#my energy levels cannot be quelled

[radioiaci]

To be so brazenly complimented while being stared at in the face with such a bold and earnest smile is... absolutely not something he has ever experienced before. It is disarming, causing the slightest of flushes to form over his face which he tries excessively hard to distract from as he is pulled back up, glancing up at the ceiling briefly to try and disperse the redness before he can continue to take in Lucifer's words. Though none of them are making it much easier.

"Hah- Well... It is one of my more frequent pastimes. Or... was. Before the hotel took much of my time." But he waves that fact away, dismissively, lest Lucifer believe that he is resentful of the hotel (even if he somewhat is). It will not do him any favors as the secondary song begins to play, the guitar in this one not as fervent, but just as sweet as the first. Alastor falls into that little sway readily as the conversation continues, fighting disappointment when the other seems to put distance between them.

A break is probably needed. So he can regather himself, staring after Lucifer for a few brief moments before catching himself and again glancing away. A slight clearing of the throat given to try and return back to the norm.

But the Devil has made it so incredibly difficult. Every touch feels like fuel to a fire he cannot quite quell.

So aggravating.

He catches the tail end of that tease. And the welcome promise of more to which he visibly perks.

"I suppose another drink will do me some good. Hydration and all. You need not worry about my endurance levels. I've been galivanting around expending much more energy than this for near a century. I can handle a few hours of dancing."

A hand is brought up to brush claws through his hair. Not quite to the point where he is visibly perspiring, but he can tell that his hair is not as straight as it normally is. And the antlers are a dead giveaway of his investment in the moment, reaching up to subtly try to wave away the excitement to make them return down to size, but failing.

Alastor never does have full control over the things. Much like his tail.

His breathing isn’t strained, but it is quickened, steady like the thundering of his heart matching the tempo their hooves once set. His smile is beautific and praise falls readily when he gazes down at the man held in a dip. “I’ve not had the chance to dance so well in — well, long enough I can’t recall! Alastor, Alastor, I’ve heard about a jack of many trades, but you seem to be a master of more than just one, I would call you a Dance Demon as easily as I would a Radio Demon.”

It’s no effort on his part to guide Alastor back up from the dip, hands sliding up slowly, leaving them once more with little space in between, torsos nearly touching with each shared breath. “I hope you know, this was precisely one of many reasons why I was hoping to invite you here. I wanted to dance with you. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, despite the late hour. And what witticism you might throw at me, lest I become a little too comfortable, of course, without any mental exercise.”

Soft notes play for the next song on the record, but Lucifer does no more than start a slow sway where they stand, the movements instinctive from the urge to just keep dancing until the later hours of morning. “But perhaps we could — take a short moment. I hardly want you keeling over from pushing too much exertion too fast on you, old man.” That, and his eyes flick up to the growing antlers on Alastor’s head, eyes catching the soft gleam on them from the lighting. He isn’t aware of his own horn peeking out, but he can certainly relate to feeling worked up about the tango just shared.

He feels warm this close to Alastor, like he doesn’t want to let go, like it might break some sort of spell that had come over the both of them… But eventually, he is the first to pull away, not wanting to push for more, and does the same guide as before, a little pressure on the hip to encourage a pivot ollowed by a tiny squeeze of gratitude before he lets go entirely. “Well! I could use another drink, how about you? Cool off some before a second round? I am sure you would love another opportunity to strut your stuff on the dancefloor, unless I’m gravely mistaken about your endurance levels?”

[fadeless]

Today I woke up around 1:30 with really sore calves (from the concerts) contemplating whether to actually leave the apartment today. Around 2 ish I decided I wanted to get pho at my fav restaurant on Bowery. I thought about putting on makeup for fun, but decided my face needed a break from all the concert makeup lol. Then when I left, I doubled back in for my sunglasses because it was actually really nice out, 80+ degrees and really sunny.

I took the A train to Fulton St and transferred onto the J for Bowery, because I didn’t feel like doing the usual A to Canal and walking 15 minutes. Again, my legs were hurting haha. I waited at Fulton for about 10 minutes for the J, it was hot af, and then when I finally arrived on Bowery I turned north instead of south towards the restaurant. Walked a few blocks and turned around thinking like “Dang it Kim you should know this.” Actually looked at the New Museum and thought about going in because I had nothing else going on, but decided that I was way too hungry, would go to the restaurant first, and then I should still have time to check the museum out before it closes.

Walking back south, waiting for the pedestrian light to turn for me to cross Broome St., I saw a guy from behind with long hair bleached blonde, with black roots. I was actually listening to ONE OK ROCK on this whole commute, and naturally I was still thinking about the concerts, so I saw this guy and remember thinking, “huh, his hair looks a lot like Ryota’s.” I glanced around really quickly and noticed that it’s a bunch of artsy looking people in black, there’s a camera, some equipment etc, pretty common in manhattan. THEN I start crossing the street, Ryota turns around, I’m instantly like H OL Y FUCKING S H I T.

