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anonymousewrites · 3 months ago

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A Study of the Heart and Brain (Book 4) Chapter Four

Father Figure! Sherlock Holmes x Teen! Reader

Chapter Four: Threatening Pips

Summary: Lady Carmichael brings a case to the Holmses, and it is quite the unusual one. (Y/N) begins to put together the pieces of the puzzle.

“Mr. Holmes, I have come to you and your associates for advice,” said Lady Carmichael. True to Mycroft’s suppositions, she had indeed come with a case for them.

“That is easily got,” said Sherlock.

“And help,” added Lady Carmichael.

“Not always so easy,” said Sherlock.

“Something has happened, Mr. Holmes. Something…” Lady Carmichael paused. “Unusual. And terrifying.”

“Then you are in luck,” said Sherlock.

“ ‘Luck,’ ” repeated Lady Carmichael, offended.

“Those are our specialties,” said Sherlock.

“And our favorite,” said (Y/N).

“(Y/N),” said John in a low tone, warning them.

“What is the problem?” asked (Y/N), ignoring John.

“I…I thought long and hard as to what to do, but then it occurred to me that my husband was an acquaintance of your brother and that perhaps through him…” She trailed off and shook her head. “The fact is I’m not sure this comes within your purview, Mr. Holmes.”

“No?” Sherlock raised a brow.

“Lord help me. I think it may be a matter for a priest,” admitted Lady Carmichael. “My husband has always been…jolly. Teasing me at all moments of the day. I rarely see him serious, let alone somber. Yet he received a strange letter recently, and the moment he opened it…he was left pale as a ghost. He was frightened. Of course, I went to see what the letter said, but there was nothing. The only contents of the envelope were orange pips. He claimed they meant ‘death’ and refused to say more, but his distress has remained clear and constant.”

“Did you keep the envelope?” asked Sherlock.

“My husband destroyed it,” said Lady Carmichael. “But it was blank. No name or address of any kind.”

“Tell me, has Sir Eustace spent time in America?” said Sherlock.

Lady Carmichael frowned. “No.”

“Even before your marriage?” said (Y/N).

“Well, not to my knowledge,” said Lady Carmichael.

Sherlock hummed. “Pray, continue with your fascinating narrative.”

“Well, that incident took place last Monday morning,” said Lady Carmichael. “It was two days later on the Wednesday that my husband first saw her.”

“Who?” said John, confused.

“I wasn’t sure at first. On Wednesday, I found him staring at the grounds, white as a sheet. When I tried to discover what was wrong, he just sobbed and claimed that his sins had returned to punish him,” said Lady Carmichael. “He said it was a bride.”

“And you saw nothing?” said (Y/N).

“Nothing,” confirmed Lady Carmichael.

“Did your husband describe—”

Lady Carmichael cut Sherlock off. “Nothing. Until this morning. This morning, I awoke early to find him missing from bed. I spotted him in the maze on our grounds, and, of course, I followed him. But instead of finding him alone, I found with a woman. She was a bride wearing a veil.” She shook her head. “Eustace…My dear Eustace was just staring in fear.” She swallowed. “The bride just stared back, and when I tried to shake some sense into my husband who was in a trance, he could only say one thing: ‘she is Emelia Ricoletti.’ ”

(Y/N) cocked their head.

“And then she did speak,” said Lady Carmichael. “She said, ‘On this night, Eustace Carmichael, you will die.’ ”

Sherlock and (Y/N) were left in silence as they contemplated all that they’d been told.

“Holmes? (Y/N)?” prompted John.

“Hush, Watson,” said Sherlock.

“But Emelia Ricoletti, the bride,” he hissed.

“Well, you know the name?” said Lady Carmichael.

“You must forgive Watson,” said Sherlock. “He has an enthusiasm for stating the obvious which borders on mania. May I ask, how is your husband this morning?”

“He refuses to speak about the matter,” said Lady Carmichael.

That would be men, thought (Y/N).

“Obviously, I have urged him to leave the house,” said Lady Carmichael.

“No, no, he must stay exactly where he is,” said Sherlock.

“Well, you don’t think he’s in danger?” said Lady Carmichael, frowning.

“No, someone’s trying to kill him,” said (Y/N). “And that’s good.”

“That’s good?” repeated Lady Carmichael, aghast.

“We need bait,” said (Y/N).

“(Y/N),” hissed John.

“My husband is not bait,” said Lady Carmichael.

“He could be if we play our cards right,” said Sherlock, completely on (Y/N)’s side. “You must go home immediately. Dr. Watson, (Y/N), and I will follow on the next train. There’s not a moment to lose. See, Eustace is to die tonight.”

“Holmes!” said John.

“And we should probably avoid that,” amended Sherlock.

“Definitely,” snapped John.

“Definitely avoid that,” said Sherlock.

Lady Carmichael just stared at Sherlock and (Y/N) like they were crazy (which was not far off from the truth, at times).

“I don’t suppose—”

“No, we don’t, and neither should you,” said Sherlock before John tried to talk about the bride again.

“You don’t know what I was going to say,” said John.

“You were about to suggest there may be some supernatural agency involved in this matter, and I was about to laugh in your face,” said Sherlock.

“But the bride,” said John. “Emelia Ricoletti, again, a dead woman walking the Earth.”

Sherlock sighed. “You amaze me, Watson.”

“I do?” said John.

“Since when have you had any kind of imagination?” said Sherlock.

“I thought that was required of writing stories,” said (Y/N).

“Not for murder, apparently,” said Sherlock.

“Perhaps since I convinced the reading public that an unprincipled drug addict was some kind of gentleman hero,” said Watson pointedly.

“Former drug addict,” said Sherlock. He didn’t do that now that (Y/N) was around.

(Y/N) tilted their head. “Did you change my character?”

“I make you actually show emotion,” said Watson.

“That’s rather boring,” said (Y/N).

“But now that you mention it, that level of persuasion is quite impressive,” said Sherlock. “You may rest assured, however, there are no ghosts in this world.” He looked down. “Save for those we make for ourselves.”

(Y/N) cocked their head. “What?”

Sherlock just stared out the window. Still, he felt their heavy gaze on him.

“Somnambulism.” Lord Carmichael glared at Sherlock, John, and (Y/N) coldly.

They had finally arrived at the Carmichael estate and had been met with a defensive Lord of the house.

“I beg your pardon?” said John.

“I sleepwalk, that’s all,” said Lord Carmichael. “It’s a common enough condition. I thought you were a doctor. The whole thing was a…bad dream.”

“Including the contents of the envelope you received?” said John.

Lord Carmichael scoffed. “Well, that’s a grotesque joke.”

“Well, that’s not the impression you gave your wife, sir,” said John.

“She’s a hysteric, prone to fantasies,” said Lord Carmichael coldly.

“No,” said Sherlock shortly.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” said Lord Carmichael, incredulous at someone speaking up to him.

“I said, no, she’s not a hysteric,” said Sherlock. “She’s a highly intelligent woman of rare perception.”

“My wife sees terror in an orange pip,” said Lord Carmichael derisively.

“Your wife sees what is truly of value in this world,” said (Y/N). “She has observation where most have none.”

“Does she really? And how does a child deduce that?” sneered Lord Carmichael.

Instantly, Sherlock stepped up behind (Y/N). No one got away with speaking down to them like that, and Sherlock would tell Lord Carmichael off promptly.

But (Y/N) spoke first. With a smirk that spelt danger, they said, “She married you. Apparently, she was capable of finding a reason to.” They tilted their head. “I admit I can’t find one.”

Lord Carmichael’s face turned red, and he made the fatal mistake of taking a step towards them. Sherlock intervened and glared coldly at Lord Carmichael. Should he make the mistake of trying to hurt them again, Sherlock would have no mercy.

“I’ll do my best to save your life tonight,” said Sherlock coldly, though his resolution was waning by the moment. “But first, it would help if you would explain your connection to the Ricoletti case.”

“Ricoletti?” Lord Carmichael feigned ignorance to the name.

“Yes. In detail, please,” said Sherlock.

“Never heard of her,” said Lord Carmichael.

(Y/N) nearly smirked again. They had him in a lie because how could he know it was a “her” unless he knew the case of the bride.

“Interesting. I didn’t mention she was a woman,” said Sherlock. “We’ll show ourselves out. I hope to see you again in the morning.”

“You will not!” declared Lord Carmichael, not realizing how stupid the statement sounded.

“Then we will be solving your murder,” said (Y/N). “Good day.”

John sighed as they walked towards the exit of the house. “Well, you tried.”

Sherlock paused and handed a letter to a butler. “Would you see that Lady Carmichael receives that? Thank you, good afternoon.”

“What was that?” asked John.

“Lady Carmichael will sleep alone tonight upon the pretense of a violent headache. All the doors and windows of the house will be locked,” said Sherlock.

“You think the specter—”

(Y/N) raised a brow, and John coughed.

“—Uh, bride, will attempt to lure Sir Eustace outside again?” said John.

“Certainly,” said (Y/N). “What else would the threat portend?”

“ ‘This night you will die,’ ” murmured John. “But he won’t follow her, surely?”

“It’s difficult to say quite what he’ll do,” said Sherlock.

“Because he’s obviously more of an idiot than most people,” said (Y/N).

Sherlock couldn’t help but smile. “Yes, and guilt is eating away at his soul.”

“Guilt? About what?” said John.

“Something in his past,” said Sherlock. “The orange pips were a reminder.”

“Not a joke?” said John.

“Not at all,” said (Y/N). “Orange pips are a warning of avenging death originating in America.”

“Sir Eustace knows this only too well, just as he knows why he is to be punished,” said Sherlock.

“Something to do with Emelia Ricoletti?” said John.

“We presume,” said (Y/N).

“We all have a past, Watson. Ghosts,” said Sherlock. “They are the shadows that define our sunny days. Sir Eustace knows that he’s a marked man. There’s something more than murder he fears. He believes he is to be dragged to hell by the risen corpse of the late Mrs. Ricoletti.”

“That’s a lot of nonsense, isn’t it?” said John.

“Oh, God, yes,” said Sherlock.

“Did you bring your revolver?” asked (Y/N).

“What good would that be against a ghost?” said John.

“None,” said (Y/N). “Did you bring it?”

“Yeah, of course,” said John.

“Then, come, Watson, come,” said Sherlock. “The game is afoot.”

Night had long since descended on the Carmichael Mansion. The moon barely shone through the fog hovering over the grounds. While Sherlock, (Y/N), and John waited for the last lights of the household to go out, they crouched in a small greenhouse where they could see everything going on. (Y/N) was lying back on a bench, Sherlock was sitting stone-faced, and John was pacing.

“Get down, for Heaven’s sake,” said Sherlock.

“Sorry,” said John, taking a seat. “Is the lamp still burning?”

“Yes,” said Sherlock. As he spoke, a light was extinguished. “There goes Sir Eustace.” Another went out. “And Lady Carmichael. The house sleeps.”

John groaned. “Mm, good God, this is the longest night of my life.”

“Have patience, Watson,” said Sherlock.

“I should have brought a booklet of those stupid little riddles and games,” said (Y/N). “That would have given me at least half an hour of entertainment.”

“You should have patience, too,” said Sherlock. “If you’re truly that bothered, get some rest.”

“I don’t like to sleep on a case,” said (Y/N).

“When did you last sleep more than two hours at a time?” said Sherlock.

(Y/N) didn’t reply.

“Precisely. Rest as long as you can here, and once this case is done, I’m timing you until you reach six hours of sleep,” said Sherlock.

“No need to make this scientific,” murmured (Y/N) as they closed their eyes.

Sherlock smiled slightly and fondly pushed (Y/N)’s hair out of their face as they rested. John watched him with a soft smile of his own. Out of the entire population of the world, Sherlock had a soft spot for only one—his child. John had to admit, it was endearing, even if Sherlock was loathe to admit it at times.

John managed to remain silent for nearly another hour and let Sherlock just sit silently with his kid, but once it reached midnight, he couldn’t remain silent any longer. He needed some conversation to keep going.

“You know, it’s rare for us to sit together like this,” said John.

“I should hope so. It’s murder on the knees,” said Sherlock. That’s why he’d made sure (Y/N) lay down. No need for his kid to be uncomfortable.

“Two old friends just talking, chewing the fat, man to man,” rambled John. Sherlock didn’t respond. John cleared his throat. “She is a remarkable woman.”

Sherlock frowned. “Who?”

“Lady Carmichael,” said John.

“The fair sex is your department, Watson,” said Sherlock. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“Well, you liked her, a woman of rare perception,” said John.

“And admirably high arches. I noticed them as soon as she stepped into the room,” said Sherlock. He noticed all things about people, so it blurred together.

“She’s far too good for him,” said John.

“You think so,” said Sherlock.

“No, you think so, I could tell,” said John.

“On the contrary, I have no view of the matter,” said Sherlock.

“Yes, you have,” said John.

“Marriage is not a subject upon which I dwell,” said Sherlock.

“Why not?” said John.

“What’s the matter with you this evening?” said Sherlock, frowning.

“You already have a child. Why do you insist on pretending you have no heart?” said John.

“It gets in the way,” said Sherlock.

John sighed. “Holmes, you took in (Y/N) and made them part of your family. So why do you still fight and try to keep yourself distanced?”

“I cannot put them in harm’s way,” said Sherlock quietly. John looked at him. “I am…soft with (Y/N). I am kinder with them than I am any other.” He gazed out the window. “Someone will use that against me. And if I am compromised by emotions when that time comes, how will I help them? How can I help them when I couldn’t help…?” The world buzzed, and Sherlock blinked. The soft whine of a dog echoed through the night, and he furrowed his brow.

“Good god!” exclaimed John.

Sherlock was broken from his trance, and (Y/N) was awoken by the cry. They sat up, and the three peered out the windows. Floating near the mansion was the bride. She seemed to shiver as if not there, yet the outfit was exactly what Emelia Ricoletti had worn.

“What are we to do?” breathed John.

“Why don’t we have a chat?” said (Y/N), no fear whatsoever. They were merely curious and eager to understand their theories and how this fit into their suppositions. They moved to the door and flung it open.

Sherlock grinned at (Y/N)’s bravery, and for a moment, all his fears for what his enemies could do to them flew from his head. That was his kid right there, through and through. He followed them into the night.

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the-wales-5 · 2 years ago

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"In another life..."

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

29th April 1931.

The newlyweds Catherine Murray and William Howard just left the little church in the village where they tied the knot surrounded by their close family and friends. The bride was a part of an aristocratic Murray family but she still wanted to keep a low profile so instead of having a rather huge ceremony in London with King George V attending, she decided to have a small wedding in her favourite part of Wales and to wear a crown made of her favourite flowers instead of an expensive tiara from her family's vault.

William was looking at her with love as if she was the only woman to ever exist on the earth and that was something she considered her biggest achievement and joy in life.

"I cannot believe we did this at last" Giggled her as she looked at her now-husband. They'd been together for almost 10 years at that point, having met each other when they both were 18.

"It is real, Lady Murray-Howard" William whispered and kissed her on the lips, causing their guests to cheer.

"Promise me that we'll never be separated" she whispered as she took his hand in hers.

William smiled without replying to her and just squeezed her hand more as they walked to the car driving them to their house in North Wales where a small wedding reception was about to start.

1939.

Their life was almost idyllic, with two children and a dog living in Wales, until September 1939 when Germany declared the Second World War against Poland and therefore other countries as well.

"You know what they say.. about the war.. and you are the pilot, they may need assistance from planes.." said Catherine as they were coming back from a horse ride with their 7-year old daughter Mary.

"Yes indeed" William nodded and then he noticed his wife's fearful facial expression. He told Mary to go inside the house and then approached his wife "I will join the forces if that will be necessary. No need to elaborate on that, Catherine"

"Are you serious?" She scoffed, "We've got two children!"

"And our country may soon experience war. We both have seen what it means to live in a country at war, haven't we? My father died during the First World War in 1919 and if I have to, I will defend my country just like he did"

"So you want to die as well?" Catherine murmured and chuckled with sorrow "Just to defend your country and keep his memory?"

"Do not be ridiculous" he sighed as he approached her "I am aware that we have children. I will not be risking my life on the front line if that won't be necessary to protect our nation".

He kissed her on the forehead and held her hand, helping her to get off of her horse. Catherine hugged him and then they shared a kiss. Mary and her brother Patrick giggled as they ran towards their parents.

Back in London, the royal family lived their lives, attending official engagements while ordinary people on the streets, the same as Lady Howard and her husband were talking about the possibility of war coming to the United Kingdom.

1944.

Three words. 3 words she dreaded to hear for the last few years. "I am leaving". She didn't even have to ask "Where?". She knew.

The war. The front line. He was needed for the operation near Normandy where the Alliance forces were fighting with the Nazis. An easy way to die and leave her and their children for good. Seeing him saying "goodbye" to Patrick and Mary made her curse his abilities to fly in planes even if she always used to admire that in him.

William was about to travel to France by train. Although he told her to stay at home, Lady Howard traveled to the station with him. The media knew about this but they were unusually respective and didn't bother the couple at all.

"You never promised me that we'll never separate. Not during the wedding, nor later. You knew that it was coming" She whispered with pain in her voice as they were looking at each other right before he left.

"I don't know how to explain it, darling"

"No need for an explanation. Just take it" she handed him a dried-up white "Sweet William", her favourite flower, a part of her wedding's flower crown worn in April 1931.

One picture of her wiping tears upon leaving the train station was published by the press but Catherine's father The Earl of Pembroke forced them to erase it. Otherwise, both the photographer and the author of the article titled "LADY MURRAY'S FAREWELL TO HERO WILLIAM HOWARD AS HE GOES ON WAR" would have faced a law prosecution in London's court for invading her privacy.

As she was sitting in the car that drove her back to her small cottage, Lady Catherine Murray was looking at his picture but her thoughts were not about him but about someone else. A baby. She and William's third baby that she was carrying. Nobody knew besides her and her doctor. Her pregnancy got confirmed the same day when her husband decided to leave for France to "defend the country". Therefore, she had no time to tell him about their new "bundle of joy". By all these days leading to his departure, she has been wondering if telling that would perhaps keep William at home. Her heart was telling her to do exactly that but her mind was consumed by thoughts like: "That would make me a selfish person" .

Her sense won against her heart and now she was regretting it. A few hours later when she was in the bedroom, she touched her bump for the first time ever and whispered "He will return to us. We have to believe it".

Then, she pulled a picture of her husband out of her purse and began to pray. She used to do that often years ago when her then-boyfriend was attending a military academy to get his pilot licence and also when he was a rescue pilot back in the very beginning of the Second World War between 1939-1942. It finally began to sink into her brain. It was not just assistance in helping injured soldiers anymore. Now he was a soldier too. This thought was enough to make her cry after only one minute of her prayers.

Weeks passed and William Howard was getting used to his new routine of being a pilot during the war. Despite only two months of warfare, a majority of people serving in the same battalion whom he met on his first day in France were killed off. He knew he could not give up. Every single time when he doubted if all of this was worth its price, he was immediately 'brought back' to London's train station full of other soldiers saying their goodbyes to their families.

Every night, he was thinking of his children, and of his wife's teary eyes and had been falling asleep while inhaling the 'scent' of that dried-up white flower which she gave him.

"Catherine, I will come back to you. I promise". Those words seemed like a prayer for him. He often told himself when there was danger close to his battalion or in the air.

Lady Murray-Howard had to keep herself busy so as to not worry too much about the ongoing war. She has been attending many charity events founded to help the families of men who were fighting on the front line. She was attending almost all of them despite her tiredness. She wanted to show her unity with other waiting women even if that meant crying while hugging her husband's pillow after coming back home.

"Are you sure you want to go?" Her father asked. He was about to join an event like that with her for the first time.

"Obviously yes" Catherine weakly smiled as she was finishing putting on her make-up in front of the mirror "It is an amazing initiative, you will see it for yourself, papa"

"I have no doubts about that. It's just--.. Catherine, let me tell you the truth. Do you still believe he will return? It's been weeks and he can already be deceased! Nobody knows what is happening there!"

Lady Murray rolled her eyes but spoke up: "Let me tell you a story of a woman I met during a meeting in Leicester last week. Her husband Richard has been a soldier for four years now. Four years, not weeks. Last year there was news about Germans bombarding the battalion he was in. That woman I met went through a nightmare trying to get even a small piece of information, first about the whole incident, and then about her husband's condition. He suffered from brain injury but survived and even remembered his wife during their meeting in the hospital! It is truly a miracle and I know it is just one of many! You cannot think only of the worst-case scenarios possible".

"But this is the cruel reality of war, Kate. You must accept the fact that happy endings happen to just 1% of soldiers and their families" Michael, The Earl of Pembroke said.

Catherine closed her eyes and after taking a deep breath she said with confidence in her voice: "I'd rather believe in happy endings than sink into depression after imagining the death of my husband and other men!" .

Michael sighed. He was now facing the window as if he was afraid to tell his daughter the following words while looking at her face: "The moment you revealed you are engaged to a person from the middle class I had a feeling that it will only bring us problems. If William was a nobleman, he'd never go to war! He would stay at home and defend the country in a civilised manner, by donations to charities".

Catherine was speechless for a second. At last, she replied: "Oh, thank you for confirming how much you despise my husband. You needed almost 15 years and a war to admit it. Wow" she chuckled with sorrow and her eyes narrowed as she added: "You know what, papa? If William's manners are not good enough then let me tell you that yours aren't good either right now. These poor women do not need your appearance during this meeting this afternoon, nor do they need your 'donations'. I'll go there on my own! Stay with Mary and Patrick, if you have enough time for it" she scoffed and left the house with furiousness.

Five weeks passed since Lady Murray's last conversation with her father. She was attending yet another charity meeting in Cardiff when all of a sudden a man from her father's office came in. She had no slightest idea what it could mean but she listened to each word he said, getting paler within seconds.

"No.. It's impossible" she mumbled at last and fainted.

48 hours earlier.

He looked for 'one last time' at the white dried-up flower.

"I am so sorry, Kate," soldier William Howard murmured and closed his eyes.

Michael arrived at the hospital where his daughter had been taken after losing consciousness during her meeting. He already knew what happened to his son-in-law and considered it a blessing to Catherine. In his mind, The Earl of Pembroke already imagined his daughter's second wedding taking place. A wedding with a Welsh, noble, wealthy man whom she "deserved".

"Lady Murray-Howard is such an unlucky person" one nurse said to another standing in the hospital corridor.

"What are you two talking about?" He asked but without hearing their answer he entered Catherine's cabin. She kept her hands on her stomach while looking through the window.

"I've lost them both" she whispered through tears when she noticed Michael's gaze.

He had no idea about her pregnancy, therefore the fact he just realised struck him like lightning.

~~~

'Why is this bloody war so cruel to me? Why is the whole universe against me? Losing him would have been easier if I had our third baby close to myself, that thought would console me a little. C. Howard, 1944."

~~~

That was her first note weeks after getting to know about her husband's death and her miscarriage. Now, after a year since writing it out, she was looking through old notes, finding that particular one from 1944. As she was closing her notebook, her father watched her.

