park. Yeah, that flavor of criticism is about as helpful or productive as bullying the kids in your local dead mall's Hot Topic.

On the other hand, you have the people who act like Viv and her team are incapable of wrongdoing and that any direction their projects going is the direct word of god and criticism of any aspect of either of her shows is a literal war crime.

I belong to neither camp because I enjoy my ability to critically think.

They're a long, LONG shot from perfect but there are things to like about both shows. Unfortunately, there's even more to criticize.

The Hazbin/Helluva fandom has a reputation for being childish, (often because a lot of them are actual children who have no business watching either show), whiny, and media illiterate. A creator can rarely if ever be blamed for the stupidity of certain members of their fanbase, though. Given the inane and frankly ridiculous misinterpretation of the character of Stolas by fans who are dead-set on viewing him through the most red-tinted "Ron the Death Eater" headass lenses, if I were a writer for Helluva I'd be tearing my damn hair out. But, sometimes, I wonder if Helluva's writing encourages the kind of dumbassery it's fans are prone to, mainly, with the latest short.

As soon as I saw the thumbnail, I knew what was coming. I tried to stay hopeful, I tried to think that Viv and her team wouldn't do this, but my expectations for this show are probably wayyyy higher than they should be.

The Helluva Shorts are Viv's little way of having her cake and eating it, too. With the plot of the full episodes being almost completely dedicated to more drawn-out character driven emotional beats, the shorts are allowed to maintain the monster-of-the-week mercenary assassination type plots, where I.M.P. has a target to kill and a specific goal to overcome for the episode. (Short 1 is an exception, and strangely the best out of all of them. It helps develop Millie's almost completely flat character and prioritizes her over the male characters she typically gets shafted for.) Short 3, Weeaboo-boo, is the weakest short by far, something even hardcore fans of the show would agree on.

To spare everyone the misfortune of having to watch it, let me summarize:

I.M.P.'s latest target is Emberlynn Pinkle, a twenty-something college student living at home with her parents. Her case file actually gave me some hope for this short, as the reason I.M.P.'s client wants her dead is over bullshit and inane shipping drama, something I sadly have experience with. I thought this short was going to critique the kind of nonsense the worst types of fans (like the ones outlined above) get up to, but instead, it just took one big look at fandom culture as a whole, and like a woman-hating redditor obsessed with powerscaling, decided to spit in it's face and call it a whore.

Emberlynn is portrayed as a sickeningly cliche charicature of female fandom, a horny loser burdening her parents, obsessed with sex, who writes dumb and lame fanfics about her dumb and lame self-insert oc. She feels like she was an attempt at a tounge-in-cheek little self-depreciating humor bit about fandom, but feels stale and mean-spirited.

She's a loser weirdo for being a monsterfucker, despite half the jokes in the show being about weird kinky sex. She's a horned-up creep for getting exited about being hunted by a demon and thinking he's here to have sex with her, despite that being THE LITERAL FIRST THING STOLAS DOES WHEN BLITZ BREAKS INTO HIS HOUSE, the only difference between him and Emberlynn being that Stolas has a tragic backstory, and is a man. Blitz kills her and sends her to hell, where she gets a sickass demon form I might add,

and is nothing more than a stalky, obsessive fangirl.

...

Do you ever wonder why creators hate their female fans?

We've already done this same song and dance with Supernatural, but I expected Vivzie, a woman herself who's made jokes about the kind of misogyny women in her field of work experience, to not treat female fandom with the same "icky girls ruin everything with their stupid horny bullshit" sentiment that the Japanese incels on 2chan who came up with the word fujoshi. But I expected too much from her I guess. How the fuck did The Amazing World of Gumball handle fanfic culture in a genuinely funnier and kinder way than she did!?

Viv is just doing what she does best, creating a female character with interesting potential and the teeniest weeniest bit of something resembling body diversity in her cast of stick figures, making her annoying, and letting her rabidly misogynistic fanbase trample all over her. She did it to Mimzy, and funnily enough, Emberlynn kinda looks like her.

This short sucked complete ass, and is just more proof that Viv sucks at writing female characters. I'm disappointed, she did Emberlynn and Mimzy so damn dirty.

#hazbin critical #helluva boss critical #helluva boss criticism #helluva boss critique #helluva boss #hazbin hotel #vivziepop #vivzieverse #vivzepop critical #vivzipop critical #emberlynn pinkle #helluva boss emberlynn #helluva shorts #hazbin mimzy #misogyny #fandom misogyny #fandoms hate women

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jaydovekj · 3 months ago

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y’all know what I think about a lot? kristoph is a lawyer. a famous, filthy rich and powerful defense attorney. he’s practically a genius. he’s a terrible, awful man; that’s for certain, but he’s so intelligent.

so why did he testify? phoenix made it very clear you don’t have to testify in court in turnabout trump. I guess I could understand trying to defend his reputation but… kristoph, man.. idk idk. I’m not pulling up the transcripts so I might reblog with more stuff later.

either way though, he’s still really smart. couldn’t he have come up with a million excuses for assuming the cards color or seeing Shadi Smith’s head? like, come ON. he could’ve said he looked at the crime scene himself (that’s pretty common [or atleast allowed] for defense attorneys in aa, no? kristoph definitely did, often, because apollo does the same in turnabout corner with no guidance from phoenix. someone had to teach him that and it had to be his mentor). I’m mostly sure Phoenix didn’t see them while they passed in the hall. plus there were seemingly no cameras. (these places really need security.) kristoph couldve said they bumped into eachother/brushed shoulders and/or that hid hat fell off. that part of it is just soooo icky to me!!!! I ggguuueeesss kristoph assumed he could just disprove it himself in testimony but, based on how phoenix hid things from literally his own defense attorney, he should’ve known that phoenix knew more than them at that moment! this is basically just word vomit about turnabout trump (but the testifying part applies some to turnabout succession. I think. I don’t remember either case 100%) so I have no idea if it makes sense. just. I think kristoph’s decisions were too irrational for his character but he did kill a man abruptly, so….

#ace attorney #apollo justice #aa4 #aj:aa #kristoph gavin #phoenix wright #aa kristoph #turnabout trump #turnabout succession

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woobifykamukura · 7 days ago

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ghdsfkjghdsf is that a common thing?

I don't really get how he'd be misdiagnosed anyway; it would need brain scans, especially since it's so rare at his age, and if anything it would have been misdiagnosed as other conditions for a while. Only going off cry-stars here- I have no expertise myself- but she's said that can happen and there was a recent case in Japan where a young guy's dementia was mistaken for depression for ages.

If we doubt Komaeda's FTD it can only be via doubting his honesty imo (but I still think he's telling the truth). I also love seeing analyses of him through the lenses of other disorders as comorbid instead of alternative diagnoses- especially autism, but I've seen interesting takes wrt OCD and BPD too- but canonically I feel like bvFTD, extreme post-traumatic stress and political radicalisation adequately explain his issues.