Theyre right at the corner, so when I touch the sidewalk on the other side I just kinda freeze, and Ryota notices me staring at him, acknowledges me, smiles, and says “Hi!” I’m just freaking out in my head, and I say “Hello!” back. He waits for me to say something really patiently ( as in like the few seconds where I’m still gathering my imploding thoughts) and I  tell him I went to see their two shows here, and I don’t think he heard me the first time so he asked if I went to their shows, and I said “Yes I went to both of the shows!” I don’t remember his exact words but he smiled and looked excited/surprised and said something along the lines of “Wow! That’s awesome/great!” and then I noticed Michelle, his wife, standing there and asked really awkwardly “Your wife?” and he answered like “yes this is my wife”  and internally I was like smh why am I weird what do I say but then I started spewing out  things like “The shows were amazing thank you so much for coming!” and I told him I saw them here before too in 2015 and he was surprised/excited and I just kept saying thank you (???) and he was really smiley and nice. I asked if he’s having fun in New York and he said “Yes!!” Then he turned and said something in Japanese and I realized he was gesturing to TAKA who THEN WALKS OVER and says YO! Or HEY! (I forget) and I shake his hand like “Hello!” At this point I haven’t noticed anyone at all because I was so shocked in that moment that I was talking to Ryota and then it dawns on me that yes the others must be here too. Then I tell Taka that I went to both of their shows and they were amazing, thank you so much for coming please come back soon (this string of words comes up often lol) and he was surprised/excited and said “That’s awesome! Thank you” Then, again, I tell Taka that in 2015 I saw them here, and I met them and they signed my CD (35xxxv) and he was like “Really? Wow!” and I was just going thank you so much I love your music thank you, asked if he’s having fun in new york, he says “Yeah!” And I asked for a photo and he said “of course!” and we selfied and then WE HUGGED and I said “thank you so much! I hope you have a great day!” And he said “Thanks!” and I kinda just walk over to Toru. Remember, this is still HELLA FUCKING SURREAL so just then as I took a few steps I was like “That’s Toru. I’m just walking over to him.” And he’s tall! And I say Hi! And he says hi! And I (insert telling him I went to his shows thank you etc etc) and he was like Thank you! And honestly sorry if I am uninformed but I wasn’t sure if Ryota, Toru and Tomoya could speak English very well but they answered so fast and looked so engaged in what I was saying I felt so special omg 😭 (but in retrospect it makes complete sense because they hang out with a lot of American bands) but YEAH. And at some point Toru said that they were going to come back soon and I asked “Do you know when?” and he kinda just smiled (sWOON) and I laugh and I asked for a photo and he takes this goofy-ass selfie with me. I thought it was funny behind I accidentally unlocked my phone and was on the music app with NO SCARED playing and was fumbling to do the iphone-swipe-from-the-bottom-camera and he saw it haha. And then I say Thank you! AND WE HUG and hes taller than me so I LEAN UP TO HUG. And then Tomoya is actually standing RIGHT THERE ready to talk to me and says HI TO ME FIRST and im just thinking (“THESE MEN ARE TOO NICE THEY SEE ME HAVING A HEART ATTACK AND KNOW IM A FAN AND GREET ME GOD BLESS OMG”) and I tell him thank you so much for the shows and he smiles! And I try to tell him it’s hard to see him behind his drums from near the stage but he was amazing but I kinda get stuck in my words so he’s like “haha thank you!”  anyways. And he sees me holding my phone and says “Photo?” and im like “Yes!” and we take a selfie! AND HUG And then I say thank you and they have to leave. This whole time I’m vaguely aware the camera men were filming me and then they approach me and the band make their way out. As Taka, Ryota, Toru, and Tomoya were getting in the van they waved goodbye and I waved bye back! And then they were gone. This was all so fast, probably in the span of seven, maybe twn minutes.

Camera people aren’t as exciting but they asked me like,

“What’s it like seeing them in concert, and then just seeing them here on the street?”

“What’s your favorite song?”

“How did you discover them”

and they prompted me for my emotional response to the band and I talked about how their music especially for youth my age really inspires us to keep going and I talked about “We Are” and honestly I was just so frazzled like legit my hand was on my chest and my heart was pumping lol. The camera man thought it was hilarious how I took a different subway trip and turned the wrong way at first and somehow ran into the band I just saw in concert.  And they were so excited for me and happy to talk to me! After filming I asked the manager or supervisor or something what they were doing here, and we were standing outside of what looks like to be a restaurant and he explained to me that there is a studio downstairs and they just had a jam session. And the camera man pulls out his phone and shows me a video of the session and Im just like wow! Thank you. And they talked about how theyre filming a documentary and that I will be able to see it in the fall, and I signed a paper to let them use the footage lol.

And yeah guys! Sorry this is some kind of inarticulate diary post but that was my day today! I planned on going grocery shopping/museum visiting but after meeting them I was so shook I couldn’t really handle more functioning lol. I got pho, despite how my former appetite was just eliminated from how excited I was, and continued to freak out to my friend on my phone the whole time I was eating lol. P sure the waiter thought I was weird for intensely smiling while eating lmao.

Tl;dr, the men of ONE OK ROCK are so down to earth and friendly and adorable and kind and I’m so grateful they accommodated me, a spazzy fan that interrupted whatever they were doing. I HUGGED THEM AND TALKED TO THEM AND GOT PHOTOS (except I missed one with Ryota on accident because I wasn’t thinking coherently yet 😭) .  I cant believe that all my random decisions today, including bumming it in my bed until 2 PM led to this amazing moment. So yeah, this weekend was fantastic!!!

I am still so happy and I plan on nursing this high for at least a week haha.

Disclaimer: highly likely my memory is v imperfect especially when I was this surprised but the gist is all there!

[toomanyf4ndoms7]

Mortal Kombat: Return of the dragon king: The construct’s companion.

Summary: Sensing an explosion of spiritual energy, Ermac is soon joined by a surprising ally with a quest for atonement.

Chapter List.

Chapter List part two.

Adapting to free will was certainly a new experience for Ermac. Thankfully, they managed to quell the cacophony of screaming souls within into a somewhat unified way. They acted as a protector to Outworld, helping the innocents in an attempt to make up for countless wrongs.

Recently, a massive explosion of spiritual energy caught Ermac’s attention. As a being on a higher level of enlightenment than most, they decided to meditate in hopes of understanding the cause. It was also remarkably calming for a being such as them.

As they were deep in meditation, their consciousness exploring the spiritual plane, Ermac heard a voice call to them.

“Ermac?”

The being of ten thousand souls opened their eyes to find a spirit looking at them. But this was no ordinary ghost, it was Liu Kang, the champion of mortal kombat. They bowed their head in a showing of respect.

“Liu Kang. An honour, champion.”