"Your life has been surrendered by anxiety since he left for France. It was quite predictable that you would lose your child sooner or later" he said

"Your grandchild," Catherine remarked and looked at her father with narrowed eyes "How can you be so heartless? I lost my husband and a baby and you say that it was 'predictable'? I am lost for words, papa".

"Think of the positivity that comes from this situation. Soon, you will finally find a man who will not be risking his life at war"

"You mean you will find him for me, right?' She scoffed. "It has been more than a year and so far there is no luck. I am so sorry for being such a disappointment for you but.." she stopped to take a breath and continued: "But I will always love William. Only him. You can even try to organise my meetings with as many potential future husbands of mine as you want. Just know that I will reject every single one of them." she emphasised each word "No matter how much money they will keep in their houses or how handsome they will be. It does not matter to me at all. Your attempts will all be pointless, as they have been until now".

"I am constantly giving you a choice, Catherine. If I was to threaten you, I'd force you to get married a month or perhaps even a day after we got to know about William's death. In my mind, there was a possibility of a wedding ceremony with the first nobleman I could think of. Be kind enough and notice how I was, and how I still am letting you get used to life without Mr Howard and get to know someone of your choice. Moreover, you are not held hostage here either so do not exaggerate this situation" he said louder.

"I'd rather be held hostage than have to think about 'someone new' in my life, papa" she murmured and closed her eyes "Leave my room, please".

"Lady Catherine Murray, soon you will see for yourself that living in the land of the dead takes you nowhere. The hurtful truth is that you are wasting the greatest years of your life now'.

"No. I am not Catherine Murray, papa. For almost 15 years my surname is Howard. It will always be Howard, not Murray nor any other name of an unknown, noble man" she hissed, yet she had confidence and determination in her voice "Papa, let yourself accept that in 1931, on the day when Lady Catherine Murray got married, she died and instead she became Mrs Catherine Howard.

Accept that it is my surname now and please let it be written on my gravestone in the future when I will, at last, join my husband".

She finished and looked at her father with 'sharp eyes' so he left to go to the garden where his grandchildren were waiting.

Catherine watched Patrick and Mary through the window for a few seconds. Then, she closed her eyes and burst into tears. After she calmed down a little, she looked at her reflection in the mirror, noticing a silver locket which had been hanging from her neck since the day William asked her to become his happily ever after.

There was no ring or other expensive jewellery for the proposal, just that locket which he found in his teenage years in an old box with his family belongings in the attic and which he then named "A piece of jewellery for my future wife".

A silver locket with a small blue stone and two pictures of them were both put there by William himself days before asking her to be his wife. Simple, yet meaningful.

She promised to wear it always. Now, though, she took it off and opened it for the first time. "I cannot keep it with me forever. I guess my father is right. I must leave the land of the dead. I spent too much of my time there. But no worries, my William" she weakly smiled, closing her eyes "I will not marry anyone else. Remember that I will always love you. Your Catherine Howard" she whispered and put the locket into a wooden drawer in their bedroom. As she was closing it with a key, she was not even trying to hold back her new tears.

France.

"Where am I?' A soldier asked one of the nurses working in a hospital minutes after waking up from a type of coma that lasted more than a year.

"You are in the hospital, Sir. Your battalion was attacked in 1944. A year ago. It is truly a miracle you are alive"

'So there's still an ongoing war."

"No. It ended two months ago, Sir. Today's date is July 20th, 1945"

"My son's birthday is in two days," William said and weakly smiled.

His doctor did a checkup but it seemed like he remembered every detail of his life The names of his children, his family members' birthdays, the date of his wedding and he remembered her. Catherine. His wife and someone who kept him in her memory all this time. He assumed that she married someone else meanwhile so he did not try to write a letter. "I do not want to ruin her life".

On the day of her son's birthday, Catherine couldn't help but think of her husband again. She still thought that he was deceased on that day in France back in 1944.

"Do you think he is looking over us?" Mary asked her mum as she stepped closer to Catherine and put her hand around her

"Yes, certainly," her mother replied and smiled as she looked up to the sky. She felt quite worried about her father now because he was late for Patrick's birthday party.

The Earl of Pembroke was attending an 'urgent meeting' in England, regarding the situation of his son-in-law. He knew everything all along and despite that, lied to Catherine and her kids. "The most convenient solution for this would be to keep it all a secret, and in case he would try to return to Wales and Lady Murray's life, then you must take steps to kill him" he commanded without a blink of an eye.

25th August 1945.

William was able to leave for home after the long hospital treatment. Home. He wondered where to go. His old house was destroyed in the war back in 1942 and the home where he lived with his wife and children was no longer his. The decision he made not to come back to Catherine's life was upheld. All of a sudden, he noticed a familiar silhouette of a man.

Catherine Howard tried to find the strength to keep going through her life, bring up her children and had hoped to find peace. She kept her promise of not marrying anyone else and cared for her two children and charities. Nothing of that had given her the liberty she desperately needed but she knew she could not leave. "He left and that caused us enough heartbreak. I cannot leave as well" she thought to herself over the years when been getting suicidal thoughts.

On his deathbed, her father who died due to cancer in 1950, had given her a letter without explaining it. Catherine opened it three days after his funeral.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"My beloved daughter,

I apologise for not having enough courage to tell you about it before. Your husband survived. He survived the attack on his battalion six years ago. I am sincerely sorry for keeping it a secret. All along since 1921 when I met William, I thought you made the biggest mistake of your life. It turns out you were right and I was and will stay the worst possible father and grandfather ever.

William was the victim of war but also a victim of my eagerness to make your life better. I met him once after the war ended. It was the day him being discharged from the hospital. I had wanted to make sure he would not try to return to your life. Consequently, I told him that you met someone and got married for the second time. I mentioned a pregnancy that you miscarried and I blamed him for it. I was astonished when his reply to that was: "I assumed her second marriage a long time ago. Tell her I am sorry for making her life a misery and that she and our three children were my everything above all".

He was run over by a car driving at a high speed right as he walked away from the spot where we met. I am certain it was not an accident. I killed him. I wanted it for years and yet when it was announced to me by a doctor in France I was in a state of shock, almost sadness even. His gravestone is located close to the church where you two got married. Nobody knew it was his funeral, only me. You can find it. -8 / 1945- is all that's written on it..

Patrick, Mary and you are victims of my selfishness and greed. I understand completely if you won't be able to forgive me, Kate. But remember I loved you and cared for you and your children. I've made huge donations to all those charities you supported over the years. Last year, I also made several secret visits to a few of those, just like you always wanted me to. It is not enough and I am aware of that. I have not left money or any other sort of inheritance. You and your son are owners of our family estate, so you can keep it or sell it to get money from it as I once told you. But there is something that you would probably like to keep with yourself. Look inside this envelope. "Something that saved me during the war now is supposed to keep her safe" were his last words to me.

I, most likely, will not get your forgiveness so I can only hope for God's forgiveness.

Your father - Michael".

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mrs Howard was shocked to bits after reading the letter. It dropped from her hand onto the floor while tears appeared in her eyes. "It is insane.." she murmured and broke down crying. While doing so, she looked inside the envelope as her father told her to. Almost yellow now, dried up flower "Sweet William". A 'talisman' she had given her husband back in May 1944, something that "saved him during the war" did not manage to do that for the second time because he returned it to her father, almost as if he did not want to live anymore.

Catherine Howard quickly wiped her tears when her son came to her room.

"Mum, is everything alright?" He asked as he approached her. She sniffed and with all her possible strength she hugged her son.

In the evening, that 'talisman' in an envelope was put right next to Catherine's locket with two pictures of her and William Howard. Her father's Welsh property was sold three months later and she and her children moved out of there as soon as it was possible. The Earl of Pembroke's daughter did not want to stay there as she considered it cursed because of him. She had taken all the significant things with her to another, much smaller house in Wales. She also ordered William's full name to be written on his gravestone.

Mrs Howard witnessed the wedding celebrations of both her & William's children, had become a grandmother three times and lived in her second home until her death at the age of 79. A white flower "Sweet William" was put inside her hand and a silver locket with two photographs was again put on her neck on the day of the funeral. The location of her grave was right next to one of her dear husband William. "Catherine Howard" was the name written on it, just like she wished years before.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

2010.

Prince William and his fiancée Catherine Middleton entered their first real house in Anglesey, Wales.

As she stepped into one of the rooms, she felt something weird, as if the spirit of someone 'checked' what she was doing there. For some reason, it did not scare her but instead made her open an old drawer with a key.

"What is this?" She whispered as she took something into her hands and slowly opened.

It was an envelope with one petal of "Sweet William" and a piece of paper with words:

"Life is too short to love you in one, I promise to look for you in the next life".

She knew this quote was by William Shakespeare. It made her feel confused and amazed all at once. As she stared at the letters on paper and dried petals of "Sweet William", her future husband put his hand on her shoulder.

"What is this?" He asked

"I wanted to ask you the same question now" she startled and showed him the envelope and what was inside it. William was astonished as well but as he read the sentence by Shakespeare a few times and looked at the petal of one of his wife's favourite flowers, he looked at her and kissed her on the lips.

The air surrounding them had a familiar scent. The scent of flowers which years before were a part of Catherine Murray's flower crown on her wedding day to William Howard.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

THE END.

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rauchendesgnu · 7 months ago

Note

⭐ For At thy will!

*cracks knuckles* alright, so (I have no idea how tumblr is gonna treat this post lol)

I am going to elaborate on a few things: medieval marriage laws in what would later become Germany (and how my seminar on middle high German became the catalyst for this fic), a few details on the restrictions and powers of being a dominant or a submissive, and how the marriage laws and misogyny translate into fantasy sexism.

Before all that I have one more thing to say, though: the fic is inspired by the AUs I read in the Witcher fandom (the designation marks are heavily inspired by this fic specifically).

That being said, I hope I can satisfy your curiosity without boring you.

First: medieval marriage laws in the area that would later become Germany (I keep saying this because at this time there are a ton of principalities and small factions. It's only later that something like a nation is founded. I'm a language student, though, not a historian, so if you're interested in that, I'm probably not the right person to ask).

There are two types of marriage, the "muntehe" and "friedelehe" ("ehe" meaning "marriage" and "munt" meaning something akin to tutelage. i forgot what "friedel" means, I'm afraid). The first one, "muntehe", is much (much!!) more common, and the reason why I am writing this fic right now instead of finishing my other wips. The family of the bride and the family of the groom (or the groom himself) make a bargain. The bride goes from the tutelage of her father (or eldest remaining male relative) into the tutelage of the groom/her husband. The bride's family then receives money for her to use should her husband die before her. She has no rights and no say in the matter at all. (I believe there are one or two things I'm missing, but you get the idea.) The wedding has, of course, to be consummated, and sexual abuse within marriage did not count as rape in Germany until 1997 (which is very fucked up and not actually part of the medieval laws, but it still makes me really mad (as it should)).

the "friedelehe" is a form of marriage where both members consent to getting married. There are a few differences, first: the bride has more rights and may divorce her husband if she decides to do so, but: there is also no money, since her family is not selling her (it doesn't say so in the text book, but that's basically what happens). If I recall correctly, the ceremony at church is also not a thing in this one. My professor said this form of marriage happened more or less never.

In general, this wasn't news to me, but discussing it at university, realising I could technically read the laws written down over 500 years ago, sort of started this whole thing.

Second: being dominant versus being submissive. The visual difference between both is the designation mark: a long, black bar from the wrist up to the crook of the elbow on the left arm for the dominant and a thick, black cuff around the left wrist for the submissive. There are conventions, but much like the whole "men can't wear dresses" thing, that's a society problem (which I will get to later). To be submissive means the body requires submission in order to function properly, and to be dominant means to guide someone into submission. Should those needs not be met (as Martin mentions), physical and mental consequences follow (in the worst case, depriving oneself of the submission/domination ends in death, like it did with Martin's mother). Scenes do not have to be sexual. There is one thing that makes it more complicated: the dominant can use their Voice to force a submissive to obey (I'm pretty sure most of what I'm currently saying is pretty standard for the AU, but I haven't seen it around in a while, so I'll just leave it here and hope nobody is annoyed).

Third: The fucked up part about how society screws it all up (aka fantasy sexism so we can still make it gay while also discussing how sexism is very fucking shitty). In this AU, submissives take on the role of brides/wives in medieval Europe. No citizenship, no rights, the only way to escape the arranged marriage is to pledge yourself to a religious order (like Jon tried with the Temple of Beholding). There is a very strict set of rules ("etiquette") on how submissives have to behave around their dominant, but also other dominants and neutrals (neutrals being the majority that can, but doesn't have to, assume either position if needed). Submissives are also taught to cover their hair (this was custom in medieval Germany). This does not apply to neutrals or dominants, although it is very frowned upon to Command a submissive that is not your own (writing this makes my skin crawl).

There's probably more, but this post is getting pretty long. Feel free to ask any further questions you might have and I'll try my best to answer them. Here are some sketches I did to illustrate my point (plus Jonah Magnus' smug face in case any of y'all wanna punch it)

Thank you for this ask and for letting me ramble about the world of my wip. It ended up being more of a "I write down a shit ton of stuff I feel like mentioning" and less "I pick something specific to talk about", but well.

If you haven't read the first two chapters yet and you're interested, you can find At Thy Will here.

#ask #cw: mention of rape #cw: mention of misogyny and gay fantasy equivalents #medieval marriage laws #writing fanfic #my writing #my art #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #jonah magnus #tma au #tma fanart #tma fanfic #d/s #fantasy au #i swear a lot in this one but i feel like that's justified #using the stuff you learn at uni for fanfic as is right and proper

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sadprosed · 3 years ago

Text

𝑺𝑬𝑵𝑻𝑬𝑵𝑪𝑬 𝑷𝑹𝑶𝑴𝑷𝑻𝑺.

↬ THE LANGUAGE OF THORNS, midnight tales and dangerous magic. ( 2017 ) by leigh bardugo.

sentences taken from or inspired by the collection’s dialogue & narration.

+ feel free to change pronouns !

i. AYAMA AND THE THORN WOOD.

‘ love speaks in flowers. truth requires thorns. ’

‘ we all know the story of how the queen becomes a queen. ’

‘ we should leave this place. ’

‘ no doubt it will come and devour us all. ’

‘ the beast will laugh you right out of the wild lands. ’

‘ you know how the stories go. interesting things happen only to pretty girls. ’

‘ is the wood much worse than a garden overgrown with pricklers ? ’

‘ stupid girl ! do you wish to become a monster ? ’

‘ strike me. cleave me in two. ’

‘ you’re as thorny as the wood. ’

‘ there is but one rule in my wood. speak truth. ’

‘ perhaps you might show mercy freely. ’

‘ just eat a bit of the sun to fill the sky, and you will feel empty no longer. ’

‘ what nonsense ! of course that’s not how the story ends. ’

‘ some people are born with a piece of night inside, and that hollow place can never be filled. ’

‘ what do i care for winter ? no season touches this wood. ’

‘ you know the only bargain i will make. ’

‘ sometimes the unseen is not to be feared and those that are meant to love us most are not always the ones that do. ’

‘ bad fates do not always follow those that deserve them. ’

‘ no prince is worth your life. ’

‘ are you so eager to be eaten ? ’

‘ they have told me to return with your heart. ’

‘ you think to love a monster ? ’

‘ a man like you is owed no words. ’

ii. THE TOO CLEVER FOX.

‘ you are doomed to a miserable life. ’

‘ better to be hungry now than to be sorry later. ’

‘ what will everyone say when they see such a face ? ’

‘ we have not gone so soft as that. ’

‘ you think that we will let you live on foolish promises ? ’

‘ you have bested me. that much is clear. ’

‘ will you not free me ? ’

‘ you will have a fine time of it, i can tell you. ’

‘ i can bear ugliness. i find the one thing i cannot live with is death. ’

‘ if you will only cease your talking, i will gladly go. ’

‘ where he went, he bled the woods dry. ’

‘ what’s a bit more blood ? ’

‘ you should leave this place. you are not safe here. ’

‘ with such big eyes, i think you see too much. ’

‘ will you not tell me what troubles you ? ’

‘ why do you stay with him ? you’re pretty enough to catch a husband. ’

‘ just because you escape one trap, doesn’t mean you will escape the next. ’

‘ first i must find my courage. ’

‘ few can resist the sight of a pretty girl crying. ’

‘ the trap is loneliness, and no one escapes it. not even me. ’

‘ in the wood, even songbirds must be survivors. ’

iii. THE WITCH OF DUVA.

‘ there was a time when the wood ate girls. ’

‘ be back before dark. the trees are hungry tonight. ’

‘ who can say what shapes an appetite ? ’

‘ this is my home, you can’t just send me away. ’

‘ don’t be foolish. there’s plenty of light. ’

‘ well then, come help me stir the pot. ’

‘ i will warn you just this once. go. ’

‘ you cannot come and go from this place like you’re fetching water from a well. ’

‘ hope made me stubborn. ’

‘ stay there and keep quiet. i don’t need rumors that i’ve been taking girls. ’

‘ i will not have you bring a monster to my door. ’

‘ you know that you are welcome to remain here with me. ’

‘ i will follow her. i will peck out her eyes. ’

‘ believe me. say you believe me. ’

‘ dark things have a way of slipping through narrow spaces. ’

iv. LITTLE KNIFE.

‘ it is dangerous to travel the northern road with a troubled heart. ’

‘ if you are lost in your own thoughts, you may find yourself stepping off the path and into the dark woods. ’

‘ she was beautiful from the moment of her birth. ’

‘ why must i be the one to hide ? ’

‘ do you think i am so foolish or so cruel ? ’

‘ water only wants direction. it wants to be told what to do. ’

‘ always you have done my bidding, but what good are you to me now ? ’

‘ soon i will be very rich, but will i have a good man ? ’

‘ that is a question for the river. ’

‘ your tongue is not fit for my true name. ’

‘ will you come with me, and be bride to nothing but the shore ? ’

‘ she was terrifying in her beauty, bright like a devouring star. ’

‘ remember that to use a thing is not to own it. ’

‘ should you ever take a bride, listen closely to her questions. ’

v. THE SOLDIER PRINCE.

‘ this is the problem with even lesser demons. they come to your door in velvet coats and polished shoes. ’

‘ you will find great love and more gold than you could wish for. ’

‘ he’s a charming fellow, but most unusual, and peculiarities seem to follow him. ’

’ it seemed harmless at the time. ’

‘ he needed a girl, still malleable, one that he could make admire him. ’

‘ this is pleasant. this is enough. ’

‘ are you my soldier ? are you my prince ? ’

‘ i have not come to fight, only to talk. ’

‘ wanting is why people get up in the morning. it gives them something to dream of at night. ’

‘ i am perfectly real. ’

‘ she loves you, though, and that will make it harder. ’

‘ best not to ask. i think the answer would please no one. ’

‘ we can stay forever in the land of dreams. ’

‘ kiss me. take me from this place. ’

‘ i sent you to die a hundred times. ’

‘ i eat the wonder in their eyes. ’

‘ you were an idea in my head. you were nothing, and to nothing you will return when i think of you no more. ’

‘ you wanted only that i might live. you would sacrifice your own life to make it so. ’

‘ are you my darling ? are you mine ? ’

vi. WHEN WATER SANG FIRE.

‘ you wish to strike a bargain. ’

‘ make me someone new. ’

‘ this is the problem with making a thing forbidden. it does nothing but build an ache in the heart. ’

‘ easy magic is pretty. great magic requires that you trouble the waters. ’

‘ no one expects me to accomplish anything. ’

‘ i can smell your ambition like blood in the water.’

‘ i know that you should keep it like a secret, not shout it like a curse. ’

‘ yes. i can imagine it all. ’

‘ you are worth more than that. you should not have to earn him. ’

‘ hope rises like water trapped beneath a dam, higher and higher, in increments that mean nothing until you face the flood. ’

‘ there is no pain like the pain of transformation. ’

‘ take your pleasures as you will. ’

‘ come, and i’ll tell you all you wish to know. ’

‘ he made me dream of things i cannot have. ’

‘ i do not care for dancing. ’

‘ look into the mirror, and try to deny it. ’

‘ you have never been like the others, and you never will be. ’

‘ we were not made to please princes. ’

‘ i am not quite mortal either, and i have many lives to live. ’

‘ i wouldn’t care if you were part human or part frog. ’

‘ my voice is not enough. ’

‘ you know i was never strong. ’

#rp meme #rp starter #rp prompts #sentence meme #sentence starter #sentence prompt #ask meme #inbox meme #askbox meme #rp sentence starter #rp memes #rp resources #leigh bardugo #language of thorns #shadow and bone #grishaverse #rp prompt #dialogue prompts

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oddaodd · 3 years ago

Text

· I Don't Go In For Sweets ·

Request: by a lovely anon "set after the events of season 3. Tommy can't handle the company, he's still grieving and he has to be there for Charlie so Polly tells him she knows a girl from a good family to get married He ends up agreeing (aunt Pol can be very persuasive) but even though he's married, this new girl isn't considered as a wife. He doesn't really make any effort but his "wife" understands, he's a widowed father who lost his first wife only a year ago. However since they are...in this, she wants to make her time as enjoyable as possible for the both of them and for Charlie too. But no matter what Tommy makes it a point of honor to not let her in, to not let her replace Grace so he ignores her, he works more, tries to spend as little as possible in the house. Reader stays patient, it will be alright and Charlie is making her quite busy anyway. One night, Tommy comes home completely drunk and maybe a bit high too, he can't even make it to his office. Thankfully Reader is still awake, she takes care of him and Tommy just...melts at how gentle Reader is, he may be able to keep his distant while sober but it's much harder in his state. He admits to her how he's been feeling and all. Ever since that night, something changed, Tommy feels some comfort, some solace being around her, she accepts him wholly, even his flaws, the bad side of his business and she tries to provide some sort of safe place for when it gets too hard." (I edited the request because it was very long, but I kept all essential parts in there)

Author’s note: I loved loved loved writing this and it ended up being SUPER long, but I’m very happy with how it turned out. As always, I hope you like it and have the loveliest of days!

Warnings: season 3 SPOILERS sort of, but not really, still read at your own risk. Arranged marriage, mentions of alcohol and drugs, angst.

“Thomas, you may not be able to see it, but you’re breaking apart” Polly spoke with a sigh as she lit a cigarette after everyone was dismissed from a family meeting.

Everyone had left Tommy’s office in arrow house rather gaily after receiving their fair compensations for partaking in the whole Russian ordeal, all except Polly, who remained where she sat, wishing for a word with her nephew

Tommy merely scoffed at her concern before lighting his own cigarette and taking a puff “I’ll be alright”

“And Charlie?” Pol pressed knowing Tommy’s mourning was not only affecting him, but Charlie as well. “What about him?”

“He’s fine” He said before turning around to look through the window, ignoring his Aunt’s heavy stare.