TO BE FAIR it probably isnt As common as i think it is, i just saw one reddit post thst explicitly claimed the FTD was a misdiagnosis and that it totally makes way more sense for komaeda to have autism and bpd, and a surprisung number of people... agreed? for some reason??

which i need to state for the record a) i am autistic myself and b) have absolutely zero problems with headcanons, even if they arent ones i ascribe to personally

what i DO have a problem with is people erasing canon neurodivergencies and/or erasing traits CENTRAL to a character in order to square-peg-round-hole the headcanon THEY have as the most correct one

"nagito has ftd and was autistic before that?" cool! neat! seeing how those two disorders being comorbid with each other could be really interesting!

"nagito does NOT have ftd, the devs were wrong, they actually wrote an autistic character and didnt realize it" stop talking.

this is very like, misanthropic i guess but after SO MUCH SHIT ive seen it just speaks to an unwillingness to empathize with or relate to anyone that isnt exactly like you. and you cant just headcanon real people around you with Misdiagnosed Autistic (most.... times....) so this pops up in fiction

like. i am autistic! i also have two (2) personality disorders, and neither is bpd. this has led to a non negligible amount of autistic people completely stereotyping my other disorders as evil in order to prop themselves up ("i thought i was a narcissist/sociopath, which wouldve been awful, but really i was just autistic! phew!!" with implicit, sometimes EXPLICIT value judgements being made)

i have had a friend i had in real life, to my face, say he didn't believe i had either personality disorder and really i was secretly just autistic

...if we had been better friends, maybe he would've known me well enough to know that that's almost... comically untrue. lol

so in my opinion there do exist a certain minority of autistic people who see autism as the only neurodivergency that Matters, or at least the one that matters the most. and the only way they can feel any sympathy for anyone else is if they are also autistic

and i know this is a minority! and i just see it a lot because i am an autist in fandom and a lot of other autistic people are also in fandom! AND that this is a mindset prone to ANY minority- most people think their Problem is the Worst Problem, it just... happens. however i am just as irrational and prone to biases as anyone else and ive chosen this as my completely irrelevant hill to die on

that one reddit post made me so goddamn mad bc of All This PLUS its double insulting when someone says "i have a special interest in psychology!" as a way to say theyre extremely knowledgable, and doing genuine analysis with the lens of "i am looking at the text and trying to make an objective diagnosis" and then STILL DO THIS!!! because they have this veneer of "im just a guy asking questions" before diving right into a weirdly consspiratory subset of "everyones an idiot about mental health except for ME"

...which tbf i dont think that about myself. i am very good at writing a wide variety of mental illness due to a combination of research and life experience BUT i could really only tell you like. actual non-surface level FACTS about aspd and to a lesser extent, npd. because thats what i chose to focus on. there are far and away lots more people that know more about me about other things, and im fine wit that

i am however also aware of this extremely hyperspecific social phenominon. and thus it is my burden to bear. my mountainous molehill.

also r/danganronpa just fucking sucks like in general. every time i see a kokichi opinion there i get a little closer to pulling the trigger. i think the real moral here is reddit is garbage and should not be used for anything other than product reviews

(also fwiw i agree w ur personal take at the end, with a lil bit of ocd tendencies that like, started off manageable and nowhere near diagnostic level badness, since things he might do to manage his cycle and even the constant thinking about it are very much reminiscent of obsessions and compulsions. but ftd in of itself can cause ocd symptoms so after that it got... worse. thats my personal take on it ^^)

#i do have like other experiences with this very specific phenominon #in the last fandom i was in someone tried Debating Me and saying my headcanon (about aspd) is dumb and amateur #and i dont know what im talking about #and the character is CLEARLY autistic #(because he was autistic and related to him)#he tried to do this three times on three seperate accounts #and i KNOWWW its a vocal minority but also i hate them #i dont think ALL autistic people are like this. or all autistic people who hc their faves as autistic #but the ones that ARE like this make me lose my fucking mind and then i go on my personal old man yells at cloud rant #also teehee we have the same name #ur komaeda lyre and im kamukura lyre #or komaeda lyre and kokichi lyre?#eegh whichevers funniest #uso janai ka?

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robininthelabyrinth · 1 year ago

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The Other Mountain - ao3 - Chapter 25

Pairing: Lan Qiren/Wen Ruohan

Warning Tags on Ao3

———————————————————————-

The evidence from the Fire Palace came in not long after, confirming Lan Qiren’s deduction.

Wen Ruohan still looked stupefied by the revelation, though he’d lived up to his word and believed Lan Qiren immediately, which was nice. He just hadn’t believed it of Jin Guanshan, Lan Qiren supposed.

That was reasonable enough.

Jin Guangshan might not be especially smart, but he made up for it by having cunning in spades. Lan Qiren could out-argue him nearly every time, particularly on matters of morality, but Jin Guangshan got his own way just as often, whether through schemes and maneuvering or underhanded tricks. He’d been pretty close to Wen Ruohan, too. The Wen sect never made alliances, it was part of their founding principles – the clan over everyone, the clan over the world, Wen Mao at what was either his finest or his worst depending on what commentary you were reading – but Jin Guangshan was good at flattering people, and Wen Ruohan liked to be flattered. He enjoyed not only the reality of being powerful, but the pageantry of it: he liked it when people bowed to him or recited phrases honoring him, he liked it when people thought about him, and he liked it when people praised him, even when they were smarmy sycophants obviously out for their own interests like Jin Guangshan.

(Having now spent a little more time with Wen Chao, Lan Qiren felt that he had a better understanding of Wen Ruohan’s character. Wen Ruohan was smarter, subtler, and far more experienced than his second son, and certainly more ruthless, but Lan Qiren could see that some of the same characteristics were there, writ miniature. Certainly some of the same flaws: Wen arrogance and self-absorption, a prickly competitive pride – though with Wen Chao, unlike his father, not quite enough cleverness and talent to justify it – and of course a tendency towards indolence and laziness, impulsiveness and excitability…not to mention, interestingly enough, a certain degree of gullibility, worsened by their tendency to think themselves above being tricked.

It was a little adorable, actually.

Wen Chao, at least, was young enough that Lan Qiren felt confident he could help ameliorate the worst of his flaws, or at least help him manage them better and with fewer awful tendencies than his father. As for Wen Ruohan…well, it was good for him that Lan Qiren liked him so much. He’d never met a man more in need of a beating. And that included Lao Nie.)

“Why would he be so foolish?” Wen Ruohan asked, not for the first time. He had started pacing – almost as if conjured up by his irritation, Cangse Sanren had appeared, this time with Wei Changze trailing behind her. “No Great Sect directly encroaches on another, not like this. We all refrain because we all know where it would lead…why would he incite war against me?”

“Not just a war, but a war in which you are the aggrieved party,” Wei Changze agreed. He looked worried, probably because of his natal sect’s potential involvement – the Jiang sect were formal allies with the Jin sect, close to the point of having arranged for a future engagement between Jiang Yanli and Jin Guangshan’s son, Jin Zixuan. The engagement had been mediated by their mothers, who had been close as girls, but even Lan Qiren, who did not gossip and tried not to listen to it when it was presented to him, knew the rumors that claimed that Madam Jin had utilized that very connection to help win her current place as mistress of Jinlin Tower. “It does seem rather implausible, not to mention irrational.”