“There is no need for such praise, Ermac. We are equals this day. I sense something… different about you.”

Ermac lifted their head.

“We have been freed from Shao Kahn’s control and are free to choose our own destiny.”

“I am pleased to hear that.”

Ermac changed the subject. The fact that Liu Kang’s spirit approached not long after the spiritual maelstrom could not be mere coincidence.

“We sensed a massive explosion of spiritual energy. I assume you are somehow related?”

“Correct. Shang Tsung killed me and stole my soul. That explosion you refer to freed his countless souls, including me. Many of my Shaolin brothers and sisters are in the heavens, but I cannot rest until I atone for my failure.”

Ermac could relate to that feeling. They had spent many years trying to make up for the crimes committed under Shao Kahn. But no matter how many bandit attacks they thwarted or villagers they saved, it never felt like enough. Perhaps this mission can help ease that guilt.

“We are also seeking a chance to atone. Perhaps we can form a partnership in your endeavour?”

The spirit of Liu Kang nodded.

“Before we begin our quest, I must ask, how much do you know of Onaga?”

“We have heard the name, and tales of his power, but not his agenda. Why do you ask?”

“While I do not know his plans beyond conquest, I can inform you that he has resurrected and enslaved Kung Lao, Jackson Briggs, Johnny Cage, Sonya Blade… and princess Kitana.

For some reason, Ermac felt something stir within them at mention of Kitana. Strange, perhaps a holdover from the Edenian souls that comprised their existence. They also felt something strengthening their resolve.

“Then we cannot afford to wait. Where is our first objective?”

“Before we can free our allies, we need to learn about the dragon king. There must be a temple, something with records of Onaga.”

Onaga’s rule was far before Ermac’s time, but the Edenian souls within along with absorbing knowledge from his reading had filled in the blanks.

“There is a tomb in the Sarna desert. It could be a good start.”

Liu Kang nodded.

“Then we do not have any time to waste.”

The pair of spirits began their journey, and Ermac allowed their mind to wander. This would be their chance of achieving redemption. And perhaps they would finally understand these feelings towards Kitana.

All in good time.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Chapter 5 of The Quiet Room (ao3 or tumblr pt 1, pt 2, pt 3, pt 4)

-

Nie Mingjue took three tries to wake up.

In all truth, he wasn’t that badly injured – if it hadn’t been for how tangled his spiritual energy already was, steeped in resentment from his wayward cultivation and burned by trying to keep a saber’s pace from within a human body, a night’s rest and some tonics would probably have been enough to put him right. But it was, and he was, and so the concern of his doctors was all the more pronounced.

The first time he woke, it was to Nie Xiaoxuan, a cantankerous old doctor who’d lost all patience with her patients years before Nie Mingjue had been conceived, looking down at him with a scowl, saying, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Go back to sleep!”

A needle had descended, leaving him not much choice about the matter – it was a good thing he was used to such rough treatment, or else he might’ve worried. Instead he found some comfort in how some things were always the same, and his Nie sect’s objectively awful bedside manner was one of them.

He slept.

He woke a second time to arguing outside his door in the middle of the night, whispers and hisses that were so loud as to be unworthy of being called lowered voices –

“– the Sect Leader deserves to know!”

“Nie-er-gongzi gave the order, and it was obeyed. There isn’t any need to disturb the Sect Leader’s recuperation over nonsense.”

“Nonsense?! Do you know what the implications will be? Nie-er-gongzi is still young, he doesn’t understand –”

“Sect Leader was once younger still. There is still sect discipline, or are you making an official challenge to his judgment? If so, you should be bothering Nie-er-gongzi, as the one who gave the order, and a council of peers that would be assembled to determine if his judgment was flawed.”

“I  - no. I won’t.”

“If there’s no challenge to the quality of Nie-er-gongzi’s judgment, then there’s no reason to talk to the Sect Leader.”

Nie Mingjue smiled, proud of his sect and of his brother – even if he didn’t know exactly what it was that Nie Huaisang had ordered that had caused such a stir – and went back to sleep.

He woke up the third time to the sounds of a guqin.

He’d always been slow to wake from an induced sleep, and this time was no different – his body was heavy, confining, and it was a long time before he managed to open his eyes. A half-shichen at least, and yet the guqin continued steadfastly onwards.

So by the time he did manage to open his eyes, the first words out of Nie Mingjue’s mouth were, “Wangji, please stop making a racket.”

The sound of the guqin paused.

Nie Mingjue turned his head to look at him. Lan Wangji looked better than he had the last time he’d seen him, in that horrible mixture of nightmare and reality that had been their flight from the Cloud Recesses and the terrible strain of flying all the way to Qinghe in a single night.  If either of them had been lesser cultivators, they wouldn’t have been able to manage it; even at their level, it was considered highly unwise, and they had known that they were spending life energy rather than spiritual qi to buy them the strength they needed.

At least it had been late enough that both children, initially excited by all the rushing around involved in their escape, had quickly lapsed back into sleep instead of descending to tears.

Still, better was a low bar. By the end of their flight, Lan Wangji had had blood soaking through his white robes, his eye locked on the horizon and unable to focus on anything nearer, his entire body wracked with occasional shudders – if he’d been anyone else, he would have been screaming.

He still look pale and bloodless, his eyes hunted and guilty and tired, stark white bandages visible beneath the pale (but not white) robes that looked like something Nie Huaisang had once owned, but he didn’t look about to expire, so Nie Mingjue would take that as a victory.

“I would have thought,” Lan Wangji said carefully, laying his hands on the guqin chords to stop the sound, “that you would prefer that it not be silent.”

“There’s silence and then there’s silence,” Nie Mingjue said, trying to shrug and abruptly realizing that that was a bad idea. His shoulders and neck and back all hurt – possibly he’d dislocated something in trying to get out of that horrible room. Probably, even. “Not wanting to be locked in a room designed to be as close to nothingness as possible doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t want some peace and quiet once in a while…I shouldn’t have called your playing a racket. It’s very good. There was just a lot of it.”