“You take too much after your mother” she sighed half angry half sad “she too loved pretending everything was alright and I don’t need to remind you where that lead her”

Tommy sighed deeply, he knew he could fool anyone. Anyone but Polly. “We’ll manage”

“Consider my offer” Polly said standing up and making her way to the door “Y/n is a good girl from a good family” she persuaded before leaving the room.

Tommy sighed at his Aunt’s words, he wasn’t ready to get married again even when he knew the woman he would be marrying was a nice one. He felt like he was spitting on Grace’s grave and he hated himself for even considering the prospect, but he knew a mother figure would be good for Charlie.

He spent the rest of the day pondering about Polly’s suggestion and remembering his own childhood in the shadow of the absent tortured presence that his mother had been. It didn’t take him long to decide he didn’t want that for Charlie, so that same night he phoned Polly.

“I’ll do it” was all he said before hanging up. There was no need for more words, Polly would know exactly what he meant.

Exactly a week later, Tom was standing in the altar of a church that was significantly smaller than the one from his first wedding. The fact that everything about this wedding was so obscenely different from his first did soothe his guilt a bit. And as he stood there he couldn’t keep his mind from traveling to the days leading up to his wedding to Grace. She had made sure everything was perfect and had made an effort to invite every single relative she could think of. She remembered her rambling on an on about fabrics, insisting that everything ought to be perfect when he in all honestly couldn’t care less, he just wanted to marry her.

All his thoughts vanished away with a poof when Y/n came into sight. And what a sight she was. She had insisted on doing her own makeup and on pinning flowers to her hair to compliment her headpiece and her elegant, yet simple white dress flowed almost mystically as her father gave her away. She had never imagined she would be marrying someone she didn’t know, but she wanted to look her best for getting married is not something people do everyday.

When she stood in the altar, she offered her to be husband a smile which he did not return, instead turning his attention to the priest before them. She mirrored his actions, her heart beating violently under her chest as the priest began speaking.

It all felt like a blur, she could swear it had only been a second since her father had given her away and yet, the priest had already uttered the dreaded “you may now kiss the bride”

Tommy barely brushed his lips against hers and soon the sound of everyone clapping invaded her ears. They had a small party afterwards in Y/n’s former house. Her parents had invited pretty much all of their acquaintances while tommy had only invited his close relatives.

When night fell Tommy was more than ready to leave “Are you ready to go?” was one of the few sentences he uttered to his now wife that night.

She again offered him a smile before saying “yeah just let me say goodbye”

The drive to arrow house was tense, although Y/n didn’t know Thomas very well she would tell he was unhappy. She wondered about what to say to him, but couldn’t come up with anything good enough and soon enough they were pulling over in front of Tommy’s stately home.

“Charlie must already be asleep, but I'll introduce you tomorrow” he said opening Y/n’s door for her.

“It’s alright” she said looking at him, not quite knowing what to do next.

“Your parents sent some of your belongings, I've already asked the maids to take them up to your-our room” he said

“Thank you, Thomas” she smiled as she walked into the big house not yet feeling close enough to him to call him Tommy.

His name falling from her lips caused an echo of bittersweet emotions to stir inside him but he masked it perfectly well as she introduced Y/n to the maids that went to the door to take their coats.

“Frances here will show you the way to the room” he said after having made introductions.

“This way, Mrs” Frances politely said.

Y/n began following her but stopped when she didn’t hear Tommy’s footsteps behind her own.

“Are you not coming?” she asked turning to look at him.

“Maybe in a bit” was all he said before he walked away down one of the many spacious hallways of the house.

After Y/n made herself comfortable in the room and changed into her nightgown she took the time to peek around the room like one always does when one is a strange place. After familiarizing herself with it she laid down in the big bed. She was nervous, she knew what happened on wedding nights. A small chuckle stopped at her lips when she recalled the stories her close already married girlfriends told her. If she hadn’t married a complete stranger she too would be looking forward to it.

Her thoughts ended up luring her to sleep after a while despite her nerves and the night went by in a ridiculously fast flash. The next morning she woke up alone and after getting ready she made her way downstairs. Tommy and Charlie were already in the dining room when she entered it.

“good morning” she said

Charlie immediately turned his attention to her, his eyes widening while his dad merely glanced at her while he muttered a “Good morning “ of his own.

Y/n sat down next to Tommy while he cleared his throat “charles, this is Y/n. We got married yesterday so she’ll be living with us from now on”

Charlie merely nodded in understanding before playing around with his food.

A tense air flooded breakfast until Tommy stood up, having barely touched his food and spoke turning to look at Y/n “I have to go now, if you need anything feel free to ask Frances”

“Alright” Y/n replied feeling a bit disappointed, she would love to get to know him, but she already knew it was going to be difficult.

“I have to go too” Charlie announced in a timid voice, interrupting Y/n’s thoughts. Despite her disappointment she understood, maybe he was just shy and his dad just reticent. They had lost a wife and a mother after all.

The first few days after that, Charlie avoided her nearly as much as his father did and Y/n remained in lonely patience until one night Charlie’s cries interrupted her focus on the book that she had just bought. She rushed to his room and called out his name as she entered not knowing if the boy would be comfortable with her or not.

“What is it?” she asked worried as she knelt by his bed.

“I miss my mum” the boy confessed looking at her with teary eyes as he clutched his blanket.

Y/n felt her heart give a small ache at his confession and in an attempt to comfort him she spoke “She’s not really gone, you know?”

“She’s dead” the boy sobbed.

“but people who die, don’t leave us. Not really anyhow” she said hesitantly rubbing his arm. “just because we cant see them doesn’t mean they are not here”

“I miss seeing her” he continued.

“Oh but you can still see her”

“how”

“before you go to bed just think about her, then she’ll visit you in your dreams” Y/n spoke as if she was telling a fairy tale.

“really?” the boy’s eyes widened.

“really” Y/n confirmed “But you have to think really really hard”

“I’ll try” Charlie said having calmed down a bit.

“very well” Y/n said as she stood up, but Charlie’s voice stopped her.

“can you stay till I fall asleep?”

After that night, Charlie hardly left Y/n’s side and she felt much better with his company for she was sure if he wasn’t there keeping her on her toes all day she would fall into a depressive chasm induced by her husband’s absence.

On the rare moments he was home she tried to strike up conversation with him over breakfast or late at night when he came home and she was burdened by insomnia. But Tommy only humored her with a few short responses before excusing himself or turning to face the other side of the bed.

It wasn’t only the fact that he avoided her as much as he could, but he also made it a priority to exclude her at all times. She was never invited into family meetings or night’s at The Garrison so she thought it was a miracle when tommy didn’t oppose to her planning Charlie’s birthday party.

She invited only Tommy’s family which instantly warmed up to her, noticing what a good influence she was and Polly wanted to slap Thomas for the way he had been acting throughout his marriage to Y/n. Almost feeling guilty for getting her into this mess.

When the party ended Tommy shut himself in his office like he often did when he was at home and though he had never given Y/n a reason to believe she was welcome in there of all places, she found herself allowing herself in after putting Charlie to bed.

Tommy looked up as she entered and let out a sigh before turning his attention back to some papers he had been reading.

“I noticed you didn’t have any” she commented not letting his sigh deflate her as she laid a plate with a slice of homemade chocolate cake on his desk. “it’s really good if I may say so myself” she mused sitting down in a chair opposite to his as she dug in with a fork in her own slice.

“I don’t go in for sweets” he stated.

“Not even chocolate?” Y/n tried, but tommy didn’t answer, instead he just shook his head.

“I still think you should try it, it’s not overly sweet, and…”

“is there anything you need?” he interrupted bluntly a bit harsher than he would’ve liked.

His tone caught her off guard and when she couldn’t come up with an answer tommy again turned his attention back to his papers.

“I wish you could let me in” She softly confessed after a few tense seconds.

“Well I wish we hadn’t married but I guess things don’t always go the way we want them to go”

Tommy knew he had crossed a line by the silence that again settled into the room. He looked up at Y/n with her parted lips and misty eyes. They exchanged glances for a second but instead of allowing him to see her like that any longer, she stood up setting her plate on his desk and walked away, only allowing a few tears to drop by when she was out of the room and his sight.

After that she stopped trying to get closer to him. He still loved his late wife and she understood, people in grief never mean what they say after all, but his words stung nonetheless.

She stopped trying to wait for him at night to see if he had gotten home alright and during breakfast she only uttered polite good mornings.

One night however, Y/n was yanked out of a peaceful sleep by a loud crash. She was on her feet in no time and after checking into Charlie’s room to see if he was alright she cautiously ventured downstairs. A few incoherent mumbles filled her ears before her husband came into sight, fumbling with his coat to get it off.

“need help?” she asked earning his attention.

“I’m fine” he said finally taking it off but as he went to take a step to begin walking the floor under him moved and he lost his balance, his knees crashing loudly against the wooden floor.

Y/n offered him a hand and helped him up. He smelled of whiskey and cigarettes, his hands were shaky, consequence of the snow, no doubt. “let’s get you upstairs”

“I can do it on me own” he slurred letting go of her hand.

“stop being so stubborn” she derided, snaking one of her arms around his waist as she helped him upstairs.

Y/n helped him into bed, tookoff his shoes and went to the bathroom to fetch a small towel and some cold water.

She dampened the towel with the cold water before dabing it gently on Tommy’s forehead. His eyes never leaving her face as she did so, making her grow a bit nervous. She continued, trying her best to ignore it until she felt his hand softly caressing her cheek.

“You are beautiful” he rasped.

“Stop it, Thomas” she said feeling her cheeks grow red when she felt a bit sad that he had to be completely drunk to compliment her.

Even in his drunken state he seemed to notice he was making her uncomfortable so he held his tongue until Y/n laid in bed next to him after turning on the lights.

“I’m sorry” he interrupted the silence “For the way I’ve been acting” the whiskey and cocaine making him more vulnerable and open “I guess I was afraid that if I let you in then she would disappear”

He didn’t expect her to answer, but then her voice came in a soft exhausted tone“ I don’t intend to replace her. You don’t need to act all defensive and secretive. Even if it’s not what you wanted, we are married.”

“I Know” was all he said.

Y/n expected him to withdraw more from her after showing himself that vulnerable to her that night but she was wrong. He began arriving home earlier, sometimes even asking if he could come along on the walks she and Charlie so much adored going on. And Y/n finally felt her marriage was going somewhere maybe it wasn’t based on love yet, but it was something.

One day she was at the stables while Charlie was taking a nap. She had always adored horses.

“I didn’t know you liked horses” came Tommy’s smooth voice causing her to jump.

“You never asked” she smiled petting a black horse as he walked closer to her.

“We could go out for a ride, I’m sure Charlie wouldn’t mind letting you borrow his horse” Tommy offered as he too began to pet the horse, his fingers brushing against Y/n’s for a brief second.

“I’d love to, but I am afraid I don’t know how to ride, Tommy” she said, panicking for a second after having called him that. But she rested assured as soon as he spoke again.

“Well that can be fixed” he said opening the door of the stall and guiding the horse outside.

“You mean now?” Y/n asked with a laugh.

“Got something better to do?” he asked walking out of the stable with the horse. Y/n observed tommy as he prepared the horse. She had never seen him so gentle and calm before and she only realized she had been staring when Tommy directed his attention to her to ask her if she was ready.

“I think so” she said going to stand next to the horse wondering how the hell to climb up. But before she had any more time to think she felt Tommy’s hands on her waist giving her a push that allowed her to pull herself up on the animal. It was a good thing she had chosen to wear slacks that day, she thought.

“Goodness this is high” she said nervously looking down at Tommy when he began guiding the horse to move in a slow walk.

“Don’t worry, I won’t let you fall” he promised repressing a mirthful tone at her nervousness.

He guided the horse with her around the property in the crisp evening air and Y/n allowed herself to relax with every step the horse took. Tommy’s presence made her feel safe and protected and she found it increasingly harder to look away from his figure. She wondered if he could feel her eyes on him.

When the sky began turning soft shades of purple and orange the pair returned to the stables. When the time came from Y/n to come down from the horse, tommy helped her again. Y/n began to love the feeling of him touching her and when her feet touched the ground in front of Thomas, he didn’t remove his hands from her waist right away and instead fixed his blue eyes on her, not wanting to stop looking at her.

She too fixed her eyes on Tommy as she felt a silent gasp in the base of her throat. That was the way she would’ve liked him to look at her on their wedding day. Tommy then leaned in, almost as if he were asking for permission before he tenderly pressed his lips to Y/n’s.

@captivatedbycillianmurphy @peakyxtommy @nyotamalfoy @writeroutoftime @babylooneytoonz @slytherinicequeen @lilymurphy03

#tommy shelby request #tommy shelby #tommy shelby angst #tommy shelby fluff #tommy shelby imagine #tommy shelby one shot #tommy shelby x reader #thomas shelby request #thomas shelby one shot #thomas shelby fluff #thomas shelby x reader #thomas shelby imagine #thomas shelby angst #peaky blinders angst #peaky blinders request #peaky blinders x reader #peaky blinders one shot #peaky blinder one shot #peaky blinder imagine

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guzhuangheaven · 3 years ago

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Guzhuang Appreciation Month: badass dialogues

(but in the novel)

legend of ruyi :: ep 5 // ep 78

This drama is so amazing, demonstrated by these two scenes. Here you have Ruyi and Hongli watching the same play at two different stages in their lives. In episode 5, they are still clearly in love and are happy watching the play together, leaning lovingly against each other and moving in unison as one. They are also being watched fondly by Aruo, who has yet to have ideas of betraying Ruyi. Many years later, in episode 78, we have Ruyi and Hongli watching the same play, but they are physically far apart and their emotional distance from each other is also clear on their faces. They are literally being divided by the presence of Ling Yunche standing between them.

I find the parallel between the closeups of Aruo and Ling Yunche the most heartbreaking, because Aruo, despite how happy she looks for them in ep 5, would eventually try to break Ruyi and Hongli apart. And yet for all her efforts, she never succeeds because Hongli never actually believes her. On the other hand, Ling Yunche never tries to get in between Ruyi and Hongli, but just the mere presence of him is enough for Hongli to drive a wedge between himself and Ruyi. The presence of Aruo and Ling Yunche in this scene drives home the stark contrast in how the relationship has deteriorated between Ruyi and Hongli, and how Hongli went from trusting Ruyi despite all evidence against her to believing the worst of her despite no real evidence.

What is even more heartbreaking is the play they are watching. It’s not made very clear in the drama, but the plot of the play has great significance in the novel. The play they are watching is called 墙头马上 / Over the Wall and Atop a Horse. The play is based on the poem 井底引银瓶 Silver Vase at the Bottom of the Well by Bai Juyi.

The poem by Bai Juyi, writes of a broken relationship/friendship where two people once lived happily in harmony, then one person wronged the other, causing the other person to leave and never come back; the relationship is thus severed.

When the poem was adapted into the play 墙头马上 / Over the Wall and Atop a Horse, the play tells the story of Pei Shaojun falling in love at first sight with Li Qianjin when she was standing by a wall and he was on a horse riding by her house. The two then eloped, and lived together for seven years, having two children together, before they were discovered by Pei Shaojun’s father. Upon the discovery, Li Qianjin was condemned for getting into a clandestine relationship and Pei Shaojun caved to parental pressure and divorced her. She went back to her hometown. Many years later, after having achieved political success, Pei Shaojun went looking for Li Qianjin again, and just happened to discover that the two of them were actually engaged as children. In the play, they then reunited, got remarried and lived happily ever after.

There is however a plot point in the Ruyi novel, where Qingying does not like the ending of the play, feeling that the happy ending was forced. In the novel, Hongli and Qingying only know each other in passing at first. Then on the day that Hongli chooses his wives, Qingying is made to attend by her aunt. Before the selection ceremony, everyone is invited to watch a play, and Hongli chooses Over the Wall and Atop a Horse. Qingying, because she dislikes the happy ending, asks the theatre troupe to change the ending of the play so that in the end, Li Qianjin does not actually get back together with Pei Shaojun but stays firm in her resolve to end the relationship between them. After the play ends, Qingying leaves before the selection, but Hongli becomes intrigued by her changed ending and chases after her. This conversation below ensues, in which you can see clearly how Qingying’s belief on the matter stayed constant with her through the years. In fact, she practically predicts her own fate later with her changed ending.

~*~

Qingying stepped lightly ahead, her gown fluttering in the breeze like a white butterfly in flight. Aruo’s face was robbed of all colour and she was crying in despair. “Gege, what is wrong with you? Everything was well, why did you change the ending of the play? If Huang Hou Niang Niang hears about it, what will you do?”

Qingying shrugged. “At most, Aunt will just scold me a little. I just don’t like that ending. Today, I finally got to see how it should be played out. I’m so happy!”

“Gege might be happy,” Aruo said miserably, “but today is the consort selection. If Gege you are not chosen, then what would we do?”

Qingying’s aunt had already intended her to be the Third Prince’s bride, and now that was not successful, she should be pushed to the Fourth Prince instead? If they needed this one forced marriage to prolong their family’s glory, would that mean all women of the Ulanara clan were little better than slaves? It would be better this way. Regardless of whether she succeeded at being chosen to be a prince’s consort or not, she got to see things done her way, for once.

She only managed a few steps more when suddenly a voice called behind her. “Qingying Meimei!”

No one had ever called her that before. Everyone in the palace simply called her “Qingying Gege”. Curious, she turned her head to find that Hongli was chasing after her.

Thinking that he must wish to reprimand her, Qingying made herself as small as possible.

Hongli only laughed. “I chased after you to comfort you. Xiyue Gege was rude in speech, I feared that you would be offended.”

“Offended? About what?” Qingying asked in a low voice. “Fourth Prince, do you mean to mention the fact that I was rejected by the Third Prince?”

Hongli nodded, frowning. “I only fear such talk will destroy your reputation.”

Qingying laughed, all her teeth showing, against all rules of decorum, which seemed to astonish Hongli.

“I don’t care!” she declared. “There are many things that women can’t necessarily decide for themselves, such as marriage, or family. But at least, I can decide whether to mind those mocking talks, whether to care about them and let them hurt me.”

Hongli looked sad for a moment, whispering, “Your family…” But then he trailed off. Then, with a humourless smile, he said, “Over the Wall and Atop a Horse is the play I chose myself, why did you not like the ending and asked them to change it? I pick a plum blossom, lean against the wall. / You ride off among the bending poplars*. Is that not a lovely image?”

“Yes, it is very nice, it’s just…” Qingying thought a moment then said, “Over the wall and atop a horse we gaze at each other. / I know you, too, must be heartbroken*. From this beginning, the play is full of conflicts, ups and downs, all very compelling, yet in the end, there is a forced happy ending, everyone is forced to be happy, I really don’t like it at all.”

[* excerpts from the poem by Bai Juyi]

Hongli looked displeased, asking, “To be able to mend a broken mirror, husband and wife reunited and at peace again, is that not good?”

“When Li Qianjin was being insulted by Pei Shaojun’s parents, he did not protect her. He watched her leave in humiliation and did not stop her, as if all the love and years they shared did not matter. Such a heartless and weak man who dares not protect his woman, why would Li Qianjin want to get back together with him?”

Her voice was soft, but also full of conviction. Even though it went against Hongli’s beliefs, he wanted to keep her talking.

“To be reunited and together in harmony is the wishes of all families on earth. If Pei Shaojun is willing to start over, why would Li Qianjin not forgive him?”

“Why must a woman always forgive a man for his failings? Wouldn’t that teach the man that it doesn’t matter what hurt he causes? I don’t care, if he hurt her, she shouldn’t forgive him.”

“Women must be soft and gentle, and give into her husband. If she sacrifices a little, bears a little hurt feeling, they can be reunited, isn’t that happiness?”

“If she must be hurt, must sacrifice herself for this forced reunion, then it is already not a good marriage,” Qingying said stubbornly. “In my eyes, Li Qianjin is a woman who is willing to walk away, to severe the relationship, because all trust is gone.”

“If she walks away, wouldn’t that mean she spends the rest of her life alone? Everyone has their own difficult moments, if Li Qianjin is so stubborn, Pei Shaojun is put in a difficult position too.”

“Who isn’t in a difficult position?” Qingying asked. “If the woman can understand the man’s difficulties, can a man not understand a woman’s pain of being cast aside and humiliated?”

Hongli thought for a moment then laughed. “Qingying Meimei, you are much too unbending.”

Qingying merely nodded. “It’s better to live the rest of your life alone, rather than live to old age with someone who already betrayed you once. So it might be harmonious today, but if a conflict arises, what is to say Pei Shaojun will not just forsake Li Qianjin again? It is easy to change mountains**, that is the principle here.”

[** there is a Chinese saying that it is easier to change the course of rivers and shapes of mountains than to change the character of a person… aka old habits die hard but with more stakes.]

Hongli still did not agree with her logic. “Women should place obedience before all and be pliable. If she does not restrain herself and be more accepting for the greater good, then she would just suffer.”

“If one must accept being humiliated for a so-called happy ending, then I don’t want that kind of happy ending,” Qingying repeated.

“Then is Over the wall and atop a horse we gaze at each other so easily forgotten?” Hongli asked, astonished.

Qingyin turned and stared at Hongli. “If it is not easily forgotten, then why didn’t Pei Shaojun protect Li Qianjin? Hasn’t he too forgotten how they once loved each other when he cast her aside?”

Hongli could not argue against her, and finally admitted defeat. “Meimei, you really are something, I don’t know what else to say.”

Qingying laughed in delight.

“Meimei,” Hongli said, stepping closer to her, “you argued so animatedly, you must love Over the Wall and Atop a Horse. Why don’t we go back and hear the play again?”

Qingying hesitated, thinking that it would be a great loss of face if she were to return now. But Hongli was looking at her so earnestly, she found it hard to immediately refuse.

“I’ll go back first, and prepare good tea to wait for you.”

He said ‘wait’, as if he would not move the day along if she did not come. Her heart softened, and she suddenly stopped in her path.

…

[And then of course Qingying comes back to attend the selection. Hongli, who had originally intended to choose Langhua, changes his mind and chose Qingying to be his di fujin, but then Yongzheng interfered and put a stop to it… But the play is one massive foreshadowing plot device that doesn’t get explained much in the drama, but packs a punch when you read this scene.] -h

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oh-three · 2 years ago

Text

Incorrect Unit Arrel Quotes (Part 11) (with a special guest at the end)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Linaleh, to Vori and Tindri: “Tindri! Vori! Get over here!” Vori & Tindri: desperately look to Rakesh for help Rakesh: “You’re on your own.”

Tindri: “Have you ever thought about faking your own death?” Rakesh: “Nah, I’m too busy faking my own life.”

Tindri: “Must be hard not being able to laugh.” Rakesh: “I do have a sense of humor you know.” Tindri: “I’ve never heard you laugh before.” Rakesh: “I’ve never heard you say anything funny.”