“People act irrationally out of fear,” Cangse Sanren said. She’d perched herself on the stool again, with her knees pulled up in a dreadfully inappropriate manner; Lan Qiren was starting to wonder if she had difficulty getting comfortable unless she was contorting herself. “His conduct being irrational doesn’t necessarily mean that this is a trap.”

“It could be,” Wen Ruohan said.

“Anything could be. In this case, I don’t think it is. Qiren-gege is right: Sect Leader Jin decided to bet on a roll of the dice with Qingheng-jun, siding with him and trying to box Sect Leader Wen into a major loss. He probably figured that two Great Sects acting together were hard to stop, especially since he could bulk up their power by suborning Yunmeng Jiang through their alliance with his sect. And it’s a good point! With three Great Sects you can do a lot!” She shrugged. “But he didn’t realize that Qingheng-jun was insane, so his plan failed.”

“That’s not unreasonable. But it is unreasonable to go from there to ordering an assassination.”

“I suspect that part is likely my fault,” Lan Qiren said heavily. “Jin Guangshan has always been able to rely on his knowledge of people to manipulate them. With Wen Ruohan, he counted on knowing how to calm him down whenever he overstepped, whether through flattery or gifts or otherwise. But now, for the first time, we rejected his attempt to smooth things over…well, I rejected it, and Wen Ruohan endorsed that rejection. That may have spooked him.”

“Spooked him enough to try to kill me?” Wen Ruohan sounded offended, even though he himself had pointed out several times that his temporary vulnerability made it a perfectly reasonable time for someone to try something. “I understand that he had a relatively narrow window of opportunity at present and would need to act swiftly if he wished to take advantage of my impairment, but at the same time, it seems like rather a bold move, particularly for him. Maybe it is a trap.”

“Even if it is a trap, how can we avoid it?” Lan Qiren pointed out. Quite reasonably, to his mind. “I despise war. I would do everything within my power to avoid it where possible, but despite that, even I know that trying to kill another sect’s sect leader can lead nowhere else. If we do not respond in force, it would be tantamount to saying that anyone can try to kill the people in the Nightless City with impunity.”

“How bloodthirsty of you, Qiren.”

“He’s not being bloodthirsty,” Cangse Sanren objected. “He’s being logical.”

“He’s being terrifying,” Wei Changze said bluntly. “He’s not wrong, it makes sense, it’s the way it has to be. But wars aren’t bloodless, and they shouldn’t be started bloodlessly.”

Lan Qiren frowned. He was hardly being cold-hearted, he didn’t think – it really was only logical, and not just because his new sect happened to be the victim. The Wen sect was the most powerful sect in the cultivation world; its behavior set the standard for the rest, for better or for worse. If they didn’t take the strongest possible measures against someone who had ordered an assassination now, it would suggest that such things were acceptable, or at least not too objectionable, and setting such a precedent would be disastrous for the entire cultivation world, not just the Nightless City. Every sect would start thinking about how to target each other.

They had to stamp this out at once. They had to make it so incredibly clear that the consequences of this type of behavior vastly outweighed the benefits, that there would be immediate and overwhelming reprisals, that the only outcome would be utterly cataclysmic. The only way to do that was to go to war.

There was simply no other choice.

What had Jin Guangshan been thinking? It would be one thing if he were in the Wen sect’s position, thinking that he was strong enough to cast off the consequences or maybe even to intimidate whoever he had offended out of demanding justice. But they weren’t a small sect being threatened by a large sect, where they would have to balance accepting an intolerable offense against the risk of their sect being subsequently destroyed. The Wen sect was large and powerful and unlike most sects, it had an army. An army, and a powerful sect leader known for conquest and tyranny. It would never take such an insult lying down.

Jin Guangshan wasn’t strong enough to go against Wen Ruohan’s Wen sect, and surely he knew that. He’d done the equivalent of poking a bear with a stick and running away, expecting the bear to chase.

Under the circumstances, it was pretty obvious that there had to be some sort of trap involved.

Why get a bear to chase you if you didn’t have plans to deal with the bear once you got it to where you wanted it to go? Lan Qiren was perfectly willing to believe that Jin Guangshan was a little stupid, or even more than a little, but he wasn’t that stupid. He must have, or at least must believe that he had, some sort of ace up his sleeve that would enable him to turn the tables against them at the last moment, some final card left to play, something that he plausibly thought would let him triumph over not only a weakened Wen Ruohan, but the entire Wen sect army.

But what could it be?

“– need to look at who we’re dealing with here,” Cangse Sanren was arguing. “Don’t look at the situation as a general rule, what would normal people do and why would they do it. We need to think about why Sect Leader Jin would do what he did. ‘People are different, and different people react differently to the same stimulus.’”

That almost had the sound of a rule.

Actually, now that he thought about it, Lan Qiren thought he might remember having said something similar to Cangse Sanren all way back when they were still adolescents, back when she’d been frustrated by not being able to understand why people acted the way they did. He’d overheard her ranting about it one afternoon and he’d been struck by a sudden sense of kinship. As one person struggling with the same issue to another, he’d offered to share the benefits of his hard-won lessons on social norms. He hadn’t actually expected her to accept, but she had, and he’d spent a number of highly enjoyable afternoons explaining what he’d figured out to her, occasionally even supplementing his explanations with charts and the like. It had been fun.

He hadn’t realized that she remembered.

“I see your point,” Wei Changze said thoughtfully. “Sect Leader Jin is rich and powerful, and he was born rich and powerful. I doubt he’s ever haggled or been desperate for anything in his life. He doesn’t need to take risks, he probably never did before, and now, for the first time in his life…”

“Exactly! He’s exposed. It’s probably the weakest hand he’s ever held. Combine that with pride and egotism, and he decides to double down – ”

“It is still irrational,” Wen Ruohan said with a scowl. “Starting a war with another Great Sect – with my sect – is tantamount to suicide. Jin Guangshan may be foolish, but he is not that foolish. To act so recklessly is unlike him. I think – ”

“Qiren-gege,” Cangse Sanren interrupted, turning to look at Lan Qiren. “Can you call a doctor? I think Sect Leader Wen might be under the influence of some sort of severe fever or mind-altering drug – ”

“What?!”

“Or possession! It could be possession, we haven’t checked – ”

“Cangse Sanren, that is enough,” Lan Qiren said sternly.

She crossed her arms and arched her eyebrows. “Sect Leader Wen is refusing an invitation to go to war? A justified war, that no one will be able to object to? By the laws of the night-hunt, that definitely qualifies as aberrant behavior sufficient to necessitate a check for possession.”