Lan Wangji blinked, then shook his head. “I do not take offense,” he said, simply enough that Nie Mingjue believed him. “It is a surprise that you think the way you do about silence, even now. I myself have been…struggling, with the concept.”

“It’s very loud here,” Nie Mingjue said knowingly, and Lan Wangji averted his eyes. “It’s all right if you don’t like it that much, you know. Has Huaisang talked with you about the options for soundproofing?”

“He has,” Lan Wangji said. “I have not yet accepted.”

“Why not?”

“It feels –” he hesitated. “Like a step backwards. My Lan sect has always valued silence, quiet – not just valued, but imposed, even on those for whom it is not appropriate.”

Like you, he meant, or maybe he was thinking about little Lan Jingyi, the orphan he’d stolen away from his own sect – truly stolen, since unlike little Lan Sizhui Lan Wangji had no guardianship rights over him to justify taking him away.

Nie Mingjue hadn’t objected to it, figuring that it didn’t make much difference to the amount of scandal he would undoubtedly causse whether he had taken away one child or two when he convinced the Second Jade of Lan to abandon his ‘seclusion’ in favor of refuge at the Unclean Realm. Anyway, if Lan Wangji had concluded that it would be better for the child to leave, then it probably was – Nie Mingjue trusted his judgment.

Just like you trusted Lan Xichen’s?

“Each sect has a different cultivation style,” he said, deciding not to think about that right now. “With both strengths and weaknesses. My Nie sect has a martial style, aggressive and overpowering; your Lan sect, although it still follows the orthodoxy of sword cultivation, focuses on contemplation, thoughtfulness, and, yes, quiet. Who is to say which is better than the other? They’re just different.”

Lan Wangji was frowning.

“Sometimes I think Wen Mao made a mistake when he abandoned sects based on preference and style in favor of raising up his clan,” Nie Mingjue confessed. “And your ancestors and mine, too, in following his lead. Look at Huaisang – to cultivate a saber is his heritage, his birthright and his duty to our bloodline, and so he must do so despite being clearly unsuited for it.” He paused, then sighed. “Not that he’s all that suitable for anything else, either.”

Lan Wangji shot him a quelling look, disapproving, but in the sort of way that Lans had when they were amused by you.

“Still, we’re all cultivators, each of us fighting against fate,” Nie Mingjue continued. “While we must be guided by our traditions, we must also each find the path that suits us best. You’ve always enjoyed the quiet, Wangji; you welcome peace, prefer order, thrive within the confines of your sect’s rules. Finding the point at which you and your traditions part ways does not mean that you are morally obligated to give up everything about them.”

“Not even when those traditions have caused so much harm?”

“Even so,” Nie Mingjue said firmly. “We’re all on a path, and in choosing to take a new turn, you are not disregarding the past, but adding your wisdom to that of those who came before you. I made changes to my Nie sect’s cultivation style once I became sect leader, just as my father did before me; my brother will make still more when he takes the position after I go. Each of my Nie sect disciples practices the Nie sect style, but each one takes it and makes it their own. Keep what helps, discard what hurts.”

“But in this case, is it not the very same thing?” Lan Wangji asked. His brow was still furrowed, the matter clearly one of great concern to him. “I have always turned to the quiet for comfort and strength, sought seclusion to temper myself and test myself, and yet – in the absence of all noise– I found myself slowly going mad, locked away and alone. You yourself nearly died from it. What lesson can I take from this, if not that the quiet is evil?”

“You can take the lesson that too much quiet can be an evil, in the same way too much medicine can be a poison,” Nie Mingjue said. “I might hate your jingshi, since it doesn’t suit me, but I’m given to understand that it often helps, too. It brings peace to cultivators who are tormented by a mind full of thoughts they cannot quiet and helps them fight the demons in their hearts, it allows those who are too connected to the world to tear themselves away. It was built for a purpose.”

“It was,” Lan Wangji said. “A purpose it has now betrayed.”

Nie Mingjue didn’t have anything to say about that. He’d once told Lan Xichen that he thought his sect’s practice of introducing children to that place until they learned quiet whether they liked it or not was inhumane and cruel, and Lan Xichen – in a rare moment of sarcasm – had asked him if teaching them to cultivate a saber spirit that would eventually consume their minds with rage was somehow meant to be morally superior.  

To each their own faults, he supposed. Perhaps the next generation would do better.

(He found himself thinking things like that a great deal, these days. He was only in his twenties, and yet his thoughts resembled an old man’s – the feeling of death stalking his footsteps, the day nearly done, his legacy a book that seemed to be nearly completed.

That had been what had driven him to stop his sessions of Clarity with Jin Guangyao, in fact. He’d been reviewing a plan for renovating the western courtyards of the Unclean Realm as part of a long-term plan to get more air and light in there and he’d found himself thinking I probably won’t be here to see this completed, and that had been when he’d realized that it was time to start seriously planning for succession.)

“Perhaps it is the conflation of different things,” Lan Wangji mused, more to himself than anyone else. “The quiet, being alone, loneliness…and yet you can have quiet without being alone, you can be alone without being lonely, you can be lonely without quiet. A balance between disconnecting from the world and connecting with other people.”

That sounded like poetry, and Nie Mingjue could see Lan Wangji’s fingers twitch towards the guqin – he’d probably been inspired.

Nie Mingjue sighed and put his hand over his eyes. His father had told him that being an elder brother meant a life of sacrifice, and he’d been right. “All right,” he said. “Go ahead and play something. I know you want to.”

Lan Wangji was silent for a few long moments, and then his fingers began to move, the too-familiar sound of the Song of Clarity rising up to fill Nie Mingjue’s ears.