*After narrowly escaping death* Vori: “I’m so happy I could kiss you!” Brakan, awkwardly: “Neat.” *Later, in Linaleh’s room* Brakan, head in hands: “I can’t believe I said ‘neat’! Who does that??” Linaleh: “That’s not that bad. Remember what I said when Tindri confessed to me?” Brakan: “Didn’t you thank her?” Linaleh: “I thanked her.”

Vori: “I think the Temple is haunted.” Rakesh: “Why?” Vori: “I keep hearing footsteps in the middle of the night.” Rakesh, knowing it’s just him sneaking around to get snacks: “Oh wow, that’s spooky.”

Tindri: “Jurr always looks so calm and composed, I don’t know how he does it.” Jurr, internally: "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.”

Rakesh, smugly: “Did it hurt? When I told you to google it and I was right?”

Brakan, on his phone at 4 AM: “Wow, a woman on Alderaan strangled her husband to death. Can you imagine just snapping like that?” Rakesh, trying to sleep: “Yes.”

Rakesh, returning home from shift: Vori: "How was your first day at school?" Rakesh: Vori: Rakesh: "One of us time-travelled."

Brakan, about Rakesh: “He’s covered in blood again. Why is it he’s always covered in blood?” Tindri: “Well, it looks like it's his own blood this time.”

Jurr: “You’re charged with…..breaking into a pet store?” Vori: "I thought the animals might be lonely.”

Tindri: “You don't think I can fight because of my gender!” Linaleh: “I don't think you can fight because you're in a wedding dress. For what it's worth, I don't think Rakesh can fight in that dress either.” Rakesh: “Perhaps not. But I would make a radiant bride.”

Brakan: "You know you cannot just survive only off of coffee right?!” Rakesh: takes a sip of his 4th cup today “Watch me.”

Tindri: “Adulting is hard.” Tindri: “How do I quit??” Linaleh: “Time travel.” Rakesh: “Die.”

Vori: “Help me with this crossword puzzle. I need a six letter word for disappointment.” Rakesh: “Tindri.” Vori: gasps Vori: “It fits!”

Rakesh: “I was going to make a list of all the people I hate, but it would take me too much time, so I took a picture.” Rakesh: sends map of the galaxy

Brakan: “Do you take constructive criticism?” Tindri: “No, only cash or credit.”

Loktof: “Wait, what was I doing?” Rakesh: “Uh, apologizing?” Loktof: “Really? That doesn’t sound like me…”

Tindri: “When I see initials carved into a tree with a heart I think it’s so romantic. Two lovers on a date…one of them carrying a knife for some reason.”

Rakesh: “Alright, which one of us is gonna check outside?” Linaleh: “Not it!” Vori: “Not it!” Rakesh: “...Neither one of you are as dumb as you lead on to be.”

Jurr: “Without ugly in this world, there would be nothing beautiful.” Tindri: “Thank you for your sacrifice, Jurr.”

Vori: "We are a great team because we’re so different!” Rakesh: “True, I’m always right and you’re always wrong.”

Vori: “We all have our demons.” Vori, grabbing Rakesh: “This one’s mine.”

Jurr: “You’re so well behaved.” Brakan: "Thanks, it’s the crippling anxiety and fear of letting people down.”

Rakesh: “Why are you smiling?” Tindri: “What, can’t I just be happy?” Linaleh: “She switched Jurr’s salt and sugar.”

Loktof: “I came out here to attack people and I'm honestly having such a good time right now.”

Rakesh: “Ah, Tindri, I got some good news and some bad new for you…” Rakesh: “Firstly, you are going to die!” Tindri: “Awesome, what’s the bad news?”

Rakesh: “Do you ever shut up?” Tindri: “Do you even say anything other than shut up to me?”

Vori: “Hey, Rak! How are you feeling?” Rakesh: “I haven’t felt anything in the last 19 years.”

Loktof: “Wait! Wait! Did you hear that?” Tindri and Linaleh: “No…” Loktof: “Ah, you missed it.” Loktof: "The sound of my sanity breaking into a million pieces.”

Rakesh: “Look, I’ve changed. I’m not the same person I was three years ago….I’m much worse now.”

Brakan: “If you get in trouble, I'm gonna be like...a lawyer to you. Ok?” Tindri: “Okay.” *later* Jurr: “Tindri! Sit down on the chair, you're in trouble.” Brakan, whispering: “Deny everything.” Tindri, loudly: “That isn't a chair.”

Tindri: “Jurr, in my defense, I simply do not vibe with the law.”

Jurr: “Slash gamemode creative.” Tindri: “Dude, this isn't Min-” Jurr: starts levitating

Ahsoka, casually there for all of it: “So, what’s for dinner?” Loktof: “Oh my god, we let you go 4 hours ago.”

#poor Jurr #they're all insane #especially Tindri #next one will probably have Trohr in it #but yeah anyway- Ahsoka #incorrect quotes #jedi temple guard #grand inquisitor #ocs #ahsoka tano

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jimlingss · 4 years ago

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It's B from @bang-tan-bitches and I would like to request a yandere fic. It can be BTS OT7 x reader or BTS member of your choice x reader. Similar to your amazing isekai story i would like something similar(a long one shot or a multi-chapter, your choice). Whether YN transmigrates to a game or a novel (not as a villain but maybe as a cannon fodder side character that has little importance to the story and just wants to lay low) but YN captures the attention of the love interest(s) and shit starts getting weird, intense, uncomfortable. Maybe it causes the supposed female lead to turn into the villain, maybe it causes the love interest(s) to turn into the villain(s). Maybe YN realizes that something is wrong with the story/game but can't figure it out. Idk. Time period doesn't matter. Modern. Ancient. Fairytale. Fantasy. Whatever.

If you can do this great! If you can't or don't want to, that's okay too. You're an amazing writer with so much talent and I'm really appreciative of all your work. Thank you for taking requests from your fans, I'm sure you've received a lot.

Take care! 😘💜💜💜

at the start of the pandemic, I was getting back into manga and manhwa and then after a few months, I dawdled off but recently, I’ve been getting back into it again haha so this request came at a pretty good time. Hopefully you won’t mind that I’ve taken some creative liberties with this request lol I think it’s more fun if I keep readers on their toes, including the requester.

On another note, I really shouldn’t be writing all my isekai’s with Taehyung as the main lead but he’s just so fitting asdfghjkl

↳ The Fox Bride

2.6k || 99% Light Fluff, 1% Angst || Kim Taehyung || Isekai!AU, Slight Yandere!AU, Nine-Tailed Fox!Taehyung

You are a tutorial character.

But you weren’t always. You still remember being a career woman in the twenty-first century, struggling with overtime and paying bills while trying to keep yourself fed. The success of that ranged from month to month. But more importantly, you still remember that night too.

It was rainy. Your car blew a flat tire. You pulled to the side of the highway and got out.

The last thing that registered was the deafening honk of the semi-truck.

Then you felt yourself flying upwards.

But when you landed, instead of colliding with the concrete and dying upon impact, you fell back onto your ass in the middle of a market on a dirt road. Transported back a thousand years ago.

Your purpose was fulfilled in the next two minutes.

“Are you alright?”

The male protagonist had stretched out his hand and helped you up. The hero. The main character. It was obvious with his bright red hair, shining eyes and bronze armour. He was so starkly different from the rest who were gray and drab, including you who was suddenly in a brown shapeless dress. He was practically a neon billboard in the middle of a graveyard.

“Are you Y/N?”

You looked at him, befuddled that he knew your name. But before you could even respond or provide a line of dialogue, he said, “This is a delivery from Baker Jeon. He gives you his thanks.”

The protagonists handed you a loaf of bread. Undoubtedly his first ever quest.

You looked down, not sure what to do with it.

“Do you know where the blacksmith is?”

You had absolutely no clue. But there was the deafening noise of hammering steel literally ten steps away. You would have to be blind not to see the gruff man shaping a sword at an anvil right on the road and deaf not to hear it. As if that wasn’t enough, the literal sign of the shop read: ‘the blacksmith’.

So you pointed.

“Thanks.” And he trudged off.

You were utterly confused until a background character who said they knew you waved you over. You shared your bread with her, brushed aside when she asked you what was wrong, and you followed her as she walked up to your supposed cottage.

All the while, you saw yourself in the background of the hero’s main quest as he ran through the town.

And that was that.

It wasn’t so hard to figure out where you were or what the hell this was when you put your mind to it. Without much of a job or a family, and no technology but the candle that you had to conserve when night fell, there was ample time.

So you spent it thinking and you eventually solved the mystery.

You were in Beast Boys Harem: A Forbidden Embrace. AKA. a dumb yaoi otome game app that you downloaded on your phone when you were sixteen and bored. You remember because you were too cheap to buy the routes, so you played the tutorial, prologue and read the summaries of the routes online. Now you regret that you didn’t just fork over the goddamn five dollars.

Even more than that, you regret that you even downloaded the game in the first place.

But at least you’re just a tutorial character. You’re free from the storyline and the plot—

That’s what you thought.

Turns out living a thousand years in the past in a fantasy realm as a woman didn’t bode well. It was probably no different from how it would’ve been like in the medieval ages. You had no trade skills. No one was willing to accept you as an apprentice when you were a woman. You found that you were essentially illiterate with a reading level of a preschooler, no one was willing to teach you, and you had no power or wealth when you were without a father or a husband.

And you’re certain what the landlord and tax-collectors are doing is illegal.

But in this world, in this unjust realm, there is no such thing as the law.

“We know you’re in there!”

You jolt from the heavy pounding on the frail wooden door.

“It’s time to pay up!”

Your hands tremble as you set the candle down that’s still billowing of smoke, the flame smothered out mere seconds ago. As much as you want to hide and pull the blanket over your head, you know that door won’t last. They’ll find you if you’re trapped in here.

“If you can’t, spread those legs of yours!” a low voice spits and there’s chortling from the men.

Someone adds, “Sell your body already!”

“Open up! Damn whore!”

Without a single possession but the white nightgown clad on your body, you open the latch of the back window. You cringe at the squeak, trying to keep your movements quiet before the door gives way.

You hoist yourself up onto the window ledge. The door bends with the strength of multiple clenched fists against it. Your feet touch the soft grass outside your cottage. The men shout.

And the door finally slams against the wall, hinges broken.

But by then, you’ve slipped into the shadows.

“Where is she?!”

The blanket is ripped off the bed, curtains are whipped back, every drawer dumped onto the ground and cupboards yanked open. The floor shakes with the weight of their boots and you press your palm to your mouth to silence your panting breaths, slowly stepping away.

“That damn whore slipped through us—!”

But as your shitty luck would have it, a sudden crack has the whole world coming to a standstill.

Shit. You look down at your feet, realizing that the snapping noise came from you stepping on a twig. And it’s exposed your hiding place.

“There she is!” — “Out the back window!”

You grab fistfuls of your dress and bolt.

“Get her!”

With your cottage on the edge of town, there’s nowhere to run but through the dense woods. It’s shrouded in the darkness, no doubt filled with wild beasts creeping through the thicket. The rustling canopy of the trees doesn’t allow the dim, waning moonlight to illuminate your path.

So you’re left blind. Struggling up the high incline of the forest, feet slipping on dirt and mud. But you keep sprinting with all your might, even when the pointed, coiling branches scrape at your calves until blood sheds and the hem of your dress tears in the underbrush.

“Run, little rabbit!” one of them mocks, “Run!”

The four men continue to give chase, gripping onto their roaring torches, shrieking and howling after you. One of them is manically laughing as if your efforts to flee only adds to the thrill. Their greased hands reach out to snatch you, but the tips of their fingers graze the ends of your hair.

Your teeth are sunk into the bottom of your lip, sobs breaking through your aching chest. Your lungs burn, dying for a break or moment of relief. But you don’t relent and luckily, you manage to build distance between you and the men. Only, that luck comes crashing down by a fucking hole.

A hole in the forest floor that you don’t see. That has your footing all wrong. That makes you scream and fall.

You twist your ankle in a direction it’s definitely not supposed to be in and cry from pain.

A second later, you force yourself to get up and keep running with tears flooding your eyes and dripping down your cheeks. But it’s more like limping than running, akin to hobbling on one leg and every movement has pain shooting from your swelling ankle.

The effort becomes futile. They surround you within minutes.

“All finished?” The tax-collector’s head cocks with a spreading grin. “You’re not going to keep running?”

Why couldn’t you just fucking die the first time?! Even if it was an awful death where you didn’t have time to prepare yourself or say goodbye to anyone, at least it would’ve been the end. At least you wouldn’t have to suffer.

But there’s no time to grieve. Or hate the new life you’ve been given. This is it. You have to keep going. You have to survive. By any means. You’re about to pick up a branch and uselessly wave it around at them, shout at them to stand back. Anything that you could do to save yourself—

“Who dares come onto my mountain?!”

There’s a deep timbre behind you. A husky voice that quivers the very core of the forest.

As if the wind has swept through, the trees and thicket rustle and it goes silent.

The men fall back onto their asses, some torches clattering to the ground. Their eyes have grown double in size, nearly falling from their sockets and their jaws have dropped to the dirt.

“I-It’s the nine-tailed fox!”

The man scrambles back.

“Demon!”

Another barely manages to get onto his feet. He turns around and lurches away while shrieking.

They all run. Scattering away as frantically as cockroaches when the light is flickered on.

From your spot on the ground, you turn around with wide eyes.

Amber irises meet your gawking and they practically glow in the darkness of the forest. He is dressed in a loose, white robe that’s draped over his frame, open to the middle of his chest. And over his honey hair, on the top of his head, his pointed golden ears twitch. By the torch fire still yet to die out, he is illuminated and his shadow is casted on the ground. The blazing flame warms his cold, sharp features.

He is the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen. In both worlds you’ve lived in.

And you know who he is.

Taehyung. One of the love interests of the hero. A seductive, sly creature that eventually coaxes the hero into selling him his soul to grant one of his wishes. But Taehyung grows to become an obsessed character that wants to do nothing but monopolize and possess the hero for himself.

That same Taehyung approaches you with his lip curled as you teeter to your feet.

“Run away, girl.” He leans close. “Before I eat you.”

“Stop!”

On sheer instinct and adrenaline, you push him back. Your palm shoves against his firm chest.

Taehyung stumbles back with his eyes becoming rounded. He looks down to where you had made contact against his body. “Did...you just touch me?”

“What?”

Taehyung’s head darts upwards and he captures your wrist in his hand, squeezing tightly. He tugs you in and on your swollen ankle, you stumble into him. Bodies flush against one another. Your face pressed to his warm chest. His arm coming around your waist to break your fall.

He is aghast.

“You’re not from this world.” Taehyung’s yellow eyes swirl as they gaze into you. “Where did you come from?”

…

It’s been three days.

“Wed me,” he begs for the seventy sixth time.

You don’t know why you’re keeping a count.

“No.”

You’re hugging your knees for warmth. The rice paper-paneled doors are slid open and letting in the chilly air. He doesn’t seem to be affected by the cold, but you don’t look at him for long.

You turn into the corner of his home while sitting on the tatami floors as if you’re putting yourself into time out. But you’d like to say it’s your privacy corner. It’s as private as this abode, which was basically one room, could get.

Taehyung sighs in frustration, placing his hand on his forehead. His teeth grit. “You’re only making this harder for yourself.” Your silence angers him more. “You can never leave.”

You turn over your shoulder to glare. “Even if I married you, you’d never let me leave anyway.”

Taehyung narrows his eyes on you and then smirks. “You’re right. Wed or unwed, I won’t let you out of my sight. You should feel grateful, girl. You’re the best human I’ve ever treated.”

You quietly scoff.

Maybe you should feel scared. Maybe you should tread more lightly. After all, he’s not a character to be trifled with.

But you know he needs you. That alone gives you power.

As a beast, Taehyung’s been trapped on this mountain by priests for centuries. The only way he can be free is by feeding off of sexual energy and breaking the barrier. But of course, they also cursed him to be unable to touch any woman in this universe.

You aren’t from this universe.

You jolt when you realize that while you were lost in thought, Taehyung’s crawled closer. He has a foxy smile, amber eyes searching your expression. “Maybe….maybe I’ll grant you a bit of freedom if you would just give into the temptation and let me have a taste of you.”

As cold as he looks, he is beautiful. He is mischievous when he smirks and sly when he speaks. You are utterly spellbound as you look into his irises. And the temptation he speaks of flickers in the warmth of your belly.

But you turn away.

“I already said we only do that kind of thing after marriage. And I will only marry someone I love.”

Taehyung draws back with an unamused scoff. “What a prudish world you’re from.”

He wanted you the moment you were brought to this house. With the intensity of his stare and your captivated state, you had let him pin you to his floor and you liked it. But then clarity came and you blurted that such an act only happens after marriage. A lie just to buy time.

You didn’t expect for the hero to arrive at Taehyung’s house the next day. With his red hair and bronze armour, he had gotten lost in the forest and knocked on the door. Before you could limp over and answer it, Taehyung jumped off the roof and confronted him.

The guy was thrown off the mountain within five minutes.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They were supposed to have a steamy rendezvous. Taehyung was supposed to get the sexual energy from him!

The story was going off the rails. And you’re not sure what you’re even buying time for anymore.

The both of you know it’s only a matter of time before you break and succumb to his mesmerizing seduction.

Taehyung is cruel, ruthless, obsessive.

But what’s the most bewitching thing about him is the jarring contrast of when he’s clumsy and nurturing. It’s what he regards as his own weakness. What he hides from others. But you felt your heart waver two nights ago when you were shaken awake in the middle of twilight. When you peeked open your eye to see him gingerly wrapping your swollen ankle with bandages.

He looked beautiful in the pale moonlight, ears, tails, sharp features softened—

“Ow!” You wince as he squeezes your ankle, right on your injury.

“You think too much in your head,” he says and looks at you. “What’s wrong?”

“It hurts.”

A sadistic smile tugs on Taehyung’s lips. He lets go, but only to lift your chin with his fingers. His plush lips are inches away, his breath warm on your skin and he gazes deep into you. “I won’t let you return to your world. I won’t let you run away. I won’t let anyone harm you.”

“You’re mine now.” Taehyung swears, “You’ll fall in love with me eventually.”

You gulp and he smirks.

The two of you know it’s only a matter of time.

#bts fanfic #bts scenario #taehyung fanfic #taehyung scenario #taehyung fluff #bts fluff #taehyung reader insert #taehyung x reader #taehyung fanfiction #LET'S GOOOO

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curiouschild · 4 years ago

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Twin Butterflies

|| Jean Kirstein x fem! reader one shot ||

Summary: You’re taking a private moment on the morning of your wedding day with butterflies in your stomach when it’s interrupted.

Warnings: f l u f f <3

____________________________

No one else stirred in the cabin you were renting for yourself and your bridesmaids. It must have been a little after 6 in the morning as you could see the promise of dawn on the edge of the horizon. The wood was cold beneath your bare feet as you headed down the hall. In the haze of the morning fog that misted your brain, an invisible string seemed to be tugging you towards a large oak door. As you approached it, your nerves crackled beneath your skin as you gripped the metal handle, pushing the door open.

In the middle of the room with several large gaping windows was an elegant draping of white tulle and lace giving off a faint luminous glow in the early morning light. Wandering over to your wedding dress, your hand dips into the fabric of the skirt as if you could find the promises you would be making with Jean Kirstein could be found in its depths to calm you on one of the biggest days of your life.

Basking in the elegance of the most beautiful dress you will most likely ever own, you began to think of your soon to be husband who was sleeping in another cabin with his groomsmen. The two of you thought it would be lovely to get married in a wonderful little clearing in the woods that was owned by the family of your friend and bridesmaid, Sasha Braus. There were a few cabins as well that she offered to let you and your fiancee stay in before the big day. It was all so incredibly generous of her to accommodate yourself and your fiancee.

Your lips tug upwards as you thought about Jean. Was he peacefully sleeping? Was he about to get up for his usual morning jog? Or maybe he was starting a breakfast for his friends since he always loves to cook for people he cared about.

These thoughts made your heart flutter as you realized the mornings to come would be spent experiencing any of these scenarios with him. The serenity of those thoughts were clouded by the increasing amount of butterflies humming in your stomach. Even though you knew that no matter what, today was going to be special.

A quiet *tap tap tap* on glass had you reeling from your thoughts. Your eyes flicked towards one of the large windows where the noise came from. Your face pinked when you found warm hazel eyes watching you. Jean smiled softly, waving at you from outside. You returned his smile, loosening the fabric from your hands as you made your way to open the window.

“Good morning beautiful,” he greeted. Up close you saw that he was wearing a simple workout tank and loose sweatpants hung low at his hips.

With no screen in the way, he propped his long arms on the ledge and leaned his head through the window. His considerable height made his eyes remain almost at the same level as yours even as he slouched.

“Hi there. This is a surprise,” you said.

“A pleasant one I hope,” he chuckled. He opened his palm up to you and you slipped your hand into his, enjoying the warmth of his touch. “I woke up before any of the guys and felt like going for a walk. I couldn’t help passing by your cabin. What a lucky thing for me to see my beautiful bride before anyone else on our wedding day,” he murmured as his eyes studied your face in awe. He seemed to love drinking in the sight of you despite your clearly just-woke-up appearance.

“It’s certainly lovely to see you before everyone’s buzzing around getting ready,” you agree, your free hand reaching up to softly trace his jaw. The pads of your fingers grazed stubble. “I can’t even believe I was able to sleep. I’m so nervous about today- I think the worrying woke me up.”

His brow crinkled at your comment. “Why are you nervous, love?” He cupped his hands around yours and his fingers began to massage the back of your hand in soothing circles. You pause for a moment as he continued to knead into your skin carefully as you considered the question.

“There’s two things that come to mind,” you start. “Firstly, that I’m going to trip down the aisle. I wonder if that’s every bride’s fear, honestly. It seems like such a long walk and even if we laughed it off what if I ruined the dress? Or worse, stumble and trip into someone like your mom?”

You thought for a moment Jean would laugh at you for coming up with silly what-if’s, but he only continued to press his fingers into your palm. His hazel eyes were slightly amused, but he only said, “And what is the second thing my bride is worried about?”

You inhaled slowly before saying, “Well.. secondly, I’m nervous everything will pass by in such a blur that I won’t take in the moment.”

At this, you could see his handsome face become sympathetic. When he didn’t say anything you went on, “It feels like I haven’t seen you much this past month and all of the last minute planning has felt like such an onslaught of emotional and mental energy to the point where I don’t remember much of anything. We went sent out invitations and suddenly we’re here. I don’t want today to flash by like our engagement has.”

Jean brought your hand to his lips and softly pressed them across your knuckles before he asked quietly, “Come with me?”

You glanced down at your small silken robe that barely hit the edge of your short pajama shorts. “In this? I don’t even have shoes on.”

Jean smiled. “We won’t go far, I promise.” He tugged his hand and you laughed a little and muttered a small “oh fine.”

He stepped back, keeping your hand in his as you began to slide yourself through the window sill. The grass was still dewey as the two of you walked shoulder to shoulder and hands intertwined.