“I am not refusing,” Wen Ruohan snarled. “I am merely – ”

“I think my brother might be involved,” Lan Qiren announced, deciding that the minor breach of etiquette involved in interrupting people and blatantly changing the subject was less egregious than allowing this conversation to continue any further. It wasn’t that he hadn’t noticed that Wen Ruohan was being unusually squirrelly about being handed an opportunity that he would normally salivate over and even scheme wildly to obtain, but he also had enough insight to be able to determine that his hesitation was more than likely due to him still being unnerved by their earlier discussion about Lao Nie rather than any actual anxiety over the notion of going to war.

After all, Lao Nie and Jin Guangshan had ascended to their positions at around the same time. To lose one would be an ominous sign for the other, and Wen Ruohan had already lived past the length of a human lifetime, had already lost every single person he’d known as a young man. He hadn’t yet prepared himself for more loss, more change.

Lan Qiren could sympathize with that.

“I do not mean to be repetitive on the topic of my brother,” he added, when everyone else had stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at him. “I assure you, I am not seeking to lay the blame for all my misfortunes in one place simply for convenience. I genuinely think that my brother may have played a role in what happened.”

“I doubt your brother has access to assassins,” Wen Ruohan said dryly, then smirked. “Unless – ”

“There are no secret assassins in the Lan sect.”

“Hey, Lan Qiren,” Wei Changze said. “Remind me again, what was that really cool skill that Lan Yi invented? Starts with ‘chord,’ ends with…?”

“…Chord Assassination is named that way because of its similarity to other already existing methods of combat, and the fact that at the time using a string to garrote one's enemies was considered the sole province of assassins,” Lan Qiren said, rubbing his temples. “We do not employ actual assassins.”

“But theoretically, if you wanted to – ”

“If I wished to assassinate someone, I would not use Chord Assassination to do it. I have a sword. I would merely stab them.” He scowled at the crowd of grinning monkeys in front of him. “As I very recently demonstrated, if you recall. Can we return to the subject at hand?”

“Right, your brother,” Wen Ruohan said. He was still smirking, but Lan Qiren was willing to give him a pass on account of smirking being better than the tight and angry expression he’d had earlier. “Explain your thought process. How is he involved?”

“He was always exceptionally talented, and he continued to improve both his cultivation and his swordsmanship during his time in seclusion,” Lan Qiren explained. “Having faced him, I would rank him exceedingly high, putting him among the greatest cultivators of our time, up there at the top alongside Wen Ruohan and Lao Nie.”

“From what I hear, you’re not that bad yourself,” Cangse Sanren put in, rather unhelpfully. “Especially once you factor in the element of surprise.”

“He’s magnificent,” Wen Ruohan informed her. Also unhelpfully.

Lan Qiren decided to ignore them.

“We know that my brother has not returned to the Lan sect,” he said. “We know, too, that he must have worked with Jin Guangshan to put together the plot that led to the mountain collapse in Xixiang, though presumably Jin Guangshan was only informed about the parts of the plan that involved causing Wen Ruohan to take a loss, rather than the parts that involved mass slaughter of innocent lives.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Wei Changze mumbled. “I’ve met him. He might not mind.”

Lan Qiren was also not particularly sure, having also met Jin Guangshan, and indeed having had to spend significantly more time around the odious lecher than he would have preferred. Still, the rules said Be easy on others.

“However it may be, we know that they worked together. It was likely one of the Lanling Jin sect’s spies that was used to set up the plot, and Lanling Jin’s support was critical to springing the trap by convincing the rest of the world of the truth of their claims – in short, for whatever reason, however he did it, my brother successfully obtained Jin Guangshan’s support. I propose that when my brother left Xixiang, he may have gone to ground in Jinlin Tower.”

“Jin Guangshan also left the battlefield early, around the same time that your brother disappeared,” Wen Ruohan said, nodding. “His absence was commented on at some length at the party. Wasn’t that why he was handing out those stupid trinkets? To distract everyone from that?”

“Trinkets?” Cangse Sanren perked up, resembling a magpie catching a hint of something shiny. “What trinkets?”

“Commemorative coins to celebrate the event.” Wen Ruohan wrinkled his nose in genuine disgust. It was adorable, though possibly Lan Qiren was biased. “I had my subordinates pick up a few extras, if you’d like some.”

“Ugh, no thanks. They’re probably unbelievably gaudy.”

“They are. They’re also made of gold.”

“We’ll take two,” Wei Changze put in at once. “Cangse, stop scowling. Even if they’re hideously ugly, it’s not like we’ll keep them for very long. We’ll sell them the next time we run out of cash.”

“Oh, all right…”

Lan Qiren pointedly cleared his throat.

“I believe I see where Qiren is going with this,” Wen Ruohan said, returning to the subject with the speed of a man who knew Lan Qiren’s temper. “If Qingheng-jun has gone to ground in Lanling, that may be what Jin Guangshan is counting on to defeat any attack that we throw at him…though that still seems unreasonably foolish to me. There is a limit to what one man alone can do.”

“That was the previous wisdom,” Lan Qiren said. “You just demonstrated that it might not be the case.”

Wen Ruohan looked pleased.

“So you think your brother, what, told Jin Guangshan that he could do something similar to what Sect Leader Wen did at Xixiang?” Cangse Sanren looked thoughtful. “And Jin Guangshan believed him, so he thinks that even if we attack Jinlin Tower, he’ll be able to fight back, or at least cause enough damage to the Wen side to make a siege not worth continuing. Not the worst plan, I guess.”

“No, but it is also not an especially good one,” Lan Qiren conceded. “But I think you had it right earlier in your analysis of Jin Guangshan: he placed his bet on my brother, and now that the risk has gotten greater and the stakes higher, he has chosen to double down on that bet.”

“Hold a moment,” Wei Changze said. “That was a gambling metaphor. Lan Qiren, you know how to gamble?”

Lan Qiren threw the nearest thing to hand at his head.

He expected Wei Changze to dodge, the way anyone else who knew him well would have, but apparently he’d managed to take him by surprise – he hit him dead on, the paperweight hitting his head and bouncing off.

“Owwww…” Wei Changze whined with theatrical pitifulness to his wife, who was sniggering unmercifully at his expense. “Cangse, don’t laugh! Your husband is injured…”

“I have a better question for everyone to consider,” Cangse Sanren said, eventually yielding enough to press a kiss to her husband’s definitely-not-actually-bruised temple. “What is Qingheng-jun getting out of this arrangement? Jin Guangshan gets a powerful weapon, but what does Qingheng-jun get? What is even his goal, now that his plan has failed?”

That was a good question. Lan Qiren had been wracking his brain for answers, but short of “trying to kill me” – which would involve explaining why his brother hated him enough to consider breaching the taboo against murdering one’s kin – he couldn’t think of anything. What could his brother’s motive possibly be? Why wouldn’t he go back to the Lan sect? What in the world could he still want, after having lost his schemes for power, lost face, and lost even his chance for revenge…?

“He wants to kill everyone, of course.”

Now everyone turned to stare at Wen Ruohan, who shrugged.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked. “It’s certainly how I would feel under the circumstances.”