“I didn’t mean for me,” Nie Mingjue clarified, rolling his eyes while his hand was still hiding them. The Lan were always so earnest. “I’m not even meditating right now, Wangji. Don’t waste your effort.”

Lan Wangji’s fingers stilled briefly, then continued.

“Chifeng-zun –”

Nie Mingjue pulled his hand away long enough to give Lan Wangji a stern look – he’d already told him several times to refer to him more casually, and however long or short his stay at the Unclean Realm was, if they were going to endure a scandal together, he was simply going to have to adjust to their ways.

Lan Wangji looked long-suffering.

“Mingjue-xiong,” he conceded, and Nie Mingjue nodded, pleased. “Please pay close attention to my playing. Identify if there are any differences between my rendition and –”

“Wangji,” Nie Mingjue interrupted, feeling pained at the very thought. “I can’t.”

Lan Wangji frowned at him, his eyes showing distress.

Nie Mingjue felt guilty at once, and exhaled a sigh. “Wangji, you know I don’t cultivate with music,” he said. “It’s all just interminable plucking to me.”

Lan Wangji’s eyebrows shot up. “Plucking?” he echoed, and Nie Mingjue winced – he’d probably shocked poor Lan Wangji’s conscience. “Mingjue-xiong…you really don’t like music, do you?”

“Not in the slightest,” Nie Mingjue confessed. “I can more or less follow a beat or rhythm, and military calls are fine no matter what instrument is involved, but the rest is all a mess of pointless noise. I can’t tell if the notes are high or low, which ones go before the others, and apparently there are different tones in music as there are in speech? Except in music, certain of them apparently sporadically considered bad, in a variety of different and exciting ways, sometimes but not others, none of which make the slightest difference – ”

He stopped talking on account of Lan Wangji having started to make an unusual hiccupping sound.

Nie Mingjue squinted. Was Lan Wangji…laughing?

If so, he was sorely out of practice. Though now that he thought it, that seemed to make some sense.

“Forgive me,” Lan Wangji said, shoulders shaking – he’d stopped making audible noise, but he was evidently still suffering from an attack of hilarity. “You speak so well, Mingjue-xiong; I had not realized that you suffered from amusia.” He saw Nie Mingjue’s frown of confusion and clarified, “Tone-deafness.”

“I say so all the time!”

“I had incorrectly assumed, as I suspect many have, that you were using the term colloquially,” Lan Wangji said. “How do you fight alongside my brother? I have seen you do so flawlessly, without any impediment, even when he wields Liebing.”

“I can follow along with what he’s doing with his qi,” Nie Mingjue said. “We have been close for so many years, and his spiritual energy is as familiar to me as my own –”

Lan Wangji flinched.

Nie Mingjue stopped talking.

His heart was heavy in his chest, weighed down with feeling, all those things he’d been so carefully not thinking about suddenly stifling him. Lan Xichen, his childhood friend, his lover, his beloved…

He’d hurt him.

Nie Mingjue couldn’t bring himself to believe that the act had been intentional or malicious, not even when Lan Wangji’s arrival made painfully clear that Lan Xichen hadn’t even bothered to supervise him. It simply wasn’t in Lan Xichen’s nature to do such an underhanded thing –

(You once thought Meng Yao wouldn’t do that sort of thing, either. Do you make a habit of blindness?)

He had known Lan Xichen for such a long time, though. If he didn’t know him, both virtues and faults, what person existed that he could say he understood?

No, Lan Xichen must have been trying to help him, not hurt him. And yet – regardless of his intent – he had.

He had hurt him very badly.

Lan Xichen hadn’t listened to him, had ignored him, disregarded him – Nie Mingjue had been as clear as he could be about how he felt about the quiet room. Perhaps he hadn’t told Lan Xichen about his youthful attempt to see if he could handle it, at first out of simply not wanting to appear weak in front of his lover, but later out of (admittedly petty) principle: shouldn’t his ‘no’ be enough? Shouldn’t Lan Xichen have trusted him?

He hadn’t.

He’d trusted Jin Guangyao instead.

Jin Guangyao with his smiles and slippery manner, with his so-believable excuses and always-present rationalizations, always the victim in every exchange they had – Lan Xichen always went to comfort him first after they had another one of their arguments, Nie Mingjue recalled abruptly. He’d called him on it once, in his anger, but Lan Xichen had explained that he knew how strong Nie Mingjue was, how resilient, and that his “A-Yao” needed his sympathy more.

Nie Mingjue hadn’t thought much of it at the time. He was resilient, and anyway he knew how frightening his rages could be; he’d thought perhaps that Lan Xichen simply wanted the excuse to be elsewhere until he’d had a chance to calm down.

He’d rationalized a lot of things. Maybe too many. But this?

This was too much.

“Mingjue-xiong,” Lan Wangji said hesitantly. “About – about my brother…”

Nie Mingjue grimaced, and Lan Wangji felt silent once more.

Nie Mingjue’s heart cried out for his lover, the kind and gentle man who might be a little too reluctant to express himself, a little prone to going with the will of the majority to avoid confrontation, a little inclined to panic at the thought of disappointing people, but whose faults only made him the more human, the more loveable.

But Nie Mingjue had slept, and slept well, and even if his heart was still tangled, his mind was now clear.

“I have long thought,” he said carefully, painfully cognizant of the fact that Lan Wangji was Lan Xichen’s younger brother, “that fate had arranged for your brother and I to meet, and that we would live the rest of our lives intertwined, our hears and minds filled with thoughts of one another. But it seems to me now that that was perhaps – not our destiny.”

“My brother has wronged you,” Lan Wangji said solemnly.

“I still believe his intent was good,” Nie Mingjue assured him earnestly. “Your brother has – more reason than most, I think, to resent my intransigence on matters of my health, and to suspect – to suspect –”

He stopped, swallowed. He had long been (politely) termed to be a straightforward man; it was not in his character to stutter over his speech, to be unable to say the unvarnished truth no matter how painful. Even if it was his lover who was causing him such pain.