The jitteriness you had been experiencing on and off were left behind as you let Jean lead you towards a hidden path behind the cabin. There was a calming stillness, and neither of you felt the need to say anything. Your eyes glanced over every now and again to Jean’s face. He was keeping his eyes up, watching the tops of the trees. When you two were younger, he was often chatty and talked about himself until he was blue in the face. When he joined the regiment, he changed from being self centered, to a man who would do whatever it takes to protect those he loves. It made him more reflective. Humble. And one of the most passionate people you had ever known.

It wasn’t long before you two arrived at the clearing where your ceremony would be held. This was the first time you had a chance to see the seats set up along the trail of stepping stones that marked the path you would be taking to Jean later in the day.

You almost forgot to breathe as you took it all in. Jean squeezed your hand softly. “I can’t believe I get to marry you here,” he said softly before he moved into the last aisle to take a seat. You joined beside him in the innermost chair.

The blush returned to your face and you couldn’t help pressing your cheek against him. “It feels wrong to be here before the ceremony starts.”

You felt his laugh in his shoulder. “That’s what makes coming out here fun. Besides, if I can take your worries about our wedding away, then it can’t be that bad.” His eyes wandered up to the alter ahead and the two of you basked in the silence for a few moments.

“I sure do love you,” he finally said, tightening his hand around yours. “I loved you for the last several years. And I’ll love you if we’re saying our vows in front of everyone, or if we say them right here in our pajamas and skip the entire ceremony.”

Your eyes widened and your laughter rang in the clearing. “We aren’t skipping out on the wedding!”

The corner of his eyes crinkled at your laughter. “I know, I’m just being reassuring. You know what I mean though.”

“You’re so cheesy,” you teased him, lifting your head to press your lips against his cheek

“And yet, you’re still here with me,” he mused.

You bit your lip a little bit. His endearing charm always made you feel a bit like a school girl. “I couldn’t see myself here with anyone else.”

He rolled his eyes. “Now who’s the cheesy one?” He bumped his shoulder against your playfully. His hand left yours so he could wrap his arm around you.

“You told me earlier you’re nervous about walking up the aisle.”

You nodded shyly.

“Well, let me tell you that if you trip, I’ll just come to you.”

“No!” You quickly exclaimed. “That would emphasize the embarrassment.”

He smirked a little. “Then I’ll just have to trip on my way to helping my future wife. Then all of the attention will fall on me. And as far as you tripping into someone like my mom, it would be okay.”

You groaned at the thought. “If I trip into anyone I will die on the spot.”

His lips pressed into your temple affectionately. “I can’t let that happen. If you trip and fall into anyone, I’ll run to you in the aisle. I can just grab your hand and we’ll run away together. If your dress is ripped, I’ll carry you as we book it out of here.”

You shook your head, unable to stop grinning picturing him doing everything he can to help you in these imaginative situations.

“As for fearing about today going by in a blur,” he went on, his head turning to gaze into your eyes lovingly. “I think starting the day with just you is keeping me rooted in the moment. Wouldn’t you agree?”

He pressed his nose sweetly against yours and you felt any last of your butterflies quiet. It was quite something to remember the glow of your love for each other.

“I’m jealous that you haven’t had anxiety like I have. You’ve been so comforting.”

Pulling back, you were surprised to see a gentle flush in his face.

“Oh I’ve got my own butterflies, but for you I can ignore them.”

You tucked your head into the crook of his shoulder once more and you felt his head rest over yours.

“Well let me comfort you this time. What is my sweet Jean afraid will happen on our special day?”

“That our friendly neighborhood suicidal maniac is gonna do something stupid at our wedding,” he grumbled.

Through your giggling, you managed to say, “That’s what you get for making Eren a groomsmen.”

You heard Jean let out a scoff. “I knew you couldn’t sympathize,” he said in an exaggeratedly hurt voice.

The two of you talked and laughed together a little longer as sunlight danced over the tops of the trees. And in the moment, there was only the bond between you and Jean with the rest of your lives ahead of you.

#jean kirstein #jean kirschtien #jean kirstein x reader #jean kirstein x you #jean kirschstein x reader #jean kirschstein x you #jean kirstein one shot #jean kirstein fluff #aot #attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #snk #listen yall i was in my FEELS this week #and needed a pick me up #jean kirstein one shots have been my main comfort drug #also I didn’t know what I was gonna name it so there

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starksinthenorth · 3 years ago

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Musings on ASOIAF Ladies and Ambition

I’ve noticed people use “ambition” to describe Sansa and Daenerys as if it’s a bad word or an insult (often called “power hungry”). Yet in the text of the series, neither of them are shown to be ambitious people as a core characteristic. I blame the series for a lot of this, because it failed to explore the internal dialogue of Sansa, Arya, and even Cersei, who ends up more humanized than either of them by the end (because of the maybe baby).

Cersei Lannister is the classic ambitious ASOIAF lady, whose point-of-view is introduced in perhaps the most iconic sentence of any introductory chapter:

She dreamt she sat the Iron Throne, high above them all.

I can’t think of a sentence in ASOIAF that better introduces the internal thoughts and view of its leading character.

In comparison, Sansa’s first sentence is receiving news about her father’s whereabouts, Daenerys is shown her new dress to meet Drogo, and Arya has crooked stitches again. Arya’s works to frame her relationship with Sansa and her internal struggle to fit the feminine Westerosi mold, while Sansa and Daenerys are setting up plot points. None of these interactions signal ambition, bad or good. Daenerys did not arrange her wedding, Sansa is just told the information by her Septa, and while Arya is aspiring to have straight stitches, that’s hardly an ambitious goal for a girl of nine.

Fans rarely, if ever, deny Cersei’s cruel, cold, often stupid ambition. In fact, it’s one of the reason people seem to love her. She’s internally open about what she wants - power - and when she wants it - now:

All of them are burning now, she told herself, savoring the thought. They are dead and burning, every one, with all their plots and schemes and betrayals. It is my day now. It is my castle and my kingdom.

- AFFC, Cersei III

The rule was hers; Cersei did not mean to give it up until Tommen came of age. I waited, so can he. I waited half my life. She had played the dutiful daughter, the blushing bride, the pliant wife. She had suffered . . . She had contended with Jon Arryn, Ned Stark, and her vile, treacherous, murderous dwarf brother, all the while promising herself that one day it would be her turn. If Margaery Tyrell thinks to cheat me of my hour in the sun, she had bloody well think again.

- AFFC, Cersei V

Cersei is the definition of a power hungry lady, scheming and cheating at every point. Yes, Sansa learned from her, but most of Sansa’s internalized lessons of Cersei’s were to do the exact opposite.

"The night's first traitors," the queen [Cersei] said, "but not the last, I fear. . . . Another lesson you should learn, if you hope to sit beside my son. . . . The only way to keep your people loyal is to make certain they fear you more than they do the enemy."

"I will remember, Your Grace," said Sansa, though she had always heard that love was a surer route to the people's loyalty than fear. If I am ever a queen, I'll make them love me.

- ACOK, Sansa VI

Cersei isn’t the only POV character who views herself outside of conventional Westerosi standards and aspires to something beyond being a wife and mother. Arya Stark has ambition writ clear on the page, though it is not so cold or denying other people their rights or chances. Compared to Cersei, Arya doesn’t want everything, crown and throne and kingdom and all. She just wants something, and even that is denied to highborn women in Westeros. Even when she asks her father about her future, a man who wants to do right by his children and loves them, Eddard Stark is blinded by Westerosi patriarchy:

Arya cocked her head to one side. "Can I be a king's councillor and build castles and become the High Septon?"

"You," Ned said, kissing her lightly on the brow, "will marry a king and rule his castle, and your sons will be knights and princes and lords and, yes, perhaps even a High Septon."

- AGOT, Eddard V

With Arya in this, I see some parallels to Elaena Targaryen, who was so good at math and management she served as the secret Master of Coin while her husband carried the title. Elaena was “more willful than Rhaena, but not as beautiful as either of her sisters,” yet is also said to have been “more beautiful at age seventy than at age seventeen,” growing into herself like Arya is expected to. They both even cut their hair, Arya to hide her gender and Elaena to hide her beauty, both instances to gain freedom from captivity in the Red Keep.

Despite both these examples of ambition - Cersei’s all-encompassing, without care for how it affects the realm, and Arya’s attempt to find a place in the world outside the Westerosi model - it still becomes an insult when people speak of Daenerys and Sansa.

Critics claim Sansa is ambitious, and negatively so, because she “wants to be queen.” But this criticism misses a vital point of Sansa’s character. Unlike Cersei, she does not want to be queen because of the power and political influence, but because she will be living a song. In the start, Sansa’s got her head in the clouds, not to the dirty world of politics. Her very first chapter lays out this motivation incredibly clearly:

All she wanted was for things to be nice and pretty, the way they were in the songs.

When she thinks of Joffrey and being in love with him, it’s because he’s “handsome and gallant as any prince in the songs” (AGOT, Sansa II),

Alternatively, it has been said that Sansa is ambitious because of her claim to Winterfell. But compare how Sansa thinks of her claim to how Big Walder Frey does. Despite being far down the inheritance line, he is certain he will someday possess the Twins. He’s likely willing to kill his family to become Lord of the Crossing, and already has killed Little Walder.

In comparison, Sansa isn’t the one who realizes her claim as heir to Winterfell, even after her two younger brothers are believed dead. It’s Dontos who mentions it, and after she still thinks that Robb will have sons to inherit.

But she had not forgotten his words, either. The heir to Winterfell, she would think as she lay abed at night. It's your claim they mean to wed. Sansa had grown up with three brothers. She never thought to have a claim, but with Bran and Rickon dead . . . It doesn't matter, there's still Robb, he's a man grown now, and soon he'll wed and have a son. Anyway, Willas Tyrell will have Highgarden, what would he want with Winterfell?

- ASOS, Sansa II

Sansa’s not ready to kill Bran and Rickon if they show up. Her arc is about taking off the rose-tinted glasses and seeing reality, but also working to make reality like a song. For example, her idea of the Tournament of the Winged Knights for Sweetrobin. It’s a song come to life, all by her making. TBD how the ending goes, of course, but it shows that trajectory.

And finally, Daenerys.

Daenerys is not driven by some lifelong desire to win and dominate. She’s forced into it, a la Brienne’s “no chance and no choice.” If Daenerys were raised in a stable environment, I have a feeling she’d be much more like Sansa: dreamy, hopeful, sweet and studious. Happy.

But instead, her eyes are open.

When she’s introduced as a character, she shows an awareness for the schemes and politics of the world. She knows her brother is called the Beggar King in the Free Cities, and is doubtful of the smallfolk’s secret toasts to Viserys III that Illyrio Mopatis claims happen across Westeros.

Like Sansa and Cersei, there’s evidence of her goals, hopes, and wishes in the very first chapter:

"I don't want to be his queen," she heard herself say in a small, thin voice. "Please, please, Viserys, I don't want to, I want to go home."

. . .

Dany had only meant their rooms in Illyrio's estate, no true home surely, though all they had, but her brother did not want to hear that. There was no home there for him. Even the big house with the red door had not been home for him.

Daenerys remembers home as the house with the red door in Braavos. It’s her brother whose only home and stability was the Red Keep, not her.

Throughout her journey of power to take back the Seven Kingdoms, she is doubtful at every turn and most of her wishes are for happiness, for peace, for stability.

Dany had no wish to reduce King's Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts. She had supped enough on tears. I want to make my kingdom beautiful, to fill it with fat men and pretty maids and laughing children. I want my people to smile when they see me ride by, the way Viserys said they smiled for my father.

- ACOK, Daenerys II

A queen I am, but my throne is made of burned bones, and it rests on quicksand. Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros?

- ADWD, Daenerys II

Even later, Daenerys is determined to bring peace to the lands she currently rules. She does plan to return to the Seven Kingdoms, but it’s not driven by pure ambition. And this is, notably, from a conversation when Prince Quentyn Nymeros Martell asks her to come back and claim them now, saying she has allies for that conquest. And still she turns him down, with promises that it will only happen eventually:

"Daenerys said. ". . . .One day I shall return to Westeros to claim my father's throne, and look to Dorne for help. But on this day the Yunkai'i have my city ringed in steel. I may die before I see my Seven Kingdoms. Hizdahr may die. Westeros may be swallowed by the waves."

- ADWD, Daenerys VII

And yet in both Sansa and Daenerys, these visions and hopes for the futures they might have are considered unbridled ambition, although they turn more on happiness and peace for themselves and their people, rather than the type of ambition Cersei has, which is clearly her own power and being heralded above everyone.

Daenerys’ thoughts in her sixth chapter of ADWD have the same energy as Sansa’s “I will make them love me.”:

"A queen must know the sufferings of her people."

. . .

A queen must listen to her people, Dany reminded herself.

Daenerys has figured out how to make her people love her, by wearing her “floppy ears” and appealing to the masses, listening to them, et cetera. She’s also a bit ahead of Sansa in the realm of ruling, to be sure.

But how are these similar thoughts ambition in either of them? It’s an attempt to empathize and connect, not to throw away and disregard and rule by force and domination. Both these ladies are more nuanced, and the fandom does them a disservice by painting them as ambitious or power-hungry when at the end for both of them, it’s a desire to have a happy, stable, loving life.

#asoiaf meta #sansa stark #daenerys targaryen #cersei lannister #arya stark

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justthehiddleswrites · 4 years ago

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Anesthesia | Tom Hiddleston x Reader

Pairing: Tom Hiddleston x Reader

Summary: Tom suffers a serious car accident and the reader is the nurse on duty in the ER. Tom and anesthesia don't mix and Tom acts very out of character. Can Tom regain his composure or will he continue to shamelessly flirt with the reader? And is Benedict going to work all of this to his advantage?

Warnings: Car Accidents, Hospitals, Anesthesia Makes people act crazy, Tom quoting Shakespeare

“Tom?”

Tom’s eyes fluttered, and he blinked several times, adjusting to the bright white light.

“Nurse! He is waking up!”

Nurse? Waking up? Tom reached out and cold metal hit his hands. Safety rails. The air was cool, dry, and sterile. As he attempted to sit up, he felt a cold air hit his bare back.

“Hey buddy, lie back down. You gave us quite a scare,” the familiar voice reassured him as he lowered himself back down to the bed.

Tom turned his head to the sound and once he saw Benedict’s face he smiled. Ben smiled back.

“Welcome back to Earth, Tom.”

“Thanks, what happened?”

The last thing Tom remembered was climbing into the stunt car to rehearse the big action shot. After that, it was just flashes of fire, screams and sirens.

“The brakes failed and the stunt coordinator doesn’t know what happened. But the important thing is you got out alive.”

Tom attempted to sit up again and felt winces of pain throughout his body.

“What was the damage?”

Benedict looked down.

“To you or the car?”

“The car… of course me! I feel as though a Mack truck hit me.”

“You are not far off. You broke your clavicle, wrist, and a few ribs. Um… lacerations everywhere and a… a ruptured spleen.”

Tom twisted to see his friend’s face better and felt the stitches and bandages strain. He winced at the sharp pain on his left side. Benedict hit the call button and in minutes, the nurse arrived.

She smiled as she approached the bed.

“Feeling pain?”

Tom nodded.

She looked at your chart before adding some pain meds to Tom’s IV.

“That should do. I would suggest lying down and the doctor should be in about twenty minutes.”

Tom thanked her and couldn’t help but notice her gazing over her shoulder as she left the room. Her smile barely contained her giggles. Tom’s eyes widened.

“Do they know who I am?”

Benedict averted his eyes and rose from the chair, feigning interest in the generic artwork on the wall. Tom narrowed his eyes at the clear avoidance of the question.

“What are you not telling me?”

“Oh boy, you don’t remember anything when you got here, do you?”

Tom shook his head.

“No, what happened?”

“You were in a lot of pain. Tell me have you ever been under anesthesia before?”

“Maybe, once or twice…” Tom questioned, but then he stared his friend down for answers.

“What did I say, Ben?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Yes, I do. Sit down and tell me, and I will decide if you live or die.”

Dejected, Ben returned to the chair and let a sigh out.

“I’m sorry, Tom.”

Four Hours Earlier

The gurney burst through the ER doors just fifteen minutes after you started your shift. Emergency room shifts are never boring but physically and emotionally draining. You put down your cup of coffee and headed in to assess the patient.

A man lied, groaning on the gurney. His face covered in scrapes and blood staining his ginger whiskers. His left wrist sat at an unnatural angle and his shirt cut away by the paramedics to administer help.

“Car accident,” the EMT relayed, “stunt gone wrong.”

A specific hazard unique to Los Angeles. They wheeled him to the examination room and put him onto the bed with care. He wore a C-collar, but the jostling stirred the man. His eyelids fluttered open and his blue eyes work to focus on his surroundings.

“Hey…” you looked down at his chart, “Tom. How are you doing?”

“Pain.”

“I know you are in pain, but where?”

Tom gestured to the left side of his abdomen.

“Okay.” You grabbed some morphine and added it to his IV. “Any allergies?”

He shook his head.

“Anyone come with you?”

As if on cue, Benedict pulled back the curtain.

“I did.”

You recognized the man standing before you. Benedict Cumberbatch was quite the movie star.

“Really?” You attempted to keep your cool. This was no time for fan girling.

Within minutes, Benedict could communicate the information about not only the accident but Tom’s medical history as well. It had all been on file with the production company.

The doctor came in and did a quick examination.

“We need to get a CT scan and X-rays. Looks like there may be internal injuries.”

You nodded as you prepared to wheel Tom down the hall.

“Ready to go for a ride?” you asked.

Tom nodded and gave a goofy smile.

“What’s your name?”

“Y/N.”

“Y/N, Y/N. That’s a beautiful name. My name is Tom Fucking Hiddleston.”

The drugs were doing their job.

“Nice to meet you, Tom. We will take you for some tests.”

“But I didn’t study!” he sounded dismayed.

You could not suppress your laugh.

“I think you will be fine.”

Tom grabbed your hand and looked up at you, tears in his eyes.

“Will you help me study?” he asked with a serious tone.

“Of course.”

Tom continued to babble on for the rest of the trip to imaging. He spoke about how nice you smelled and how pretty your eyes look. The full court press of flirting. As you reached the room, you and the other nurse lifted Tom onto the machine.

“Here you go.”

Tom grabbed your hand once again.

“Please don’t leave. I’m scared of the dark.”

While his words spoke of her fear, his eyes and smile said something else.

“Are you flirting with me, Mr. Hiddleston?”

His smile only grew.

“Is it working?”

You leaned in to his ear to whisper, “No, but the drugs are.”

Tom pouted.

“Not fair.”

“But you are cute.”

His face lit up once again.

“I came, saw and overcame.” Tom was being dramatic.

At that point, the other nurse started up the machine, and you walked away to let the rest of nurses to care for his needs. After his scans, you headed back to the waiting area. You found Benedict pacing the floor in anticipation. His long fingers alternating between steepling in front of his face and raking through his hair. As you approached, you cleared your throat.

“Yes?” his voice shared a tone of concern and hopefulness.

“A few broken bones but the big thing is that his spleen has ruptured. He needs surgery right away.”

Ben’s face fell.

“Will he be okay?”

You nodded.

“He will make a full recovery. Would you like to see him before they send him in to operating?”

You led Ben back to where they were prepping Tom for surgery. The anesthesiologist added drugs to the IV and Tom was now in a full hospital gown. His tattered rags of clothes in the garbage.

“No fair!” Tom bellowed as you entered with Ben throwing the thin sheet over his legs. The two of you shared a knowing look, “You have seen me naked but I have not had the chance to see you naked.”

You leaned into Benedict.

“It would seem that the medicine does not agree with your friend,” you smirked.

“Oh, I don’t know, I rather like him like this, so not proper. So not Tom Hiddleston.”

You smiled as you looked upon Tom who, in vain, tried to cover his body. Even loopy on drugs, he charmed and warmed your heart.

“I will leave you to it.”

As you turned to leave, Tom shouted at you.

“I love thee, Y/N. By which honor I dare not swear thou lovest me, yet my blood begins to flatter me that thou dost, not withstanding the poor and untempering effect of visage. And therefore tell me, most fair Y/N, will you have me?”

You suppressed a small giggle.

“I will see you later,” you let them both know as you shut the door.

As soon as the door latched, Tom grabbed Benedict’s arm and pulled him down close.

“Ben! Ben! Have you met my wife?”

Benedict screwed his face up with confusion.

“The nurse? That is just the drugs talking, Tom. You barely know her.”

“Nonsense. She will be my wife and you shall be my best man.”

Benedict looked at Tom with an exasperated face but Tom’s only contained earnest. With a chuckle, Benedict conceded.

“Very well, Tom. I will be your best man.”

Tom slapped Benedict’s shoulder.

“That’s the spirit. As my best man, I require you to acquire my future bride’s number.”

Benedict could not resist at this point to play along with his friend’s drug-addled fantasy.

“I will, on one condition.”

“Name your price.”

“Name your firstborn after me.”

“Consider it done.”

“Then consider the number yours.”

Tom’s face beamed and as if on cue, the nurses came to wheel Tom into surgery.

***

“Oh dear, God. I quoted Shakespeare.”

Tom hung his head and his face and neck turned a bright shade of red.

“Yep. The Henry the Fifth wooing speech too. Honestly, it was one of your better performances. Might I suggest doing all your roles drugged from now on.”

Tom shot Benedict a withering look.

“Ha ha. Very funny. I can’t show my face to her again.”

At that moment, the door opened, and you entered. The color drained from Tom’s face, while the smile grew on Benedict’s.

“Y/N!” Benedict cooed, “We were just talking about you. So nice of you to stop in.”

Your shift ended half an hour ago, but you wanted to check in on Tom before going home. Today was not the first time a patient hit on you, although they are usually not an award-winning actor with a penchant for quoting Shakespeare. But, you would remain ever the professional. You checked the chart before wishing the two men well.

As you turned to exit, Benedict walked you out.

“Thank you, Y/N for attending to Tom.”

“My pleasure. Even under the influence, he is quite charming.”

Benedict took this opportunity.

“Speaking about that…”

3 years later

“Tom!”

You yelled down the hall of your London home, beckoning your husband. At six months pregnant, getting up and down was no easy task. Tom rushed to your side. He gave you his arm and with a rocking start; you extracted yourself from the chair.

“Thanks, darling.”

“I am at your beck and call.”

You rubbed your swollen belly as you waddled your way down the hall. Tom followed you to the kitchen.

“Now about names for this little young man here.”

Tom grew ashen. He thought he could avoid this conversation, but it seems his luck had run out.

“Yeah, I have I mentioned today that I love you.”

Tom kissed your lips, and you looked at him with distrust.

“What have you done?”

Tom smiled and rubbed his neck, a nervous habit.

“I may have promised to name the child after Benedict.”

Tom flinched.

“You what? Why on earth would you do that?”

“It was for a good cause.”

“Which was?”

“Your phone number.”

With that, Tom took off down the hallway. You smiled as you walked with much effort behind him.

“We are NOT naming our child after breakfast food!”

You heard Tom’s laughter fill the house.