“…please explain,” Lan Qiren said, still staring. “What do you mean, ‘kill everyone’?”

“I mean exactly that. If you put me in a situation where, to my perception, the whole world has seen my disgrace, I would naturally want to raze it all to the ground to cover it up.”

“That’s not natural,” Cangse Sanren announced. “That’s definitely not what most people would think…uh, right, Qiren?”

“Certainly not,” Lan Qiren assured her.

“It seems natural to me. Perhaps it is the assumption of rulers…?”

“You’re so full of yourself. Why are you like this?”

“It seems like a fairly wild assumption to me,” Lan Qiren said, turning back to Wen Ruohan before he could answer the question. He suspected that Wen Ruohan’s answer, whatever it would be, would be annoying enough to kick off a fight, and they should not waste time nor energy on that. No matter how tempting it might be. “That my brother would so swiftly go from wanting to damage the Lan sect but not kill it, to wanting to kill not just them but far more people…when you say ‘everyone,’ do you really mean the entire cultivation world? How would he even do something like that?”

“Oh, I know! Poison the water – I’ll be quiet now, Qiren-gege, please don’t throw anything at me.”

Wei Changze politely cleared his throat, possibly in an effort to save his wife from Lan Qiren’s wrath. “Is there perhaps some other goal that he could be seeking to pursue at this stage?”

“I can’t think of anything,” Wen Ruohan said.

Cangse Sanren thought for a moment, then shrugged in agreement.

Lan Qiren…was going to have to mention it.

“He may want to kill me,” he confessed, and winced at the expressions of alarm on both Wen Ruohan and Cangse Sanren’s faces. “To remind you: I am here, I am fine, there is no cause to worry.”

“He’s your brother. He wanted to kill you?” Wen Ruohan was scowling. “He tried to kill you?”

“I think you should have mentioned that earlier,” Cangse Sanren said, with a shockingly identical look on her face. “Say, preferably before you went to a party where someone else tried to kill you…?”

“I do not think that was related,” Lan Qiren protested. “It is my belief that the assassins wanted to kill me to avoid me taking over the Wen sect in the event that their attempt to kill Wen Ruohan was successful.”

They were still glaring at him.

“Why does he want to kill you?” Wei Changze asked, in what would have been a helpful breath of fresh air and logic except for the fact that Lan Qiren dearly did not want to answer that question.

(He’d moved from being embarrassed to being angry about it. How dare his brother question his integrity like that? How dare he question He Kexin like that? Wasn’t it enough that he’d forced her to marry him, that she’d borne his children despite being in seclusion…? How could he have thrown away ten years just like that, without a moment of regret…? Even Wen Ruohan had regretted ordering Lan Qiren to the Fire Palace almost immediately, and they’d only been married for the equivalent of a blink of the eye!)

“Yes, that’s a good question,” Wen Ruohan said. “I knew he hated you and would gladly see you dead, but most people would not violate the taboo of killing one’s own blood-related kin with their own hands. What could compel him to go to such extremes?”

“I…that is, he…” Lan Qiren was stuttering. He closed his eyes and exhaled sharply. Be strict with yourself. Stop bad habits. Do not tell lies. “He thinks that I seduced his wife.”

“He what?!” all three of them shouted.

Lan Qiren grimaced at the loudness. He hated to even repeat the slander, though in truth he felt a certain amount of relief at having shared the information with them, freeing himself of a burdensome secret. As always, the rules were right, and following them the correct path.

“Not just that,” he said with a huff that encompassed all of the complaints that had been weighing him down. “If that were not ridiculous enough – as if He Kexin and I did not barely tolerate each other! – he continuously accuses me of seeking to subvert him through violations of the rules against promiscuity and debauchery. His relationship with his wife, his alliance with Wen Ruohan… I do not know why he is so fixated on the subject, but he is.”

Cangse Sanren suddenly laughed.

Lan Qiren turned to look at her, feeling betrayed. What was funny about what he’d said?

“I’m sorry,” she sniggered, her laughter getting more out of control rather than less. “I’m sorry, are you saying that your brother thinks you’re some sort of – seductive vixen?”

“…I did not say that.”

“But you meant it! That’s what you meant!”

Lan Qiren thought back over his brother’s accusations. “Well. I mean, I suppose – ”

Wen Ruohan started laughing as well.

Lan Qiren tried to glare at him, but it was impossible, not with Wen Ruohan looking as overwhelmingly gleeful as he did. Even Wei Changze had hidden away his face in his sleeves, his shoulders shaking with laughter. Cangse Sanren was nearly in tears.

“You!” she kept chortling. “You! Lan Qiren! Harlot and seductress, a nation-destroying fox-face beauty…you. With – ”

She hiccupped.

“With – with your slutty, slutty thousands of rules…”

Wei Changze fell off his chair, now completely covering his head with his sleeves. Wen Ruohan was by now bent over at the waist, the volume of his mirth reaching that typically associated with chittering baboons – in fact, it was possible he was crying with laughter as well.

Admittedly, even Lan Qiren could see the humor of it.

“Please do not refer to the rules that way,” he still said with a faint sigh. The laughter seemed to be doing them all some good. “You may continue to poke fun, but please limit your pejorative comments to me.”

Tragically, all three of them were more than willing to abide by that restriction, and insisted on continuing in the same vein for some time. It turned out that they all had several additional and very colorful suggestions that they felt the need to express before they were willing to change subjects. Or, well, Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren produced the majority, while after a few contributions Wen Ruohan primarily spent his time looking at Lan Qiren with a hungry expression that suggested that he had a new idea for what they could do later when they were alone.

Possibly something involving a nation-destroying fox and an indulgent emperor.

After a suitable interval, once the giggles seemed to have mostly passed, Lan Qiren cleared his throat pointedly.

“Can we focus?” he asked. “Need I remind you all that we must now prepare for a war? I cannot imagine that such an endeavor will be an easy one.”

“Easier than you might think,” Wen Ruohan said. He was still smirking lazily, but the tension from earlier had completely disappeared – now he looked the way Lan Qiren would have expected, full of anticipation and ambition, eager for an opportunity to expand his sect’s power at the expense of others. “I gave all the necessary orders to mobilize the army already to deal with the situation in Xixiang, and no one has ordered them to stand down. On the contrary, I suspect my generals have been putting them through their paces in an effort to demonstrate their competence to me – it will take no time at all to get them ready to march.”

“They’re all eager for a fight,” Cangse Sanren agreed. “Or at least to go out and show off.”

“War isn’t about showing off,” Wei Changze reminded her, but she only shrugged carelessly.

“What actually needs to be done to prepare?” she asked Wen Ruohan. “I’ve never seen a war before…Ooh, will there be siege weapons involved? Can we take some?”

Wen Ruohan snorted and took up his brush. “I’ll put together the orders, and you can take them to my generals. We will depart in the morning. I will include that you have my permission to examine the armory – ”

“Yes!”

“– but you will need to clear anything you wish to use with me before you remove it.”