“Wangji,” he said instead, and Lan Wangji looked at him. “You know that my family – does not live long lives.”

Lan Wangji nodded.

“It is not uncommon,” he said carefully, “for those in my family to begin to show signs of decline before the end. A certain rigidity of thought –”

“You are not so far down that path that your thinking has become impaired,” Lan Wangji said abruptly, his voice unexpectedly fierce. “Moreover, your refusal was not new, but consistent with your prior thoughts, your opinion expressed repeatedly and consistently. Do not make excuses for him.”

Nie Mingjue was a little surprised, having expected Lan Wangji to defend his brother, but then he recalled the matter of those thirty-three marks marring Lan Wangji’s back. Even if Lan Wangji’s conduct had been wrong, it had been motivated by love, and at any rate the others in the Lan sect had not died – no one had died, except for Wei Wuxian, and Lan Wangji had only been able to offer his beloved the succor of his presence for a short time before he returned to submit himself to punishment.

Impulsive, hot-headed, passionate – it might not be the actions of a Lan, but, as a Nie, Nie Mingjue found his sympathies lay with Lan Wangji in this matter. Yes, he had defended a murderer from being torn apart by the hands of his victims, and Nie Mingjue would not say that he did not think it was necessary for Wei Wuxian to die, but even those that had been duly tried and sentenced to the worst capital punishment might still be allowed the mercy of a good meal and the touch of their lover’s hand before they were executed, and a bit of disobedience against one’s elders was to be expected in any love affair.  

Was fending off a few old men to buy a few shichen of love before its premature end really worth a punishment that would have crippled anyone weaker?

“Actions matter more than intent,” he agreed, wondering how he could convey his thoughts on the subject without being offensive to the Lan sect, “but that doesn’t make intent meaningless. To act from love and affection is still better than for – other reasons.”

He wasn’t sure Lan Wangji had understood his meaning: the other man only lowered his eyes.

Nie Mingjue’s mind reluctantly returned to his own troubles.

“I’ll speak with Xichen,” he decided, even though he knew it was probably a bad idea. Lan Xichen’s conduct, however it was meant, could be understood as having brought him to the very precipice of death – enough justification to start a war, given that Nie Mingjue was a sect leader. Their respective positions meant that a disagreement between them could never be simply personal, but was also political; if Nie Mingjue allowed his soft heart to convince him to forgive Lan Xichen, he would be setting a poor standard for the future. “He can explain what he was thinking. If I find his explanation unsatisfactory, I will – tell him what I told you.”

Nie Mingjue was blunt and direct, sparing no one – not even himself – but he was not so cold as to be able to cut off a relationship that already spanned the majority of his life sign unseen. He would give Lan Xichen one chance to salvage things between them, to be shocked into sobriety by the extent of how things had gotten out of hand, to genuinely apologize –

“I think,” Lan Wangji said, very slowly, eyes still locked on the floor as if there was something fascinating there, “that brother’s explanation may omit that he was distracted by his other lover.”

Nie Mingjue’s heart froze in his chest.

“Other – lover?” he said dumbly. Lan Wangji refused to look at him. “Wangji – are you saying – Xichen has..?”

Lan Xichen wouldn’t. Surely he wouldn’t.

“Lianfeng-zun has told him lies, and Brother accepted them without verification,” Lan Wangji said, and his voice was bitter. “I believe that he feared confronting you on the subject of a man he knew you disliked, and also saw an opportunity to obtain his heart’s desire – to not give up anything and yet gain something he wanted. And Lianfeng-zun is known to be skilled in anticipating people’s desires.”

Nie Mingjue stared at the ceiling in a daze, his mind whirling.

So many little things suddenly made a belated sort of sense.

The way Lan Xichen seemed so certain that all the troubles between them were only temporary, the way that he entreated Nie Mingjue to think kindly of Jin Guangyao as if there was a stronger bond between them than a lost former friendship and a new sworn brotherhood. The way Jin Guangyao acted more intimately with Nie Mingjue whenever Lan Xichen was present, only to return to a more professional remove once they were alone – he’d assumed that was because Jin Guangyao knew that Lan Xichen would protect him if Nie Mingjue got annoyed with him for such familiarities and that Nie Mingjue would not want to upset his beloved by scolding over something so minor.

But if, for instance, Jin Guangyao had told Lan Xichen that they had been lovers once, those public intimacies, and Lan Xichen’s joy in them, all suddenly took on a new flavor –

Surely Lan Xichen knew that Nie Mingjue would never have done that to him?

Skilled in anticipating people’s desires.

Nie Mingjue had noticed Lan Xichen’s fondness for Jin Guangyao from the first, back when Jin Guangyao had been only Meng Yao, and he’d known that Meng Yao had respected and even revered the beautiful, powerful, and chivalrous Zewu-jun. He’d been pleased when they’d become friends, hadn’t minded the occasional light flirtation – he’d been so certain that nothing would come of it, trusted in Lan Xichen’s morality and their love. He himself was not skilled in wordplay the way they were, nor as sensitive to the subtle changes in a conversation, preferring to stay silent rather than risk mis-stepping, a habit formed of too much responsibility and exposure to politics at too early an age. Why shouldn’t Lan Xichen get to enjoy the cut and thrust of charming, clever conversation with an expert at the art?

They had all been friends back then. Nie Mingjue had been so proud of his prized deputy, and pleased beyond measure that Lan Xichen liked him as well; Nie Mingjue had so few friends that the addition of another one was something he treasured. Even if Lan Xichen’s good sense had surely told him that such betrayal was impossible, given Nie Mingjue’s character, he might still in his reckless desires allow himself to be intoxicated by his affections and believe it for just a little while – just long enough to taste Jin Guangyao’s lips, perhaps.

That’d be enough.