#tom hiddleston #tom hiddleston fanfiction #tom hiddleston fanfic #tom hiddleston x reader #tom hiddleston imagine #tom hiddleston fluff

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foolgobi65 · 4 years ago

Text

varshadhara

one.

Sita has been married a year when there is news of a drought, cloudless skies that refuse to darken and dust that does not become soil. 20 villages chose a single representative to beg for aid from the Emperor himself, and Sita’s husband is drawn when he finally enters their bedroom that night.

“They are dying,” he says quietly, a confession that even later Sita is never sure he meant for her to hear. His eyes close as he begins to remove the ornaments that mark him the eldest, the favorite son, heir to all his father has conquered. Sita, seated on the bed, watches as her husband looks down at the ruby necklace whose clasp he has just undone and calculates how many meals he could buy with what lies so easily in his palms.

“Years,” she confirms, hands playing with the edge of her cotton upper cloth for want of something to do. Her voice startles them both, somehow too loud and too soft for the strange hush that has fallen on the palace so many hours after sunset. “But only because the jewelry you wear is more precious in this city for having been yours.”

He looks up, curiosity a glint in his eye and hands at the heavy earrings the Emperor insists on for court. He seems glad to see her. “Would it help?”

“Yes,” she says, ignoring the way her heart clenches to hear the hope in his voice, “for now. But what about in a year, should the drought continue?”

Her husband glances at the chest which keeps his gold, the fruit of a generation’s worth of tribute from kingdoms that span the earth.

“What a tragedy,” he drawls, fingers slowly teasing out the crown from the wonderful tangles of his hair, “to lose all these heavy jewels in pursuit of my duty as king.”

Sita startles into laughter and reaches out to take her husband’s burden, ignoring the surprise that flickers briefly across his features. He is always so surprised and then so grateful for what to Sita are the smallest morsels of tolerance. She does not think about why this might upset her. “And as my Lord’s faithful wife,” she says cheerfully in response, “I suppose it would be my duty to donate my ornaments as well.”

Both of them linger on Sita’s wrists, the ones she keeps nearly bare save the one golden bangle around each that at least proves her a wife. They smile: tragic indeed.

“My father has proclaimed that the drought stricken will not pay tribute,” Sita hears hours later, low in the moments before she finally closes her eyes, “but there must be something more we can do to help.”

She could live like this, she thinks, at the moment she slips over the edge between the worlds of life and dreams. Sita is content. This could be enough.

----

two.

By now all of Ayodhya must know that Janaki, foundling daughter of the Videhan king, was not expected to marry -- the year that she has spent in the blessed state so far has been tumultuous, to say the least. She grew up a goddess, but more than that she grew up sheltered from palace politics and finds herself embroiled in more than one controversy due to her own ineptitude.

Her sisters, each of them younger than Sita, were married to her husband’s three brothers before they became women true and so are kept as maidens in the palaces of their individual mother in laws: far from their eldest sister who lives, as is traditional, in the rooms of her husband.

What would they say, Sita wonders, if they knew their sister to be equally virginal only weeks before the first anniversary of her wedding?

Sita sets the ceremonial platter on top of a stool and kneels, gently picking up the woolen blanket covering her husband as he sleeps on the floor. The difference in temperature, they have both realized, is usually enough for him to wake and so it is today when his eyes open. Together they fold not only the blanket that covered him but the two others that make what serves as his mattress on the ground, one of her husband’s many concessions to his ungrateful, accidental wife.

“I was never supposed to be married,” she had whispered the night of their consummation, tears streaming down her face and tone as possibly close to a shriek while knowing that servants listened at the door. “I know nothing of how to manage a royal household, much less satisfy a husband!”

The black rimming her eyes must have mixed with her tears, leaving Sita a fright. The combined talents of Ayodhya’s finest ladies-in-waiting ruined by the anxieties of a girl utterly unsuited to serve as their canvas. Sita’s husband, a man who wielded enough power at 16 to force each of Sita’s baying, blood-lusting suitors -- some of them thrice her husband’s age -- to their knees in supplication, had barely walked into the room when confronted with the sight.

“I did not need the protection of a husband,” Sita had said then, back turned. “I would have died before any of those lechers disguised as failed suitors tried to touch me.” She choked back a sob. “It would have been better for us all if I had.” Years later her husband confesses that sometimes he still hears her like this in the moments before he falls asleep, even when they have spent more years than not tangled as one in bed. Sita never tells him how close it all was in the end, how tightly she was gripping the knife when someone heard that a young anchorite had not only lifted, but broken the Great God’s bow. But on her wedding night, when Sita opened her eyes it was to the sight of her husband, his own blade drawn. She flinched, but he only raised his own palm and ran the edge against skin to draw blood.

“A woman,” he said in answer to her unvoiced question, “is supposed to bleed on her first night. The washerwoman will be paid handsomely for her knowledge in the morning.”

Sita flushed, shoulders straightening of their own accord at the implication.

“And as a virgin bride myself, I will bleed as any other” she said, hands fisted at her side in brief, overwhelming rage. “My reputation does not need you to shed blood on my behalf.”

Her husband had only nodded, moving towards the side of the bed opposite to where Sita sat in order to smear his palm once, twice, thrice until he seemed satisfied with his handiwork.

A million questions ran through Sita’s mind. “I hope your sleep is restful,” was all her husband said in response, grabbing a blanket from the foot of what was to be their marital bed and arranging himself on the floor.

Nearly a year since, Sita’s knowledge as to the running of households has not increased, nor, she suspects, has her knowledge regarding the satisfaction of her husband. He keeps long hours, spending as much time away from his wife as possible. The people of Ayodhya, used to the years that might have passed between visits from their woman-drunk sovereign, are enthralled by the near constant access to their Crown Prince, and this during the years when it is acceptable, nay even appropriate to be devoted to naught but one’s own pleasure.

The women of the palace, caught between their desire to honor their collective son and their need to denigrate his strange, uncouth wife, stay silent.

----

three.

“In Mithila,” Sita’s husband begins, breaking their easy silence that has fallen over this morning meal, “what would you do in times of drought?”

Sita startles, the palm frond she was using to keep away insects as her husband ate, slipping to the ground. Though they can now speak of many things, they have never spoken of Mithila -- it is encouraged for new brides to sink themselves fully into the environs of their new, forever home. In this, at least, she is like every wife before her: the ways of her past can have no place in her present. Every day she must attempt to forget who she once was.

“I am only a girl,” Sita answers carefully, eyes lowered as she was told women do. “Such a question may be better answered by my Father, or one of the preceptors versed in these matters.”

There is a silence, but Sita, unable to lift her eyes to her husband’s face, cannot tell if he has accepted her falsehood. The Raghuvanshis, she has been told time and time again, are a line of honor. They do not lie.

“Did you think--” she hears, and then a sigh. “I know who you are, my lady. Are we not friends, at the very least?”

Sita clenches her jaw, picking up the palm fronds once more. She is no longer afraid of her husband, at least not as she was at first. But he cannot want the answers he seeks, not truly. “I am a princess of Ayodhya,” she says, as she has to herself every morning since she woke up next to her husband’s blood on the bed and his body on their floor. “I am your wife, sanctified by the Lord’s Bow and the sacrament of the Holy Fire.”

“Yes,” her husband agrees. Sita cannot help but note that his tone is gentle. “And in Videha, you are considered a Goddess too.”

He says it so easily, as if Sita does not live balanced on the sword-edge between damned and divine. For a moment, she lets herself imagine what it would be like to be known.

There is a story known in Videha, of a drought so ferocious that a King long without child was forced to seed his own lands with the merit of his good deeds. Of the four days of labor that resulted in a baby girl, delivered from the womb of the Eternal Mother Earth. A child covered in an afterbirth of soil where there had only ever been useless dirt.

And yet this too is known: children are the only dead who are buried, their bodies believed too beloved to be consecrated to the fire and burned beyond reckoning. Instead they are covered in wool and laid to rest in the lap of Mother Earth alongside a plea for Death to be gentle.

Sometimes these children are wanted. Many times, the bodies buried are the ones who are not.

This is all that is known: when the King knelt to deliver the child, what had previously been blue sky broke into the first of that year’s monsoon, nearly a decade since the last.

Foundlings left to die do not wear the garb of royalty. Goddesses do not wed.

What would you call me, Crown Prince?

“I am a princess of Ayodhya,” she says, the words suddenly heavy, like stones in her mouth. Her silence protects her sisters from the taint of Sita’s own uncertainty, and Ayodhya has no need for Gods not its own. She waves away an insect that attempts to rest atop her husband’s left ear and resigns herself to her fate: “I am your wedded wife.”

“They are dying,” he says softly, but he speaks to himself. Sita thinks of the easy way they can speak now sometimes; at nights before they retire, or over a morning meal. Her husband is right -- they are friends, if nothing else, and she owes him more than this. Viciously Sita tamps down on the guilt she feels roiling her stomach, rebelling against a stance that suddenly feels like betrayal.

----

Four.

“It is strange,” Mother Kaushalya remarks, as always, “that you were never taught the ways of Royal Women. Is this how girls are raised in Videha?”

Mother Kaushalya, who has only known the Kosala for which she is named, has latched onto the strangeness of Sita’s far-off homeland as a possible explanation for the ways in which Sita grates mountain-rough against the silk of the Imperial Palace. It is useless of course, since a slight against Videha must inherently touch Sita’s sisters, who in the last year have already developed a reputation for grace, gentility, and an overflowing well of kindness towards all blessed with their presence.

Mother Kaushalya, according to the servant-slaves Sita eavesdrops on, has been heard quarreling with Mother Sumitra, begging for “at least one of your darling girls, my Lady, for you know that it can only be selfishness to keep them both when your elder sister has none!”

Sita, tugging awkwardly at the overwrought necklaces she must wear when in Mother Kaushalya’s presence, can only agree. She, more than anyone, knows what she lacks. There have been rumors recently that all three of Dasharatha’s Chief Queens have made a petition to the Emperor to find a new princess worthy of the Crown Prince’s hand.

Sita can only hope that when the time comes, her husband will allow her access to the Imperial Library, or at least will deem it proper to have one wife devoted to the worship of the Gods: philosophy and piety are so easily confused, after all. The best life she can now demand is one where she recedes into the background of the Imperial Palace, unneeded and unknown by all. Never will Sita oversee the workings of a kingdom in the manner she was raised, nor will she sit atop an altar and listen to those petitioners who make pilgrimage to weep at her feet.

Some days, Sita does not even know if she is a woman at all, if these mothers and wives are capable of knowing and carrying the grief of a nation inside their fragile bodies. Every night she dreams of the drought ravaging the villages near the outskirts of Kosala, of how once a year Sita was carried by 50 men to the fields of Videha so that she might press her feet into the soil that made her womb and call forth the rains that heralded her birth.

But then she too dreams of this: a mother weeping, swollen with child like other mothers who have knelt in front of Sita. A mother who delivers a daughter in the ordinary way and buries her alive.

“Goddesses,” the Sage Parashurama had said the year after Sita was installed in the palace of Mithila, “are not meant for marriage. Videha is fortunate that after the reign of Janaka it will be guided by the light of the Divine.”

He paused then, as they all do. “And if the Lady were not a goddess, well --”

They never finish the sentence. The threat is implied.

Sita cannot be meant for love, not in the way of women who are meant for marriage. How can she, when she was meant to sit atop a dais as the physical embodiment of a force of nature, just as easily as inside the hearts of believers? How can she, when she lives her life in the fear that she will be caught out and banished, back into the grave she was meant to die in?

Women are meant for friendship. Women are meant for love.

“My apologies Mother Kaushalya,” Sita says, shaking her head and trying to convince herself that she does not rage against the fate that stretches fallow before her, “I was not raised to be much of a girl at all.”

The real trouble, Sita thinks later, is that despite everything she has somehow found herself liking her husband anyway.

---

five.

“My Lady,” a servant twitters three weeks after the Emperor promises debt relief to the drought-stricken. “My Lady, your Lord husband has need of you!”

Sita looks up from the flowers she is carelessly attempting to string together in a garland, perhaps to festoon a doorway, perhaps to drape around one of the many idols of Surya, the progenitor of her husband’s race. They have not spoken in the week since he asked her about Videha and she refused to answer. “He does?”

“He does,” the servant responds with some relish, ready Sita is sure to reap the rewards of being the bearer of such premium gossip the moment Sita’s back is turned. Sita’s husband has never before indicated such a preference for her company. “He asked that I bring you to him, and not in the garb of royalty.”

“And you are sure that this is my husband?” It is not altogether seemly for Sita to be expressing such doubt that her husband might be asking for her, especially when such a request -- even to appear in plainclothes -- is not unusual for those young and in love, seeking respite from the rhythms of the palace by traveling outside its gates. But really, her husband?

The servant, a girl perhaps only a few years older than Sita’s 16, only raises an eyebrow and widens her grin. “Should I call for one of your maids to help you dress?”

“No,” Sita responds absently, lost in the contemplation of what game her husband could possibly be playing. “Did he say if he had any preference as to what I wear?”

“He did not, my Lady, but if I may I think you had better choose something blue if you have it. The color sets nicely against your skin. Silver jewelry instead of gold, if you have that too. ”

Sita does, buried at the bottom of a trunk of clothes she had carried with her from home. But before that --

“Here,” Sita undoes the clasp of the pearl necklace sent to her by some princeling attempting to curry favor with the crown. There is no true harm in people knowing she has left the palace in her husband’s company, but she is off-center enough to want this a secret as long as she can buy it so. “For your silence, until we return.”

In the time it takes Sita to strip out of silk and re-knot her old lower cloth of coarse blue cotton she has thought of a hundred different potential scenarios. Had she been alone, she might have had to slouch out of her own rooms with her head down so that she might prevent recognition -- in the company of a servant, Sita is passed over as one as well and strolls quite comfortably into the sunshine, following a path she has never taken until they find her husband leaning against the wall of one of the palace’s more minor stables.

“My lady,” he says, seeming to shake himself out of some sort of stupor and leveraging himself fully upright. “Antara,” he says then, turning to face the servant he had charged with fetching Sita, “you have my gratitude.” He leans down to pick up something wrapped in cloth before walking to Antara with a winning smile while pressing the package into her arms.

Sita knows something of her husband, but not like this. She is charmed.

“I came across the mangoes your sister likes when I was making my way back from one of the border kingdoms,” her husband says to Antara. “Tell her that I look forward to hearing more about her adventures when she is feeling well enough to take visitors.”

Antara’s eyes gleam and grow misty. “Oh,” she says, lips trembling as she folds her hands around the parcel and takes her leave, “and we have only just gotten her head to shrink back to its usual size after the last time!”

Alone at last, Sita’s husband’s earlier flash of ease vanish into the ether. Sita tries not to take offense at being more a stranger to him than the woman he sent to fetch his wife. “My lady,” he says again, but cannot seem to say anything more. Sita, feeling the awkwardness of the last week’s silence and her own slight guilt besides, takes pity.

“The girl?”

Sita is rewarded with a smile of her own, small but sincere. “Bedridden, but wonderfully vivacious still. There are bouts of illness where she is worse off than usual, but she believes me nothing more than a particular playmate and I try to see her when I can. The parcel has medicine a far-off physician swore had done a similar patient some good, but Antara would never accept unless I passed it to her like this.”

Sita blinks. “But you are her sovereign!”

Her husband shrugs. “I am her sister’s friend, and I find that everyone is entitled to some amount of pride. It is difficult to accept that you cannot help the one you love best alone.”

She nods, satisfied as she has been in the past with the knowledge that at least she is not married to a stupid man, And, she supposes, not a cruel one either. “How old is the girl?”

His smile widens slightly in apparent reminiscence. “She will be seven in two months' time.”

“Does she have a doll?”

“One,” Sita’s husband says slowly, brow slightly furrowed, “but bedraggled.”

Sita may not know how to comport herself as wife nor princess, but once she was a Goddess who heard the entreaties of those who cared for their beloved ill. Still, she remains a sister. This, Sita knows how to do. “If you approve, I will make her a new one that you can take with you. I used to make dolls for my sisters out of dried grass and cloth when we were children.”

For a moment, her husband looks stunned before he manages to school his features into something like equanimity once more. Still, he slips and there is something helpless about the way he is suddenly looking at her. “You are kind,” he says, but low in a tone that makes it clear that he is not truly speaking to Sita so much as about her to himself. “I am always glad for that.”

Sita blushes, unsure about how to respond to a compliment not exactly meant for her ears. It is not something she ever expected to hear from anyone in Ayodhya, much less the husband she condemns to spend his days wandering the countryside and his nights at rest alone on his own stone floor. “Why did you call me?” she decides to ask instead.

Again, her husband shakes his head as if rising from a reverie. His usual self-confidence suddenly melts into trepidation. What could he possibly want that discomfits him so?

“At the Kosalan border,” he says slowly, eyes focused on some point behind Sita’s shoulders, “there are a few villages that, at some point in the last few years, welcomed some families from afar.”

There is something about the way he speaks that begins to knot Sita’s stomach. She has the beginnings of an inkling, but nothing so concrete that she can speak it aloud. She nods for him to continue.

“Neighbors share stories in times of plenty as well as times of scarcity. These last few months there have been stories about former droughts, experienced by foreign kingdoms.”

Ah. Of course.

“This is not Videha,” Sita says, but she speaks almost as if she is in a dream. She cannot deny her divinity, not without inviting further scrutiny of her orphanhood. But neither has she ever truly believed that it is her feet that coaxed the rains to Mithila. Her father sowed the fields with the merit of his good deeds. Her father found a babe in the trough. Coincidence does not imply correlation.

What would happen if the stories were wrong? If Sita walked the lands but the sky remained a bright, barren blue? In some faint corner of her heart, she feels resentment towards her husband for having made her think of this at all.

“Yes,” her husband agrees, “I told them so. But they insist I bring you to meet them if only to speak as their princess.” He winces slightly, eyes shifting desolate to the dirt. “Hope sometimes means the difference between death or life in these instances, and at this moment I have nothing else to offer.”

Helpless, Sita thinks again. Her husband, Crown Prince of Dasaratha’s empire that extends further and exacts more in tribute than any before, stands helpless before his wife. They are friends, he had said, and even before that, he is the one who has always been kind. She opens her mouth to say something, anything, but no words find themselves on the tip of her tongue.

Her husband, eyes still averted, nods as if he has understood. “It was foolish to ask, I know, and perhaps you even think me cruel. You do not speak of who you were in Videha, and I should not ask this of you as my wife.” His jaw sets. “I will take you back to the palace.”

What would happen if the stories were true? If, as in her dreams, Sita walked the lands here in Kosala and the skies still split?

“How will we go?” she asks quietly, unable to force her voice firm. The words leave her mouth unbidden, but she knows they are right nonetheless. “How long will it take?”

She can almost hear her husband’s neck snap as his eyes rise from their study of the ground to gaze at her with all the intensity of the vicious sun. If before he was stunned, now he can only be described as pole-axed. His face is suddenly host to so many overwrought emotions at once that it is rendered as illegible as the times when he forces it blank. She has never seen him so, but that is not unusual. She had not seen him even wearing the smile he gave Antara.

This, she wonders, if anyone anywhere has witnessed ever before. She wonders, even as in her heart she knows the truth: they haven’t. None but Sita.

“Will you really come?” His voice is almost plaintive, like a child asking something he already knows he cannot have. But what does the most powerful man in the world know of want?

“I will,” Sita says, head spinning with a thousand questions, a thousand fears, a thousand hopes. She bites her lip, suddenly overwhelmed by her own uncertainty. “I cannot promise --” again, she loses her voice before she can finish the sentence that would throw her status into such uncertainty.

“I know,” her husband says, answering her unasked question. “I always knew. It would not matter to me either way.” He too seems to break off, struggling to find the proper words. He takes a step forward, and then another, and then one more until he stands in front of Sita, close enough that if he reached out he could clutch at her wrists. “Janaki,” he says, voice dripping with an honest earnesty that suddenly reminds Sita that if she feels herself a girl in Ayodhya then her husband too is a young boy, aged artificially by the weight he is always carrying on his shoulders.

“Janaki,” her husband says again, and Sita takes a breath. He is very handsome up close this friend of hers, the man who is her husband. “You will always be safe with me.” He smiles slightly, and Sita feels the corners of her own lips curling in sympathetic response. “As you say, you are now my wedded wife. There is nothing anyone could say about you that will change that. You can be more, but from now on you will never be less.”

For years Sita was old as well. More than anything else, she was lonely. She is lonely still.

What would you call me, Crown Prince?

My wife.

“I will try,” she vows, refusing to think about what it will do to the villagers for whom the drought continues after she walks the distance of their land. For once, she knows what will happen: she will remain her husband’s wife. In many ways, this is more the moment of her marriage than the one in which he tied the sacred thread around her neck than the one in which he broke the bow of the Great God.

“I will,” she says again, and Sita is unsure if she is promising to be wife, princess, or Goddess. All three, perhaps. “For them,” she swallows and throws all caution to the wind. “For you, I promise I will at least try.”

---

Sita walks for hours, hair falling out of the twist she had pulled it into after dismounting from the saddle she had shared with her husband traveling by horseback to the place that still believed there lived a goddess that could quench dry land.

She walks and walks, walks and walks and walks until her feet begin to crack and then bleed after such long exposure to the harshness of dead earth. Then, she walks some more. Thirst left her an hour ago, but now she struggles against exhaustion. Every step threatens to pull her down into the dust, and she knows, knew, that this would happen. She knew that she would prove their faith false, and leave them worse for having met her. She knew, and yet --

She had hoped, still.

There are no living goddesses who walk the land like Sita to call forth the rain. It is a ritual that has its roots in her father Janaka’s sacrifice, seeding the earth with the merit of his good deeds. Once, she had asked him what he felt when he had been plowing alone in the moments before he manifested a miracle.

“I suppose I should tell you that I prayed,” he had said thoughtfully, hand coming up to stroke absently at his beard, “but I did not. My people were suffering, and there is nothing even an intelligent man can do to mitigate the effects of a decade of drought. I was supposed to be thinking of all the good I had done, so as to imbue the ground with that goodness. But more than anything, every moment I was there I wanted it to rain -- more than anything I had ever wanted before. I felt like I would have done anything then, given anything, if only it would rain. By the end, I knew it would. It had to.”

In Videha, Sita had walked as ritual. She had lived in times of plenty.

In Kosala, there is a drought. She has seen with her own eyes the shrunken bodies of villagers who have no food. Whose voices are raspy with thirst. Together they had collected all the water they had left and had Sita sit, cross-legged before them as they washed away the dust of the road. Sita’s husband has promised that she will be his wife even if she proves a woman after all, but suddenly she knows why the rain fell. Her father too had known; in his own way, he had even tried to tell her.

In Kosala, Sita wants. She is a woman, and in this moment she wants as she never has before. She wants it to rain, more than anyone ever has wanted anything anywhere. More even than her father must have wanted because she wants not only for herself and her people but for her husband as well. Perhaps for him most of all, whom she has seen wrack his mind for weeks. Who has defied what convention or good sense would tell him and instead placed his faith in his wild wife, bringing her to the outskirts of his kingdom in hope of a miracle. Far from the palace, Sita knows herself. She knows what she wants. She knows now, with blinding certainty, what will be.