“Spoilsport.” She smirked. “You know me so well by now. Don’t you trust me?”

“Not with siege weaponry.”

“I don’t trust you with siege weaponry, and it’s because I know you,” Wei Changze put in, looking alarmed. “Cangse – ”

“Beloved husband of mine – love of my life – ”

“You do not need siege weaponry!”

“But my love, sometimes women want something really big and really, really destructive…”

Wen Ruohan finished what he was writing and held up the page. “Take this and get lost. I have something to show Qiren, and I do not require your company for that.”

“I bet you don’t,” she giggled. “Be careful, Sect Leader Wen, you never know what a sexy beast like our Qiren might do – ”

“Never say that again,” Lan Qiren said firmly. “Ever. Under any circumstances.”

“I do have to ask, Senior Lan,” Wei Changze said. “Has your brother ever…met you?”

Lan Qiren reached out and picked up the inkstone from the table.

Wei Changze fled the room laughing, hand-in-hand with his wife.

“You know, I’d been planning to find a reason to repurpose the Fire Palace,” Wen Ruohan remarked. “But it hasn’t been repurposed yet. There’s still an opportunity…”

Lan Qiren snorted and put the inkstone back. “That is unnecessary. Is what you want to show me the gift you mentioned earlier? The painting?”

“It is. I do not know if it will be to your taste, but I wish to present it to you nonetheless.” Wen Ruohan rose to his feet, gesturing for Lan Qiren to join him, then paused. “Do not ask me to explain the meaning behind it.”

Lan Qiren nodded, accepting the limitation, and followed him. He was immensely curious. Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji had told him about their conversation with Wen Ruohan on the flight from Xixiang to the Nightless City, and that had been funny enough – Lan Qiren had privately enjoyed the thought of Wen Ruohan interrogating two children as to the best method of apologizing to him – but he had been particularly captivated by their mention of Wen Ruohan’s claim of being an accomplished painter.

Wen Ruohan was notoriously vain. If he was an accomplished painter, shouldn’t his own paintings be everywhere in the Nightless City, given place of honor? Since they weren’t, what was the reason?

He’d even taken a little time to ask around with the record-keepers of the Nightless City, discovering to his surprise that Wen Ruohan had once been more famous as a painter than a tyrant or even a warrior, back when he was only a young master and one son among many. Only…he had also been assured that Wen Ruohan had given up the habit of painting long ago, so long ago that few people could remember it.

Lan Qiren wondered what it meant, that he’d picked up his brush for Lan Qiren’s sake now. Or even if it meant anything at all – perhaps it was just a whim, just a mindless impulse that was, as he himself warned, not susceptible to questions about his intent…

“Oh,” Lan Qiren murmured, stopping just inside the threshold of the secondary study. Wen Ruohan had just stepped aside, letting him see the painting.

It was – beautiful.

Wen Ruohan painted the way he wrote, bold and fearless, arrogance and self-assurance in every stroke. The painting was a masterpiece of the cultivator’s art, seething with deeper meaning: he’d captured both image and spiritual energy, the overwhelming feeling of the image pouring out at the viewer. The trees towered over the ruined earth, the blood and the ash, the remnants of war – devastating and grim, gloomy, despair tasting like soot on the tongue –

“I don’t explain my paintings,” Wen Ruohan said.

“I do not require an explanation,” Lan Qiren said, stepping forward and looking it over more closely: had Wen Ruohan really completed this in a single evening? No wonder it had taken him into the next day. It was exquisitely detailed, sparse lines coming together to suggest deeper meaning, adding additional complexity to the image. “It makes perfect sense to me. It is beautiful. Thank you.”

Wen Ruohan stepped up behind him. “I’m pleased that you like it.”

He put his hands on Lan Qiren’s waist. His breath was hot on Lan Qiren’s ear.

“Tell me, do you know what this scene depicts?”

A war scene, Lan Qiren wanted to say, but something stilled his tongue. There was something in there, something more than just a war. There was devastation, yes, the remnants left behind by a battle, grotesque in its intrinsic cruelty, the shadows all that was left of those that passed through and left this in their wake, but there was something else here. Something almost familiar…

“Obliteration,” he said, and that felt right. “A broken heart.”

Wen Ruohan’s hands tightened around him.

Lan Qiren tilted his head to the side a little, not looking away from the painting. “Is this my sect?” he asked. “My Gusu Lan…did we do this?”

“Mm. Your sect, and mine. There was a war between our sects when I was young.”

Lan Qiren traced the lines of the painting with his eyes. The way the trees loomed, tall and almost misshapen…he calculated the time in his head. The Lan sect records mentioned a war from over a century ago, though details were sparse. Perhaps deliberately: that war was not considered a point of pride for their sect, even though it had been instrumental in settling the borders of their territory where they presently lay. On the contrary, it had always been referred to with some censure, seen as an overreaction, though no one had ever mentioned what exactly the sect leader of that time had been reacting to.

If he had the dates correct, Wen Ruohan would have been very young indeed.

“Thank you,” he said once more, unable to say anything more than that. His chest felt full of feelings, which he could not bring himself to express aloud. One day, perhaps, his eloquence would return, and he would be able to put the feelings into words – or perhaps he would do what Lan Wangji suggested in the essay he had composed in response to Wen Ruohan’s request, and put to music the feelings that Wen Ruohan, who was not gifted in composition, could not.

Obliteration.

Obsession.

Perhaps other people would not appreciate such a gift. It was a war scene, after all, and they were about to march to war themselves – such a thing could have been a mockery, disdaining the sacrifice and destruction that awaited them, the pain that accompanied all wars. What sort of gift was this for a lover? One did not often associate war with love…

Well, perhaps other sects did not. But Gusu Lan did.

A broken-hearted Lan on the path of just revenge will not rest until they have obliterated the cause of their grief. Complete destruction, without mercy or regret. Whether external or internal, whether the target is another or themselves…such grief demands an answer, and Gusu Lan will answer.

If you have been consumed by love, if you are mad with it, then I am mad alongside you.

My feelings are just as strong as yours.

I will be your partner, as you have been to me. I will match you in this as I will in anything else.

Believe me.

Lan Qiren smiled.

Yes, he would need to finish composing that song for Wen Ruohan one of these days. He thought he might even know how it went, now, the difficulty he’d been previously having with it melting away in the heat of the inspiration. The heat of the sun, perhaps – it seemed apposite.

He thought Wen Ruohan would like it.

Wen Ruohan chuckled, resting his chin on Lan Qiren’s shoulder. “I assume I should resign myself to a lonely night of listening to you at your guqin? I know what inspiration looks like.”

“It will not be lonely,” Lan Qiren said peaceably. “I will be there.”

“All for the best, I suppose. I do have a war to prepare for – if I were to spend all evening in bed, I really would be letting myself get distracted by a nation-destroying fox.”