Nie Mingjue knew Lan Xichen well; he knew his lover’s faults as well as he knew his virtues. If Lan Xichen had allowed himself to act foolishly for a moment, he would have panicked at the thought of coming to terms with it, and Jin Guangyao was so good at soothing his panic. Too good: where Nie Mingjue, in his harshness, had always advised revisiting mistakes and learning from them, no matter how difficult the process, Jin Guangyao would always recommend being kind to oneself, taking care of oneself, avoiding the pain that came with tackling one’s flaws and erroneous self-conceptions head-on.

Too much care for the self would eventually mean not enough care for others, Nie Mingjue had always thought, rolling his eyes whenever Jin Guangyao earnestly held forth on his views. But Lan Xichen had liked it – and why wouldn’t he? It was easier to put yourself first, to refuse to admit mistakes were mistakes, to rationalize events until you were always the victim and everyone else wrong. It meant you didn’t have to confront your own capacity for cruelty and selfishness, could conceive of yourself as always virtuous and always good and always right.

Right, rather than righteous.

Justified, rather than just.

The way Jin Guangyao always did.

Yes, Lan Xichen might allow himself to kiss Jin Guangyao, or more if Jin Guangyao pushed his advantage – which he would, Nie Mingjue had no doubt of that – and then, after the fog of lust had cleared, Lan Xichen would realize that he’d have to confess the entire thing to Nie Mingjue.

An emotional confrontation of the sort he hated most.

And then, of course, just as Lan Xichen was most upset and vulnerable, Jin Guangyao would offer him a way out – a way for Lan Xichen to continue to see himself as a good person who had done no wrong, who didn’t need confront anything – a way to get a new love alongside the old, to have Jin Guangyao’s clever speech and gentle care while not losing Nie Mingjue’s steadfast affection and support.

It was not uncommon in their times for a man to have more than one wife and entirely possible for him to love them both equally; the idea of a triad was not so strange. But Lan Xichen should have asked.

He didn’t.

He didn’t ask because some part of him knew that the answer would be no, and, just as he had with the quiet room, that was not an answer he wished to accept.

And that…that was not something that could be blamed on Jin Guangyao, as much as Nie Mingjue would prefer to do so.

That was all Lan Xichen.

Lan Xichen...how could you do this to me?

Nie Mingjue closed his eyes in pain. It felt as if all the air had been knocked out of him, like a really good punch might do - he felt hollow, weightless, disconnected, as if he had been struck by a blow that had shattered his bones and he was drifting in that blank space in the moment after the blow landed but before the pain reached his brain.

The full weight of the revelation would hit, eventually. He would feel it all, eventually.

“I see,” he said, and he did. Lan Wangji was upset over it in a way that suggested that he had only recently learned the truth. Given the speed of their travel, that meant he must have discovered it while conversing with Nie Huaisang – and that was another problem, because Nie Huaisang was their father’s son just as Nie Mingjue was, and nothing sparked their rage more than an offense against a loved one. “Thank you for telling me.”

“It is what I should do.”

Nie Mingjue nodded, his throat tight, his chest dull as if there was a knot where his heart had been - yes, he would need some time to deal with this.

“Huaisang is managing well?” he asked, not quite able to bring himself to actually ask for a little more time before he had to return to being the stern and untouchable sect leader, before he had to once again take on the mantle of power and make all the decisions – to force himself to react as a politician rather than a betrayed lover. It would be disgraceful to give into such weakness.

“He is,” Lan Wangji said. “He has given orders that you may not leave your room until the end of the week at the earliest, so as to remind the disciples of the benefit of rest following an injury.”

Nie Mingjue loved his brother.

“Very well,” he said, and decided not to ask about what Nie Huaisang might or might not have gotten into over the last day or so that had led some disciples to think they needed to disturb his rest in order to tell him. It didn’t really matter. They needed to adjust to taking Nie Huaisang’s orders as if he was sect leader in truth – especially if Nie Mingjue’s health continued to deteriorate…

He didn’t have time to think too much on that before Lan Wangji spoke again, saying, “Even if you do not understand music, you can follow the emanations of qi from an instrument, correct?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Nie Mingjue said, a little puzzled by the sudden shift in conversation but deeply relieved to have something to think about - anything, really, as long as it wasn’t the brutal feeling of his heart being torn to shreds within his chest.

“So if I were to utilize musical cultivation, you might be able to determine if I were using the same patterns as you had heard others use?”

“I suppose so,” Nie Mingjue said. It would be extremely irritating to have to pay attention to such small ebbs and flows, especially when he was also trying to meditate and draw the qi into himself for the fullest effect, but he was familiar enough with Clarity by now that he probably could if he really had to. “But why?”

“A suspicion,” Lan Wangji said. “Nie Huaisang has pointed out that Lianfeng-zun’s actions in connection to my brother are suggestive of malice against you, his actions in convincing my brother to lock you into the jingshi doubly so, and yet he comes to visit you regularly, purportedly to improve your health.”

Purportedly.

Nie Mingjue grimaced again, but this time it was with anger at himself – because the suggestion did not shock him the way the information about Lan Xichen had. Meng Yao, Meng Yao, he thought, I wish I didn’t believe this of you. I extended my trust to you twice over, and each time you have disappointed me…it’s my own fault, I suppose, for being arrogant enough to think I could change you.

“Thank you, Wangji,” he said, suddenly tired. “I understand your implication, and we will of course need to examine whether it is correct. But not today.”

“Of course,” Lan Wangji said, and stood up. “I will take my leave and go tell Nie Huaisang to move me into one of the soundproofed rooms. I require time to contemplate the subject of quiet.”

That made Nie Mingjue want to smile, though he couldn’t quite manage it, still twisted by all the revelations that had relentlessly pounded against him since he had awoken. “Good,” he said instead, turning to nod at Lan Wangji in approval. “I hope your meditation on the subject is fruitful.”