She wants to be loved, and she wants to love in turn. She wants it to rain, and so it will.

She walks until her body fails, certain in her knowledge that the rain will come. It has to. She trips, and suddenly she hears the gasps of the crowd that has kept vigil at the sides as they did in the time of her father before her. She trips, she falls, and just as she loses consciousness she hears the impossible roll of thunder on a cloudless day.

Sita hits the ground, and it begins to rain in Kosala.

---

coda. (2, 3, 4)

It is late when Sita wakes, eyes opening to the ceiling of a small hut as the raindrops patter against the roof. Outside she can hear shouts of glee, the beat of drums, the exultant songs of villagers who know that they can soothe their hoarse throats with water.

“Was it always like that?” Sita looks down to the foot of her bed where her husband kneels, hands gently rubbing ointment into her wounds before wrapping them with strips of his upper cloth. She hums in question, uncertain of what he means. “When you would walk in Videha,” her husband clarifies, eyes never leaving his self-appointed task, “was it like it was today?”

She could say yes, and imply that this is what goddesses do. Raghuvanshis do not lie. “No,” she says, and marvels at what a struggle it is to even speak. “Never.”

He nods, as if this was the only answer he expected. “Then it really was you,” he says softly, and suddenly Sita notices his hands are shaking as he winds the last of the cloth around her left foot. “You walked, and the gods answered your call.”

“Yes,” Sita says in a whisper. It is a thought too large to bear. He must have questions, she knows, and she owes her husband an explanation. She wants to tell him everything she remembers, everything she now understands, but in this moment there is nothing she can bring herself to say.

Finally, he looks away from her feet, shifting so that it is easier for Sita to look and see his red eyes.

“You cried,” Sita says inanely, stupid again but now in shock.

Her husband laughs, the sound just on the verge of being a sob. “It rained.”

He looks away.

“Before I found your pulse, I thought you had died.”

---

They leave in the morning once more on horseback, Sita clutching her husband’s waist and content to expose her aching, bandaged feet to the elements having long lost her shoes. The villagers offer breakfast, but Sita and her husband communicate wordlessly like she has seen other married couples do, and say together that they must respectfully decline. It will take another cycle for the crops to truly flourish, and there is more food than anyone can eat at home.

For a moment, Sita is jarred at the realization that Ayodhya is what she means when she thinks now of “home.” Mithila, of course, is home always -- but it is different now. Sita’s father called down the rain in Videha, but it was Sita alone who split the sky for her home last night.

After about an hour her husband brings the horse to a halt and jumps down, walking until they reach a lush orchard. Sita swings her right leg around and falls into his arms. For a moment she feels him lower her before he remembers that she cannot walk and shifts his grip, left arm grasping under her knees as Sita wraps her arms around his neck.

“You like jamun fruits, no? You keep them in our bedroom sometimes.”

Yes, Sita does. “Do you?”

Her husband shrugs. “I like these jamun fruits.”

“And where are we?”

“The crown plants orchards at places along the main roads so that travelers might find some respite.” He smiles, looking up at one of the trees. “This is the one with the best jamun fruits in Kosala. And this,” he lowers Sita to the ground underneath the tree and she lets go obligingly, “is the best tree of the orchard.”

It is a romantic claim to make, that there is a single tree that produces the best fruit in the land, but Sita’s husband does not say it as one might when repeating a fancy. Intrigued despite herself, she asks: “How do you know?”

He palms the bark, fingers searching for something that he finds in a particular divot. “A few years ago a squadron of warriors tested the fruit of every tree. This was the one they liked best.”

Sita is skeptical. “And you believe them?”

“Well,” her husband amends, that same mischief he had shown Antara in his eyes, “this is certainly the one I liked best, and the rest agreed as well. It might not be to your taste, given that you are a woman of refined taste in this sphere and I merely a man who prefers mangos.”

“We shall see,” Sita laughs, bedraggled and thirsty and tired. Still, she feels like she has never laughed like this before. In her past she has certainly felt joy and found laughter, but in her happiness now she floats. She had always felt so heavy before. “Let me have my breakfast, and I will be the judge of that.”

Her husband is graceful in victory -- it is not perfectly the season, but Sita swears she has never tasted so sweet a fruit.

---

“Her feet are bandaged,” Kaikeyi observes when the cacophony that accompanies their return to the palace dies down to a dull roar. It is an easy thing to notice when Sita is being carried in her husband’s arms. Kaikeyi was always the quickest of Dasaratha’s queens and proves herself to be the one best informed when her beautiful face twists in withering disgust. “You cannot possibly think that your wife ended the drought by walking.”

Sita cannot tell if the emphasis is on the words “your wife” or “walking.” Both, she thinks, offend the very marrow of an Ayodhyan sensibility that has spent half a year shoving gold at pandits to fund a sacrifice that will finally please Indra.

This is what Sita, married into a family that does not lie, plans to say: “We are glad to see the rain.”

This is what her husband, whose words at 18 already carry more weight in this family than those of his father, says instead: “She did. I saw it with my own eyes.”

#maya writes #ramayana #lmao found this in my google drive and decided light blasphemy was a really fun thing to do at this point in time #i havent written anything non academic in a year so please please let me know what you think!!

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pomegranates-and-blood · 4 years ago

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Κόρη (νοσταλγία deleted chapter)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Κόρη (kórē): young woman, maiden. Also means young bride, or wife. It is also Persephone’s name before her abduction. (Ancient Greek)

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Summary: This takes place between Chapter 43 and right before Chapter 44, at the beginning of the spring. Centers mainly around the life left behind, the road not taken so to speak.

Word Count: 3.3k

Warnings: The usual, mentions of sacrifices (human and animal)

A/N: I really like this chapter, and I wasn’t sure if it I should leave it as a main chapter of the story or not, but decided against it since it doesn’t really move the plot forward much. But yeah, also a lil announcement/thingy at the end notes of this chapter. Hope you enjoy!

I took one of Ivar’s lines from the show for his dialogue in this chapter. It’s from 5x19, and it was so unbearably ominous that I had to include it 😉

Also, Maqluba is a middle eastern dish. I haven’t tried it myself, but it looks so good. I wanted it to be Quzi, an Iranian dish, which I have had and it’s so fucking good, but the word for Quzi is from Ottoman Turkish, where Maqluba is Arabic and the dish is even recorded in early medieval books.

Before you know it, before you are ready if you are honest, winter passes you by, retreats at the unescapable return of spring.

You won’t pretend you will miss the unbearably cold mornings and nights, the biting winds, or the unrelenting advance of Demeter’s grief that makes most of your plants -even the ones you’ve kept indoors- wither and die.

But there is a part of you, a part of you that will never truly go away, that is Greek before anything else; and the very blood running through your veins reminds you that with spring comes change.

This morning, you sit by one of the windows as the sun starts to rise, focused on the gentle work of your hands on the small sapling that stubbornly starts to revive and persist past the passing winter frost. You find yourself torn between hoping all the change spring will bring is the life it will return to the plants you keep around you, is the lessened pain for the man you love now that the cold isn’t so biting; and craving more, craving the change you know spring is capable of while knowing you have something -someone- to hold on to, craving to be a witness to the extent of Kore’s influence on a land as cold as this.

Then again, much has changed already and it didn’t need spring to do so.

At the sound of rattling chains your attention drifts away from the small plant in your hands, and you turn to watch your husband as he gets out of bed, eyes lazily following the by-now familiar movements.

Tonight a feast to honor the return of spring is to be held, which means the day will be thankfully more calmer as the celebrations are readied, and few people dare bother either of you.

With a familiar kind of hunger pooling low in your belly as you watch the traces of ink on his chest and shoulders move with the movement of his body, you consider luring Ivar into staying here with you a while longer to make the most of out of a slow morning; but you know he intends to go overlook the strengthening of the walls surrounding the town, and is too stubborn to let you convince him not to.

A part of you lingers more than usual on his insistence to make Kattegat safer as the army readies to follow him once again into England to continue their wars and battles; but you have a feeling you know the reason why, and you won’t fight him on this.

You will have to meet with the merchants from Kufa later today, since they are to depart back to their homeland soon and Qasim, the leader of the group, promised you -much to Ivar’s irrational anger- a gift to show his gratitude for welcoming him and his associates into your kingdom and allowing them to trade here for the winter.

Hvitserk has tried to make you promise that if it is maqluba like they offered you near the Yule celebrations you will share it with him, but you have agreed to no such thing so you will try your best to hide it from him; which means you have to get there early.

Slowly, you mournfully let go of the idea of a slow day.

“If I asked a favor from you…” You start slowly, making Ivar turn around to look at you with a small furrow between his brows.

“I would ask for something in return.” He retorts anyways, not a moment of hesitation. He lifts himself onto the small seat by the foot of your bed, attention on putting on the braces of his legs.

“Of course you would. Could you make sure Hvitserk doesn’t know I’m meeting with the merchants from Kufa today?”

His eyes narrow as he recalls, “Ah. Your gift.”

“Our gift, my love.” You try with a smile, but Ivar doesn’t buy it.

Granted, the man pointedly claimed the gift was meant for the Greek queen, and that didn’t sit right with your husband. None of what the Abbasid man does sits well with Ivar nowadays, hasn’t since he gifted you inscribed silk a couple of months into winter, but even before that most likely, and it just became apparent once Qasim made such a gesture.

“You have people to talk to today, don’t you?” Ivar asks, and when you turn to look at him, he is petulantly avoiding your gaze, pretending to be focused on adjusting the braces of his legs as you shrug on the warm dress.

“I do,” You reply slowly, because you know where this is going. Still, you continue, “We ought to secure a deal with Qasim so he and the others return before next wint-…”

Ivar lifts a finger to you, “Ah, but you have to be the one to strike the deal, do you not?”

“He will ask less from me, you know that.”

“Yes, I know that,” He bites out, looking away with gritted teeth. An angry breath through his nose, and he offers, “I don’t like him.”

“That is incredibly unexpected,” You deadpan, offering a wide smile when he glares at you. Walking closer, you explain, “I speak their tongue, and I am familiar, so he has a soft spot for me and he has coin to spare. That is all there is.”

“Hm,” Is all the response he offers, more of a grunt than an answer really. With a small sound of exertion Ivar stands up, motioning you closer and expertly tightening the laces of your dress. Because he lingers with his hands on you after, you linger as well, your back to his chest and your head seamlessly lolling to the side when Ivar leans to trail kisses up the side of your neck. When he reaches your ear, he promises, quietly even if fiercely, “I am not jealous of that man.”

A foolish smile curves at your lips, and your hand settles over his on your stomach, intertwining your fingers with his.

“Of course you are not,” You sentence, the taunt clear in your voice, “It would be foolish, irrational even, for you to thi-…ah!”

Ivar’s teeth closing down on your earlobe stop your words with a gasp and a laugh.

“Don’t mock me.” He warns, but you hear the smile on his voice.

“I am not,” You promise, turning around in his arms and meeting his disbelieving glare. Your hand settling on his chest, you concede, “Perhaps a little bit, but it is foolish to think any man compares to you in my eyes. You know this, yes?”

The quirk of his lips is a little arrogant, a little proud, and you are filled with warmth at the sight.

Still, Ivar accepts your request with a gesture of his hand, and walks closer, leaning down to kiss you goodbye. Brow against yours he lingers in the same moment you do, in the shared breath, in the quiet and the warmth of that short instant.

Moving to press another kiss to the crown of your head, Ivar whispers against your skin, “Make sure he returns with a wife next winter, so he leaves mine alone, hm?”

____

“My people,” Ivar starts, drawing attention to himself and, indirectly, to you. You have gotten used to it, though, and with your eyes only for him where he sits on the throne by your side, you can ignore all the other eyes on you. “Spring is coming. The earth renews itself, that which was dead becomes alive again. Everything changes.”

Spring in Kattegat. It still feels like such a surreal thing, to be allowed to spend the rest of your days here.

Ivar speaks to them of the battles to come, of their imminent return to England where they will face against the Saxon that tried taking Dublin from them, of Stithulf’s inevitable defeat.

There’s a strange shine in his eyes, a mix of pride and joy that carries an undercurrent of uncertainty that you know the reason for by now, when the people cheer at his words, raising horns of mead and toasting in his name.

These people have known me since my birth, he told you once, decades-old resentment making his voice grave, even if I’m king now, they all see less than a man in me.

You were never one to keep quiet, but the words you might be able to offer when it’s just the two of you are not the ones you can offer here and now.

You remember the night before Ivar was to leave Kattegat for the first time, in what feels like another lifetime, when you confessed with bitter words how the Greeks loved you but rarely respected you, and spoke of hidden resentment you held towards your own people by admitting you had to fight twice as hard than Narses to achieve recognition for the same deed.

You stop yourself, stealing a glance at the Viking that still keeps unwavering interest in the words that leave your lips. You shake your head, and reach for the cup the thrall refilled a few moments ago.

“It does not matter. Most of the free Attics are dead somewhere near Aneridge, the rest will perish when winter comes. It doesn’t matter.”

The King touches his own cup with yours, and you eye him carefully, wary of what the outburst might mean for you, but Ivar only smirks.

“If you say so.”

And so now you do the same, your cup touching his lightly, and when Ivar turns his eyes to you, you offer a quiet murmur of their word for a toast, a word that so rarely leaves your lips.

The night progresses and you find yourself, even after all this time, endlessly fascinated by the customs of these people, and their approach to the change of seasons. To us spring means war, Freydis told you once, and as Ivar and his brothers boast and rejoice at the prospect of tasting battle and warfare again, you find her words to be truer than you ever thought they truly were.

____

You quietly slip away from the still ongoing feast, and wandering steps take you outside, through a pathway outside of what used to be your rooms when you were first brought to Kattegat.

The steps you take are familiar ones, and you come to a stand by the small platform on the back of the longhouse, leaning your weight against the railing and taking a deep breath of the chilled air of the night.

The Hiereia motions for you to kneel, and you do so with your hands folded over your lap, but you refuse to bow your head. She notices, of course she does, but says nothing. You could swear she smiles.

They drag the man forward, and dazed and compliant he moves until his body stands above you. You look into his eyes as they draw the blade, and you don’t look away as his throat is slit, only closing your eyes when the blood falls over you.

It is warm as it pours erratically over you, coating your hair and face, and a lot of the white dress they made you wear, with the mark of death.

Your own blood rushes in your ears, and you finally open your eyes when the pour of the sacrifice’s blood slows and stops. The weight of the wreath of pomegranate branches and wildflowers on your head feels like a crown made of iron for a fleeting moment.

Another girl approaches, lowering to the ground on her knees just as you, and opens her palm to offer seven seeds of a pomegranate. You take them between shaking fingers, but don’t hesitate to bring them to your lips.

The sacrifice’s blood still stains your lips, and as you taste the fruit so many said is a symbol of temptation, you cannot help but think maybe they tasted it wrong when they forgot the coppery taste of blood to accompany it.

“Rise, Hiereia.”

You do, suddenly feeling like you stand much taller than you did before. Suddenly feeling stronger, suddenly feeling safer. Powerful.

The elder meets your eyes and smiles, smiles wide enough the corner of her eyes crinkle, and breathes a laugh, walking forward to embrace you.

She makes no note of the blood that stains your body and your face, but you do. You lick your lips, finding yourself almost resenting the lingering sweetness of the pomegranate.

You don’t realize your eyes have fallen closed until the familiar sound of Ivar’s crutch and his uneven steps reach your ears, making you blink past the memories, and look back up at the stars.

It is almost instinctual, the way you move your hand to seek the inevitable touch of his when he too leans on the railing before you, shoulder to shoulder.

His fingers are warm, and rough to the touch, and exquisitely familiar.

“The stars are familiar,” You tell him, without taking your eyes from the dark skies above. “When the stars are like this, when the world is like this…it is time of the Thesmophoria, back in Greece.”

“You told me about it,” He recalls, thumb absently running back and forth over your cold fingers, trying to bring warmth back to you. You don’t fail to notice he hasn’t asked you to return inside. Perhaps he knows you as well as you know him. “Mostly you told me about how you couldn’t tell me about it.”

“Men aren’t allowed to know of the Mysteries,” You explain, and your smile only grows at the indignant huff he lets out. “Besides, Viking, you do not follow my Gods.”

“Hm, but I should know about them, since I married a Greek witch.” He teases back, smiling at the indignant roll of your eyes.

By all the Gods, how you wish you could tell him. How you wish you could somehow make real, if only by voice alone, what those festivals were like, what the procession through the Sacred Way felt like and what each stop entailed, what bittersweet kind of joy sparked in the hearts of all those who participated when the procession celebrated Iambe, or what the bread made from the first fruits tasted like after the fast.

You wish you could at least tell him of the night of the Pannychis, and how it was one of the only times in Greece when you truly felt unburdened, when you truly felt at home, surrounded by music and joy and allowed to forget the repression and violence of the Empire that ruled over you all.

To Ivar you have told things you have never dared tell a soul, to Ivar you have admitted things that fill you with shame and regret; and it was one of the truer things you have said when you promised you were yourself with him more so than you could ever be with any other. And that is why at the tip of a stubborn and wine-loosened tongue there’s the whisper of what the epopteia showed you, there’s the retelling of that vision that was not the first nor the last but that will forever be the most important one.

But you know you can’t. You made your vows that night, and the aporrheta will remain unsaid, unrepeated. You will keep them guarded, sacred, as you swore to do.

You were one of the last Hiereiai initiated before Eleusis went up in flames taking you and many others with it, and now that many of the elders perished in England and the rest most likely followed in these past months; as you stand here and now in colder, harsher lands, so far from what in another life would have been your home, you cannot help but feel a grief, a loss, that you hadn’t expected. Because with her back turned to Greece may stand the last Hiereia of the Dread Gods.

“I fear…I fear I might be the last,” You admit quietly, barely heard above the biting wind. “I fear the secrets, the…everything that once made my home, my Gods, will be lost when I am gone.”

You know, realistically, that you aren’t the last Hiereia in all of Greece. There will be Hiereiai until the last of Greece, even if circumstances make it so that they never celebrate not one more festival.

But what you linger on, what you cannot ignore, is the part of you that tells you that you should have been Hiereia until the last of you.

Then again, you were. You were their Hiereia until the flames consumed you like they did your mother, you were their Hiereia until they made an Anassa out of you, you were their Hiereia until your death. And it isn’t cruel to demand to be yourself in the life after, is it?

“Then tell me about them,” Ivar replies, as if it is that simple. “You won’t be the last one to remember then, hm?”

“You are Viking, Ivar.” You repeat, a tad livelier, and a smile once again curving at foolish lips as you turn to look at him.

“Our children will be Viking,” He argues without missing a beat, but making your heart skip one. You feel your expression tremble, even though it isn’t by any means the first time Ivar and you have spoken of the future and what that means now that you have chosen to stay. In these passing months you have caught yourself imagining what a family of your own would be like as often as you find Ivar’s thoughts lingering on the same thing, thoughts that you hear about in the quiet of night with his voice rumbling on his chest where you lay, thoughts that are shared with you in the tentative approaches to happiness of a man that for too long believed it impossible. But it feels different now, it feels…more real. Ivar continues, but you don’t miss the way his pale eyes search yours a tad more intently now, as if he too is threading on unknown ground, betting on unmentioned hopes. “But you will tell them of your ways, will you not?”

There is not a breath of hesitation within you, and with too many familiar voices promising if we name things, we make them real, with the cadence of all your ghosts, you find certainty, you find hope.

“I will,” You tell him, but the emotion is embarrassingly clear in the break of your voice. After a breath, you lick your lips and try pretending you aren’t made anew by a conversation so simple as this one. Tone lighter, you quip, “But I will not tell you. You cannot hear about the aporrheta.”

Ivar’s shoulders rise and fall in a deep breath, as if he were holding it, and he asks, “What can I hear about then, hm?”

You search his eyes, get lost in them, are found in them maybe; and…you know him well enough by now to know what he means when he asks such things.

A sigh, and pressing a little closer to his warmth, you look back at the familiar stars.

You talk of home, you talk of the way the temple looked when your mother was alive to keep it safe and cared for, you talk of the bustling markets on the days before the festivals, you talk of the first rites you participated in after your initiation.

You talk until your voice starts to falter, until you lick dry lips and realize you taste nothing but the rose wine you’ve been sipping the whole night, the taste of nostalgia long gone, gone while you tried holding onto it, a last remnant of a world that never existed in the first place.

____ ____ ____

Look at Ivar being a mature partner and all at the end, encouraging her to talk about the place/people she misses. Growth lol

Thank you for reading, hope you liked it!

One last thing:

As you could see, this chapter skipped over a bunch of time, most of winter really, and of course, Chapter 44 starts with the spring. I have an Ivar’s PoV planned (hopefully it will be out this time next week) that goes over a little bit of the winter, mainly the Yule celebrations. But here’s the thing: if there’s anything (and I mean anything) you wanna ask or see about these months that went by, come to my askbox and request! I would love to just get my Nostalgia writing motor going with something like that! They may end up as little snippets, as chapter-length stuff, or as straight up answers, or smth. But yeah, whatever you wanna see/ask, come talk to me!