Lan Qiren rolled his eyes and shook Wen Ruohan off. Where was his guqin? Back in the other room, right. He should make his way there at once…

The daze of inspiration did not lift by evening, when he went to sleep, and it continued throughout the morning. It even continued past the point when the army set out – Lan Qiren merely relocated himself from the bedroom to the carriage and carried on, slowly refining the song he was putting together.

By the time he actually managed to extract himself long enough to notice where they were and what was going on, they were already well on their way to Lanling.

He could hear the army singing as they went. Not musical cultivation, since the Wen sect didn’t do that, but rather just an ordinary person’s travel song, one of the ones from Qishan. It was surprisingly euphonious to hear them all together like that, even though Lan Qiren could tell that most of the people singing had never had any sort of training and many didn’t know how to hold a tune.

He shook off the lethargy of a particularly long period of creative activity, stretched out his aching hands, and got out of the carriage, intending to explore. He was quite curious.

Lan Qiren had not had much opportunity to date to interact with the Wen sect army.

The entire concept of a professional army of cultivators was an innovation of Wen Ruohan’s own making. Most sects did not have anything of the sort. When they went to war, they took only their sect disciples, armed with whatever sect treasures they happened to have, and it boiled down to being a battle of power and talent. Even the Great Sects, which went to war on a larger scale, had to rely both on their larger selection of outside disciples and on the subsidiary sects that swore loyalty to them to make up the numbers.

Wen Ruohan had not been satisfied with that. Contrary to the approach of most sects, which fiercely guarded their cultivation styles and resisted spreading them to others, the Wen sect had taken its cultivation style and broken it down to its barest essentials, until it was barely more than rudimentary, and then they’d taught it to all the recruits that joined their army. The truly talented were accepted as proper sect disciples, becoming outside disciples just as with all the other sects, but those that were less talented, the ones that other sects would have rejected outright, were offered the chance to learn cultivation in exchange for their service. For many, it was the only opportunity they would have to learn cultivation in their lifetime – many of them were people born in ordinary families, without cultivator ancestry or lineage, and they happily traded their loyalty for the chance.

No, to call it mere loyalty would be to understate it. Wen Ruohan’s army was fanatically devoted to him.

And why wouldn’t they be? Their families back home were able to boast to all and sundry that they had a cultivator in the family, an immortal who could touch the clouds, and borrowed their glory to better their own fates, while their hometowns grew bold and unafraid, each one feeling that they had a resource they could rely on for when evil spirits emerged from the dark. The common people were proud of their cultivators, prouder than most, and Lan Qiren couldn’t blame them one bit.

As for the soldiers themselves, however poor their personal cultivation might be – many of them could not even fly a sword – they still found themselves with a career, salary enough to let them marry a wife if they chose, as well as a home, a place to belong. Those of them that were talented were given resources that they could not find anywhere else. Cultivation was a rich man’s province. To progress in cultivation, one required both money and leisure: sufficient time to spend in meditation, contemplation, and art, whether the sword or an instrument, and also access to spiritual jade and other tools, a place with appropriate spiritual energy…the Wen sect, with all its power and wealth, was able to hand such things out more liberally than most sects could ever dream. There was a reason that many sects voluntarily came under the Wen sect’s banner, and why even those that hadn’t joined voluntarily often found that they had trouble extracting themselves later.

The Wen sect’s soldiers even had the glimmer of hope that they could one day exceed their relatively lowly station, demonstrate their worth through their talent, maybe becoming one of the Wen sect’s outer disciples – or even higher than that. The Wen sect was rather famously one of the few that voluntarily shared its surname, adopting in the best of the best so that their brilliance could shine light onto their clan’s glory. Lan Qiren had no doubt that the dangling prize of that goal was a feature of many of the surrounding soldiers’ dreams.

The end result of it all was an army whose numbers dwarfed the rest of the cultivation world.

Sure, any solid sect disciple, and certainly one from any Great Sect, could easily match themselves against three or four Wen sect soldiers, and a talented one would be able to defeat still more than that. But battles weren’t merely cultivation against cultivation, not when there were such numbers, not when the Wen sect army could bring to bear treasures and siege weapons and formations that utilized numbers as their basis. It didn’t matter if a talented cultivator could defeat ten Wen sect soldiers if they were up against a hundred.

The army must have been such a scandal when it was first proposed, Lan Qiren mused to himself. But who knew how long ago that had been? By now, no one objected on the basis of it violating orthodoxy. It was just accepted as being part of what the Wen sect did…

He wandered through the army, nodding at the Wen sect disciples who served as lieutenants as he passed – they saluted him in return, though they did not stop marching. He could not quite determine the way the army was organized, though he could see that there was some sort of division, with various smaller groups each being distinguished by the presence of a flag: either the one with the Wen sect name, white with red calligraphy, or else the symbol of the sun.

He had never noticed it before, actually, but the army’s emblem was black with a golden sun, a contrast to the white-and-red that was the Wen sect’s emblem in peacetime. He wondered if that was Wen Ruohan making a private joke to himself: that mysterious black sun that was the greatest weapon of his cultivation power, and the black sun of his army that was the foundation of his political power, too.

Probably. It seemed like him.

Lan Qiren wondered if Wen Ruohan expected him to accept some of these soldiers into his classes as well. Many of them were already adults, but surely they had children that they wanted to educate, and for those that came from common families, without a cultivation background, it was possible that even the adults would benefit from a solid foundation in orthodoxy.

He certainly wouldn’t mind if that was the case. He had started his classes by inviting second and third sons, branch members and cousins, all the troublemakers that other sects grew impatient with. It was only later, once he’d gotten a reputation as a teacher, that people had started sending him their talents, their geniuses and their heirs. It wasn’t unheard of for him to accept a particularly promising disciple even if they lacked a sect’s surname – he’d even agreed to take on servants as students a few times, though his sect elders had always given him an earful whenever he’d done so, looking down their noses and citing Avoid imparting knowledge to the wrong individuals with a disdainful sniff.

Not that he especially cared about what the Gusu Lan sect leaders thought right now. Especially ones like Lan Zhengquan, who had been one of the harshest critics of Lan Qiren’s classes. What a joke that turned out to be now! He’d always been unreasonably concerned that Lan Qiren was letting slip some of Gusu Lan’s secrets, rather than just helping people understand their rules and establish the moral basis they would need, helping them find ways to improve themselves as they went down their own cultivation paths.

Judging others by his own standard, Lan Qiren supposed. The hypocrisy was truly vile.

He’d have to find time to go to the Lan sect to confront them, and soon. Even though it had been ten years since the injustice that they had perpetrated, now that Lan Qiren knew about it, impatience bubbled under his skin – he wanted to go at once, wanted to fix it at once. He wanted to excise the tumor of that crime from his sect’s heart, wanted to cut out the rot and purify the whole thing, to remake the sect back into its original intended image.

He wanted Gusu Lan to be everything that it should be. His nephews deserved that.

Whether he would be able to achieve his aims, he did not know. But he felt compelled to try.