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius @heavenly1927 @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax @angelofthorr @samsationalwilson @peachyboneless @1950schick @punkrocknpearls @ietss @itsmysticalmystery @revolution-starter @the-a-word-2214 @fae-sedai @crazybunnyladysworld @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside @aprilivar @msrawog

#ivar the boneless x reader #ivar x reader #ivar the boneless imagine #ivar the boneless #ivar #νοσταλγία masterlist

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onebizarrekai · 3 years ago

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I think that lucia di lammermoor is one of my new favorite operas not just because of the mad scene but because the opera makes no sense whatsoever

there are literally so many plot holes in the libretto. there are so many unexplained facets of the narrative, unresolved arcs, dialogues that mandate copious creative liberties, things that only happen off-stage, and some unsolvable problems that can only be fixed by cutting things or directing things a certain way. there’s so much nonsense it’s actually hilarious. if you read the source story of the bride of lammermoor the opera diverts quite a bit, but the bride of lammermoor is actually even worse, so let’s put that to the side.

let’s just start from the beginning of the opera, paraphrasing as much as possible. lucia’s evil brother, enrico, is the first lead to greet the stage, minutes after his goony normano. normano tells enrico the tale of how enrico’s archenemy, edgardo, saved the life of lucia, and he reluctantly admits that they are now in love with each other and are secretly meeting up all the time. enrico flips his shit and sings about how he’s going to kill edgardo or whatever. bide the bent (aka raimondo, but schirmir really said bide the bent, whatever the hell that means) exists and does priest stuff because he’s a priest. by the way, there’s this whole thing about how the ashton family (aka lucia and enrico) are protestant and edgardo is catholic and that’s why they hate each other and that’s why there’s a priest.

anyway they all leave, and then lucia and alice enter. lucia is, naturally, waiting for her illegal boyfriend: edgardo. she is very scared because enrico is a piece of shit and wants to kill her boyfriend. alice is like “yo man this is a bad idea” and lucia is like “where’s edgardo” but lucia is also perturbed by something else. she has a ghost story to tell about this nondescript fountain and tells alice about the girl who was killed by her lover at this fountain, and then suddenly goes like “by the way the ghost of the dead woman appeared to me” and like wow ok lucia. after singing about all of the water turning to blood in her hallucination, she proceeds to completely change moods and sing about how much she loves edgardo because she is crazy. after all of this, edgardo finally arrives and tells lucia about how he actually has to go to france to do ambassador stuff and disappear for an indefinite period of time. he says that they should finally tell enrico about their relationship. lucia completely shuts him down, and then edgardo cries about how enrico has killed his family and how she’s the only light of his life. they end up deciding to keep their relationship a secret anyway and then vow to marry each other.

act 2, enrico has ordered normano to forge a break-up letter from edgardo to send it to lucia. normano shows up to give it to enrico, enrico summons lucia into wherever he is to tell her that he needs to marry her off to some other guy in order to save their family. lucia is like “but I’m marrying someone else” and enrico is like “oh yeah? read this” and gives her the letter, and lucia naturally breaks down because it’s a big lie about how edgardo has found someone else in france. she cries about it until this big fanfare plays to welcome her new husband, arturo. at this point lucia is singing about nothing except how much death would benefit her right now. enrico leaves after being an asshole for a few more minutes, and then in comes bide the bent to lecture lucia about the invalidity of her previous marital vows. she leaves to change into a wedding gown.

enter arturo, this random loser that enrico wants lucia to marry. his lines are so cliché that he’s probably reading them off a sheet of paper (which is exactly how we staged the production I am currently doing). somehow arturo knows about lucia’s affair with edgardo because those two were actually horrible at being secretive, but also he doesn’t care because he gets to marry a hottie. enrico tells arturo about how lucia’s mother died and that’s why she’s crying about the wedding. lo and behold, lucia enters and she is crying. they hold the wedding right then and there under the Authority™ of bide the bent, enrico forces lucia to sign the wedding documents, and then everyone is like “wait who’s at the door?” and then EDGARDO BREAKS IN and he’s like “EDGAAAAAARDO” and they sing a whole sextet that borders a confusion ensemble except it’s a bel canto tragedy.

edgardo is like “yeah man! it’s my right to be here since I’m engaged to lucia!” and enrico is like “PSH” and bide the bent comes up like “sorry she just signed this Other Marriage Contract” and shows it to edgardo and edgardo is like WHAT and he comes up to lucia like BRUH YOU DONE THIS?? and lucia doesn’t even know what’s happening at this point, she’s just like “yes?? but” and then edgardo takes off his ring and hers and then throws a temper tantrum before he gets kicked out.

behold the wolf’s craig duet, the most stupid and pointless thing in this opera considering what happens later. enrico barges into edgardo’s house and they sing about how they’re going to kill each other and duel at the graveyard. that’s it. there’s probably sexual tension.

after that, there’s a wedding party, except with a Horrifying Twist. lucia goes upstairs with arturo and fucking kills him. having lost her mind, she comes out covered in blood and sings for like twenty minutes in a very impressive manor. she collapses on the floor at the very end.

there’s a random recit right afterwards where enrico, bide the bent and normano briefly talk about lucia losing her mind. while enrico is crying about lucia, bide the bent literally blames normano of all people, who did exactly nothing, for every bad thing that happened to lucia.

the final scene begins at the graveyard. now, I know what you’re thinking. edgardo and enrico promised to duel each other here, right? right! so where the hell is enrico? I dunno, not here. edgardo is here, and he’s crying and stuff about his dead father. he’s very sad and probably wants to perish. a chorus shows up mourning something. edgardo asks about it and no one wants to tell him. bide the bent appears in all his priestliness and tells edgardo that lucia is now in heaven. how did she die? beats me. she died of insanity or something. edgardo has lost the final thing in his life that matters to him, so he decides to “go see her” and stabs himself.

the opera ends.

welcome to lucia di lammermoor. now, some of these plot holes are resolvable through directing. for example, lucia’s insanity is inexplicable in the libretto. nobody is just sad about their boyfriend and commits murder–granted, her first aria had her singing about a ghost and a fountain of blood. why’s she like this, though? she’s probably not ok. so like, some people explain this by making enrico way way worse than just a big liar. in the production that I’m doing, enrico is being depicted as sexually abusive towards lucia, and like, yeah that helps do some explaining. but you know what it doesn’t help? the parts of the opera that normally get cut, like the stupidass wolf’s craig duet that exists for no reason and usually gets cut because it makes no sense. also, the scene right after the mad scene where bide the bent comically blames normano for everything even though it is clearly enrico’s fault and enrico is randomly mourning lucia even though he was horrible to her for the whole opera. unfortunately, when you have companies like the met, which do full operas with no cuts, you get the whole, nonsensical story in its full glory, not to mention the met tends to shy away from taking creative liberties with the directing.

so like, why do I say this opera is a new favorite? well, aside from it being fun to sing, since I’m doing it for the first time, it’s absolutely hilarious to consider who the real mastermind here is, since for some reason, the librettist seems to think that it’s normano. you have to make up so much subtext in this story in order to even make it begin to make sense, so how far can you take it? how much nonsense can you create?

easy mode is assuming the mastermind is enrico. he’s a horrible person. obviously bide the bent accuses normano because he’s trying to divert the blame from enrico, who may or may not kill him if he says the truth. however, enrico does not go to the graveyard to kill edgardo and tie off loose ends (which I personally think he should have). enrico just kind of disappears, honestly, in spite of being the main bad guy.

bide the bent is another viable option. he blames normano to divert attention from himself. he plays the role of the peacemaker between edgardo and enrico during the sextet, but it’s all a sham. the reason bide the bent appears in the final graveyard scene is because he’s the true villain here. he simply took advantage of everyone around him in order to make sure everything went according to plan. enrico’s bs towards lucia, lucia’s insanity, edgardo’s depression, normano loyalty, the whole deal. he wishes to rise in power… perhaps the reason enrico does not show up in the final scene is because bide the bent has already disposed of him.

what if it was edgardo? what if he and lucia devised a plan to create an opening that would allow them to run away? what if arturo was in on it? lucia pretends to murder arturo, pretends to go insane, and the plan was to finally flee with edgardo… but then they were INTERCEPTED. their plan was ruined. lucia was disposed of by the enemy off-stage and it was too late. they claim she died of insanity, but she was killed by normano under enrico’s orders, or whoever else is the designated evil one here.

in the met, for some reason, they decide to have lucia’s ghost come in during the final scene and silently “coerce” edgardo into ending his life, which sounds cool, but it was ridiculous. I just remember the blood bag being in the wrong place so he had to stab himself in the kidney and lucia actually pushed the prop knife in like she wasn’t literally a ghost. there was also a ghost during lucia’s first aria that totally upstaged her. this opens up many stupid doors for directing such as arturo’s ghost returning as well if need be. anyone’s ghost could be there. ghosts canonically exist at the met. arturo could be fortnite dancing during the mad scene.

behold, a terrible take. edgardo is having a secret affair after all, but he’s having an affair with enrico. enrico is enraged when he discovers edgardo’s relationship with his sister because he thought that THEY had a thing. he vengefully tries to break them up by marrying lucia off to arturo. enrico and edgardo sing the wolf’s craig duet as a not-tragic breakup song.

honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone in this goddamn cast was sleeping with each other. the possibilities are endless

during the staging period of the show, we all came up with so many stupid and hilarious ideas that we could stage an entire comedy version of this opera. maybe one day it could happen. maybe…

anyway it’s like midnight and I’m doing my cast’s performance of this opera in two days, and I just drove home a while ago from performance 1 today talking with my family about all of these stupid possibilities, so it’s all on my mind. at least the mad scene is fun to sing

#random stuff #me? going on a comical tangent about opera? more likely than you think #there's a lot of content warnings for stuff here but that's to be expected of opera #honestly I'll lose my mind for real if I have to do this show at face value #enrico isn't evil enough in just the libretto alone #see operas usually have pretty simple stories #and plot holes #but LUCIA #lucia is something else

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mavda · 4 years ago

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Beast Tamers

Summary: Mythical beasts roamed the world, all-powerful and terrifying, and the beast tamers sealed them withing themselves. Revered, feared or hated, a beast tamer will never have a normal life, and now Naruto Uzumaki is facing the start of his adult life: choosing a wife.

By his father's beseeching, Naruto is now seeking a wife from the Hyuuga clan, in hopes of extending his life somehow. Nobody expects him to be a real husband, to be a real father, but if Naruto is forced to start a family he will be damned if he disappoints.

Ch.1: A bride for the beast tamer

His father is looking at him with disapproval, he knows. He tries his best to ignore him by looking out the window and entertaining himself with the passing prairies, but Minato Uzumaki will drill a hole through his skull at this rate. "What," he barks. Minato breathes with exasperation, "Would it kill you to behave appropriately, son?"

Naruto blows a raspberry and keeps looking out the window with his slouched back, open legs and annoyed face. "I don't know, you tell me." "We're meeting your future wife, please try to at least look interested." "Bride," Naruto corrects, "future bride, and what's it they say? If you don't love me at my worst, you don't de-?" "Naruto!" Minato hisses, and Naruto knows he has overstepped. His father his hurt. He knows. He knew he would hurt him if he treated this meeting with such nonchalance, and he did it anyways. "Is wanting for you to live a couple more years such a horrible wish of mine?" Naruto bites his tongue, because he doesn't have the heart to tell his father that sometimes he wishes... "I will behave," Naruto concedes, "I will try my best to behave," he adds, because he knows himself. But he doesn't straighten his back, doesn't close his legs and doesn't wash the grimace off his face. "Thank you, son. Thank you." And Naruto pouts towards the window.

⁂

His stupid formal kimono is stuffy and the coat cord dangles in front of him. He has to fight the urges to grip it and rip it off. Their carriage leaves and a bunch of servants guide them towards the inner rooms of the house. Hiashi Hyuuga, head of the family, welcomes them alone and offers drinks to the both of them. Naruto became head of the family 5 years ago, the moment he became 18, so although he doesn't particularly enjoy drinking, he can't refuse the man's offering. They talk about unremarkable stuff, most having to do with their respective clans. Hiashi offers another drink and Naruto accepts out of politeness, it is common knowledge that a Beast Tamer should always keep their minds clear and alert. Naruto decides to give the man the benefit of the doubt, mainly because Minato has barely said a word and Naruto promised to behave. But then Hiashi offers another drink and Naruto crosses his arms. "I am afraid I will have to refuse, Lord Hiashi, I can not afford to get lost on the drink before meeting my future bride." Hiashi looks as bored as he had when they arrived, but he nods and calls for a servant to bring his daughters. They lock eyes afterwards and Naruto remains stoic. The man is getting on his nerves. When the door opens again, Naruto doesn't break eye contact until Hiashi does, and by that time the two daughters are already kneeling beside their father, one to each side of him. Their faces are glued to their hands on the floor and they do not move until their father says they are able to do so. Naruto hides his disgust by pressing his lips together. Patriarcal clans are always weird as fuck. If his mother had been alive he would have married a woman from another matriarchal clan, like the Inuzuka's or the Hatake's. Although if his mother had been alive she may have had a daughter and the Beast inside Naruto wouldn't be inside Naruto and maybe he wouldn't be looking for a bride to have an heir with. Specially not one from a patriarcal clan. Naruto hones in on the older-looking one. She looks as bored as her father, although Naruto is sure his own face isn't much different. She is pretty, dainty and delicate. Nothing of the things he looks for in a woman. His offspring need to be able to hold in a Beast inside of them, for crying out loud, he would much rather have a mean looking woman like Kiba Inuzuka's mother. Naruto remembers his friend's disgusted face when he had joked to him about it, and his mood is immediately better. He's just taking it out on the daughter because her father is such a stuck-up shit. Naruto's mother had been dainty and delicate, and his grandma Mito is graceful and solemn. Also, he's choosing his bride in order to lengthen his own lifespan, so whatever. Naruto turns slightly towards his right, puts his hands in front of him and presses his head to the triangle they formed, bowing towards the girl. He straightens, "Lady Hinata, I presume?" he says to the older-looking daughter, she gives the tiniest of nods. "It is my honor to be able to-" "Lord Naruto," Hiashi interrupts, and Naruto clenches his jaw. What a man. "Yes, Lord Hiashi?" "I would like to present to you my daughter Hanabi." The girl bows again and looks at Naruto directly into his eyes, "It is my honor to meet you, Lord Naruto." Naruto is confused. He glances towards Hinata, but her eyes are glued to the tatami in front of her. "I have been informed by your father that through this union you seek a partner that can help you maintain your chakra points clean and unburdened." Naruto nods, but he is still confused. "My daughter Hanabi is by far superior in terms of proficiency in the clan's techniques and as such, I believe, a better partner for you, my lord." Hinata hasn't said a peep, and Naruto can feel his very own chakras getting unruly inside of him. This must be a joke. "I do not understand," starts Naruto, "Is Hinata incapable of seeing chakra points?" Hiashi looks flustered, as flustered as he can look without losing his stoic face. "In terms of capability-" "Lady Hinata, are you incapable of using your clan's technique? Are you unable to see chakra points?" Hinata's eyes widen and stare back at Naruto's. "I can, my lord." "Are you incapable of releasing chakra points?" "I am capable of that, my lord." Her voice is reserved, like everything seems to suggest about her, but her eyes now have energy in them, and she can't hide the surprise behind them. "So could you explain to me then, Lord Hiashi, why are you offering your fourteen year old daughter instead of Lady Hinata?" "Naruto," Minato hisses from behind him. But Naruto is repulsed by this man's actions, so he awaits an answer. "As I have stated already, Lord Naruto, in terms of capability my daughter Hanabi is superior than Lady Hinata. I am sorry if me trying to be of use to you has resulted in me overstepping your boundaries." Minato raises, "Excuse me, Lord Hiashi, my ladies, I would like to have a private conversation with my son." Naruto doesn't move from his position and Minato calls him, "My lord." It's the change in tone that makes Naruto move. To anyone else, Minato looks just like a servant calling for his master, but Naruto knows his father is as disgusted as he is, there is irritation in his voice. "If you would excuse me." They walk towards a nearby pond. Everything is carefully positioned in this garden and Naruto tries to clear his head by admiring the place. Minato stops in the middle of a small bridge, just on top of a miniature waterfall. "What was that?" he asks, and Naruto is glad Minato chose a place that can somewhat drown their voices, because he's as shocked as his father. "I know, right? What is he thinking offering his youngest daughter to me? I've always known patriarcal clans were weird, but fuck-" "Naruto." Minato stops him, and his irritation is evident now. Naruto takes a moment to understand. "What?" but he refuses to think that his father is annoyed at him and not the man inside that room. "What are you doing going against Lord Hiashi?" Naruto has to remember to close his mouth. He feels somewhat betrayed, but he's more shocked than anything. "What do you mean? Hinata was the one we came here to see, didn't we?" "If Lord Hiashi says that Lady Hanabi might be a better choice, then why can't you just-" "You expect me to impregnate a 14 year old?" Naruto gets really close to his father. Minato is plenty tall, and usually towers the people around him, but Naruto has grown even taller than him, and he looks like someone that fights for fun, so now it seems like Naruto is threatening the blonde man into submission. "You do not have to have a child so soon," explains Minato. He reigns over his voice and attitude, nothing good will come out of having Naruto riled up. "Right, I have how many years left now? 8? 12?" Minato closes his eyes in pain, because this is exactly the reason why they need a Hyuuga in their family, for them to give Naruto a couple more years. "So I wait till she's of age, make her pregnant and then die a few years later, leaving her alone and with a child she will not know how to care for." "Our clan would never leave your child-" "If I am forced to have a family, then I want to at least be there for them!" Minato can't look Naruto in the eye. As Head of the family his expectations are far greater than Minato could ever understand, and if he wishes to be present... Minato understands. "Just control your temper, all right? We don't want Lord Hiashi withdrawing from this deal."

⁂

Hiashi and his daughters seem to have remained still since the moment they left the room. Naruto can't find a hair out of place and he can feel his annoyance growing again, but his father's words are at the back of his head. Naruto kneels in his spot and bows. "We appreciate your opinions in the matter, Lord Hiashi, and we appreciate your worry over the matter." Hiashi looks pleased, and Naruto has to remember to breath in and out, "I would like to have a one on one meeting with Lady Hinata, if you would let me." Hiashi's microscopic smile disappears. "As you wish, my lord." Minato leaves with everyone. He had told Naruto not to piss off Lord Hiashi, but at the end of the day, the decision regarding his bride and future wife must be his. Hinata remains as still as a statue. She had expected Lord Naruto to choose her sister, but now he is looking at her and Hinata doesn't know what to do. "Lady Hinata," Naruto starts, and Hinata breathes out the tiniest yes he has ever heard. "May I ask you to look at my chakra points and release the ones you feel are the most strained, please?" "Yes, my lord." By the way she had been conducting herself, Naruto would have thought she would have more trouble with his request. He half expected her to fumble while doing her work and actually to suck a little bit at it. But Hinata moves closer to him, keeping herself at arms length now and raises her hand to the front of her face with only her index and middle finger up, a usual hand gesture when using one's chakra. She mumbles a word beneath her breath that Naruto doesn't catch and the veins around her white eyes -characteristic to the Hyuuga- bulge out. Naruto can't look away from her eyes and he isn't sure she catches him staring. Hinata moves her eyes across his body and after a while she releases her technique. She doesn't look winded or tired, Naruto notices. "May I help you with your haori, Lord Naruto?" "Sure." Naruto notices his choice of words immediately, but Hinata pays no attention to it. She stands up and helps him take off his jacket, he feels refreshed instantly. "From what I have seen, Lord Naruto, the most restrained chakra points right now are in you upper back, chest and right thigh." Naruto nods along, because he has no way to confirm that information. "I need to put my hands in said parts of your body, may I?" "You may, Lady Hinata." The woman kneels behind him and presses her hands on his back. Naruto straightens even more, she whispers behind him again and starts moving her right hand in between his shoulder blades. She stops in one point and leaves only two of her fingers making contact. Naruto expects a jolt of chakra, a prick, pressure, anything, but he feels nothing and the next moment he feels his muscles relaxing. He feels better without knowing that he had felt bad before. "What the-?" "Lord Naruto?" Hinata moves to his side, as quick as her kimono lets her. Her hand is in his shoulder and the other hovers near his chest. He's hunched over and Hinata feels the tears coming. She did everything correctly, she may not be as good as her sister, but even she can close and release chakra points. Any child in the clan can close and release chakra points. Closing and releasing chakra points is the cornerstone of the Hyuuga clan and no one, in the history of the clan, has ever been unable to at least be able to use that technique. But this is her we're talking about, the weakest of the heiresses in history, so it is not that far-fetched for her to be the first ever to blunder such basic of the basics. "Lord Naruto?" Naruto raises his head with a delighted sigh, "That felt great," he can barely believe something so small is able to make him feel so much better. He looks at Hinata with surprise and stops on his tracks as he sees her face. She breathes in a shaky breath, presses her lips in order to stop them from trembling and does her best to smile, "I am glad, Lord Naruto." "I'm sorry," Naruto says immediately, "did I scare you? I'm sorry." Hinata shakes her head no and stands to move in front of him. Her legs feel weak but she carries on. What a disgrace. "No." If she wasn't so much of a failure then she would have never even entertained the thought that she could possibly hurt him with a bad executed technique. The fact that she even doubted herself is enough to send her spiraling into despair, and the fact that she may have disgraced herself in front of the Head of the Uzumaki is eating at her. "Pl-please think n-nothing of it, my lord." There is silence and Hinata would gladly throw herself to the ponds outside, shame herself in another way that was not her stupid stutter. She hates everything, maybe if he had chosen her sister then she wouldn't be making such a fool of herself. Maybe if her father hadn't shamed her for not being her sister, she wouldn't have such a problem with her speech when pressured. Maybe if she was better, then none of this would be even a problem. She sits in front of Naruto and presses her hands to his chest. She may be a failure and of no consequence but she was going to do what he had asked of her at least. If he would rather have a perfect, free-of-stutter wife then he could choose her sister. Why didn't he just go with her sister and save her the shame? Hinata releases the chakra point and Naruto makes a point of thanking her. Hinata barely hears him, ready to leave the room and for her father and sister to come back and change his mind. Her movements are practiced and she finishes soon. Thank god. She is ready for Naruto to dismiss her with a wave of his hand, but he only kneels. "I can see that you are more than capable of releasing chakra points, Lady Hinata. Thank you. May I know why you father decided to propose your sister instead of you?" Hinata knows this spiel by heart, "Her proficiency-" "You seem to be capable enough." "She's f-faster," Hinata wishes he would just let her go, "more controlled." "May I be blunt, Lady Hinata?" Hinata raises her eyes and breathes out a yes. "I am in need of an heir." Hinata can feel her cheeks heating. "I have no desire to wed a child, and although you and your father seem to be of the mind that Lady Hanabi is better at using your clan's technique, if she is only faster and more controlled in doing what you have just showed me, I have no interest in that. May I know what you know about my clan?" Hinata and her sister studied what they could find about the Uzumaki's, but like any high-positioned clan, they could only find basic information. "Only what is c-common knowledge, my lord." "In that case, I would love for you to get to know my clan before you make your decision, my lady. I would be honored to receive you and move forward with our relationship with marriage in mind. If you would accept my invitation, It would be my pleasure to have you in my compound starting next week." Hinata is puzzled. "My father..." "The Uzumaki are a matriarchal clan, my lady, and in matriarchal clans the decisions are made with the people affected by them, other people are inconsequential. Of course, I will repeat what I said to you word by word to your father, Lady Hinata, I know the ways of this clan." Naruto stands up and waits for Hinata to rise before getting his haori. Hinata moves her hands to help him put his jacket on without thinking. She is still shocked at Naruto's decision. Before they leave the room, Naruto stops in front of the shoji door and turns to her. He towers over her and in any other occasion she would feel anxious by this situation. "It has been my pleasure meeting you, my lady, I shall talk with your father about my proposal and await your answer." Hinata looks at him and nods as an answer. "Just keep in mind, Lady Hinata," Naruto moves his hand under her chin and raises her face to him, "we are not beyond kidnapping our brides and grooms if their decisions are faced with opposition."

⁂

As Naruto and Minato leave the compound, her father stands next to her with displeasure oozing out of him. And maybe this is just the shock talking or the comfort of not knowing what is to come. But Hinata feels the itch to run away.

#Naruto #naruhina #fanfiction #Beast Tamers #ch.1 #I'm gonna be real people I started this because Naruto and Hinata live rent free in my mind and I wanted to write them doing the do #Then the plot followed. Don't expect them to be doing the do every chapter though!! lol

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