Eventually, Lan Qiren’s wandering took him to where Wen Ruohan was conversing with his generals, all of them sitting or standing around a map in a moving pavilion drawn by horses. He paused briefly before greeting them, enjoying the sight of Wen Ruohan in his element: he looked alive, spirited and enthusiastic, even as he lounged back indolently in the seat that was very nearly a throne and waved his hands as he spoke, smirking as he dismissed some idea or another.

After another moment, Wen Ruohan noticed him, and his smirk widened momentarily into a genuine smile as he waved for Lan Qiren to join him.

Lan Qiren climbed up onto the pavilion.

“We’re discussing strategy for dealing with Lanling Jin,” Wen Ruohab said, not bothering with a greeting – or indeed with any questions or teasing about the fact that Lan Qiren had just spent several days in non-stop composing. Presumably he understood the impulse. “It is complicated by the fact that Jinlin Tower is based in an urban environment, surrounded by Lanling City.”

Lan Qiren nodded. That was one of the unique features of Lanling Jin – the Cloud Recesses were nestled among the valleys between the mountains, while the Unclean Realm was built into the very side of their own mountains, both of them isolated from the nearest towns, and while the Lotus Pier was situated near a large trading town, both on the same river, it was not part of it. The only one that was remotely comparable to the urban nature of the Jin sect was the Nightless City, but even that was different: the Nightless City was a city, yes, but the entire place was under Wen Ruohan’s personal management as sect leader, with even the ordinary people belonging to the Wen sect in some way. Lanling City, in contrast, was full of ordinary people who might pay tax to Lanling Jin, but who were otherwise completely uninvolved with them: ordinary merchants, tradesmen, artisans, scholars…

It went without saying that if they simply ignored the existence of the city and attacked anyway, there would be tremendous loss of life. Ordinary people were no match for cultivators, and Lan Qiren couldn’t even imagine what they would do in the face of siege weaponry: large scale treasures with effects that stretched out well into the distance around them, formations that could bring down entire forests and shake mountains, and all of that not even bringing into consideration the sort of specialist arrays a master like Wen Ruohan could put together. It would be a disaster.

A disaster Wen Ruohan was currently trying to avoid.

(Lan Qiren did not flatter himself into thinking he was the only or even primary reason for that. Wen Ruohan was a canny politician, well aware of the importance of saving face in public – he would never go around blatantly slaughtering common people left and right, as that would risk drawing the ire of the entire cultivation world. Certainly he would not do so when it was easier to take precautions, and in so doing win admiration and praise for his restraint. But whatever the cause, it was nice to know that Lan Qiren’s lover was not, in fact, a bloodthirsty madman with no sense of conscience or self-control, as he sometimes treated himself in his worst moments.)

“What is your plan?” he asked.

“It depends on the circumstances when we get there, which won’t be long now – we’ll get there by this afternoon. You can already see the lights of Lanling in the distance from here if you fly up a little, and in another shichen you won’t even need to do that.” Wen Ruohan tapped the map with a sharp fingernail, indicating where they were. “If they took my words to heart and set up their shields, we will have no choice but to set ourselves around them. We can take measures to evacuate the city back by some distance, creating a buffer zone in which we will operate. However, we are hoping that they haven’t raised the shields at all – that they are still hoping for some end that involves negotiation rather than fighting. If that’s the case, we will send a delegation inside to confront them.”

“How will that help?”

Wen Ruohan’s smirk was vicious. “Once we have people inside their shield perimeter, everything gets a great deal easier.”

Lan Qiren frowned, disapproving – No dishonest practices, no concealing sharp weapons – but ultimately he decided not to object. The Wen sect was well known for their treachery and disregard for convention. If Jin Guangshan invited them into his city despite knowing that, it could barely even be called a dishonest practice.

Wen Ruohan was watching him, and his smirk broadened triumphantly when Lan Qiren refrained from speaking. He’d probably been betting with himself as to whether he would or not, and was very happy to have been proven right.

(If he mistakenly thought that Lan Qiren had set aside the concern entirely, he was going to be very disappointed in the future. What Lan Qiren considered to be appropriate under the present circumstances, when Jin Guangshan had literally tried to murder them both and scapegoat his own allied sect as the perpetrator, was most certainly not what he would be willing to allow for in other situations.)

“What is your plan for what happens after that?” Lan Qiren asked, deciding to move on.

Wen Ruohan waved at one of the generals, who stepped forward and began to explain.

The army rolled inexorably forward.

It was late afternoon by the time they arrived. By that time, the forward parts of the army had already settled into their pre-arranged places outside the city gates, setting up siege formations – the gates themselves were full of civilians from Lanling City, peering anxiously down at them.

Lan Qiren was pleased, if somewhat conflicted, to see that Jinlin Tower had not activated its shields.

That presumably meant that they really were planning to try to negotiate, rather than simply start fighting right away – a remarkably foolish move on Jin Guangshan’s part. This entire sequence of events had been one misstep after another for him. He should never have gone up against Wen Ruohan.

Or Lan Qiren, for that matter.

(If Lan Qiren ever managed to find that Wang Liu that Wen Ruohan had spoken of, the spy that had deliberately incited all of Wen Ruohan’s worst insecurities and set Lan Qiren up for the Fire Palace…!)

“Not long now,” Wen Ruohan observed. He looked smug and satisfied, as well he should. It didn’t really matter if his personal cultivation was temporarily weakened, not when he had his army there to wield.

“No,” Lan Qiren agreed, unable to refrain from a faint sigh. If only they could avoid going to war at all...! “Not long now. Will we send a messenger first, or shall we await them?”

“An excellent question. I expect they will try to make us wait…” Wen Ruohan’s voice trailed off, his eyebrows arching slightly with surprise as a lone cultivator flew out of Lanling City, clearly heading their way. “Or perhaps not. That seems rather impatient of them.”

Lan Qiren privately agreed. Putting aside everything else, displaying that level of eagerness for a conversation did not speak well for Lanling Jin’s negotiation skills – showing desperation was a rookie mistake, and not one Lanling Jin would normally commit. It struck him as odd.

He said as much to Wen Ruohan, who frowned and agreed.

Perhaps for that reason, he told his general “Send the messenger in as soon as he arrives,” when normally Lan Qiren knew that he’d likely make the messenger wait outside as a demonstration of power.

Not long later, the messenger appeared. He was a middle-aged cultivator, clearly of relatively high rank in Lanling Jin, wearing Sparks Amidst Snow – meaning that this was a Jin of the main family, no less. That was an interesting choice for a negotiator; it suggested a considerable degree of respect, above and beyond the sort normally afforded to enemies.

“Sect Leader Wen,” he said, saluting respectfully, and then, in a move that surprised Lan Qiren, saluted Lan Qiren as well. “Senior Lan. Thank you both for granting me an audience. I have a message for you from Lanling Jin.”

“Oh?” Wen Ruohan drawled. “And what does Jin Guangshan have to say for himself?”

“Nothing,” the man said grimly. “You see, Sect Leader Jin is dead.”

#mdzs #wen ruohan #lan qiren #cangse sanren #wei changze #my fic #my fics #Megafic

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