“Mm,” Lan Wangji agreed. “As you said, I must find my own path, be guided by tradition but not unduly restricted by it. But there is one point in what you said that was incorrect.”

“Oh?”

“You said that I should not, without consideration, throw out my sect’s traditions,” Lan Wangji said, and he was standing stiffly, at attention, with his face as serious as it ever got. “But at the moment, it is not my sect. You have given me permission to stay here, and I intend to do so.”

Nie Mingjue’s first thought was oh that’s going to have some serious political implications, followed immediately by I guess I did do that didn’t I and someone is going to wring my throat over this, probably Huaisang, but very shortly thereafter with if this is what he needs then so be it.

Still, he could do nothing but watch, stunned, as Lan Wangji lifted his hands to his forehead and very deliberately removed the forehead ribbon that marked him as a member of the Lan sect – the symbol of his family, the symbol of his restraint, which he would normally have never allowed another person outside his family to see him without – and, just as deliberately, wrapped it around Nie Mingjue’s wrist.

“I would ask that you keep this for me, Mingjue-xiong,” Lan Wangji said, and his tone when he said Nie Mingjue’s name was the same as when he called Lan Xichen brother. “Until such time as I decide to reclaim it as my own, or discard it forever.”

“Of course,” Nie Mingjue said, his voice a little faint from shock. “Whatever you need, Wangji.”

Lan Wangji looked at him, grateful, and saluted deeply before leaving.

Nie Mingjue lay back down on the bed and stared at his wrist for a long moment.

This is going to have some serious political implications, he thought a second time. And Lan Xichen won’t ever forgive me for stealing away his little brother.

A moment later, he shook his head at his own foolishness. Lan Xichen had made his choices.

Now he would have to pay for them.

[tempenensis]

Halo! Here's a reddit link to information and research papers about onmyodo consolidated by other people and a link to an overview. Tried to summarize below bits and pieces that may be relevant to jjk (and which I tried to understand to the best of my abilities :P )

I think this will be the last time I write such a long-ass ask again, my apologies

About cursed spirits and mono

Court onmyojis in Heian used divination to find out the cause of things like curses, strange events (kaii), natural disasters, illness, why your dog is barking at a seemingly empty spot (answer: Megumi's divine dog is barking back) and so on. Strange events were referred to as mokke (物怪) or mono no satoshi (もノノサトシ) and believed to be omens of calamity that were caused by mono or "things" which could be anything like the curses of gods or something from the Imperial mausoleums. Furthermore, during the rule of Emperor Kanmu from end of Nara to early Heian, the Ritsuryo system of government began to crumble as imperial rule changed hands and political victims were feared as onryō (怨霊) that caused disease or death to the Emperor's nearest relatives (but not the Emperor himself). The fear of strange phenomena spread through the aristocrats and became commonplace. Onymojis were believed to be able to deal with the curse of mono as well (otherwise it's off to the chopping board for their jobs (and lives) they go, chop chop). And so the Imperial Court funded them to perform quelling rituals and ceremonies to appease gods, clear away damages by insects, pray for harvests and prevent the spread of epidemics (which ironically was exacerbated by the court's overspending and large-scale deforestation but that's another story). For individual cases like the spirits of living persons (ikiryō or ikisudama), or spirits of dead people (akuryō, ryō, onryō, shiryō or bōkon), onmyojis might determine that spiritual energy or evil spirits (mono no ke) was the cause but mikkyō genja (験者) or ritualists were the ones to subdue it by incantations. JJK cursed spirits resemble mono no ke in that they cannot be seen and may harm humans. Whereas jujutsu sorcerers are more like genja ritualists (complete with flashy kamehameha bombs) (and besides being cursed).

Lifespan rituals

The most popular theory for Sukuna's fixation with Megumi has already been covered by this blog owner with additional info on the Ten Divine Treasures. Another theory is that Sukuna could have been aiming for a higher level of enlightenment. Besides the Shinto-Buddhism angle, Onmyodo also has its own set of rituals concerning life and death. Onmyodo is basically a system of divination and techniques that focuses on worldly benefits and has no vision of the world after death. The rituals were instead based on the Chinese beliefs in honmyō (本命), Zokushō (属星) or the realm of the dead (冥界) and by the end of Heian, there were more than forty Onmyodo rituals to pray for the individual health and longevity of aristocrats (commoners: eat the rich 👎). For the terms honmyō and Zokushō, the closest meaning I can give without being too horribly misleading would be the life/destiny that you are born with according to your birth year, zodiac, constellation and so on. The most popular ritual was Taizan Fukun sai (泰山府君祭), which originated around the beginning of the tenth century and was closely associated with Abe no Seimei (yes that guy you keep seeing in anime). Taizan Fukun (泰山府君) is the lord of the eastern peak of Mt. Tai in China, a deity that summons the spirits of the dead and administers the lengthening and shortening of human lifespans. Twelve deities of the realm of the dead including Taizan Fukun were involved in this ritual. It was implemented on every honmyō day, but also as needed for illness, childbirth, natural disasters, and strange events. Media adaptations often depict Abe no Seimei (or other onmyojis) using the ritual for resurrection or reincarnation 😅 e.g. Tokyo Ravens, Shaman King, Onmyoji (2001). I don't think Gege will go for the same cliché trope for Sukuna but it's still interesting to know.

Seimei and Dōman (Gojo and Getou)

Anyone who knows about the folklores of Abe no Seimei 安倍 晴明 would be familiar with his eternal rival, Dōman 道満. Like Gojo who's the strongest jujutsu sorcerer, Seimei was the leading onmyoji specialist of his time. His position as the Kurōdo-dokoro onmyōji (highest-ranking onmyoji), legendary reputation and long lifespan lent to the notion that he had mystical powers due to being born from a human father and a kitsune mother. During Heian, Onmyodo referred to the organization of onmyojis under the control of high-ranking people of the same profession (kinda like the JJK elders) rather than the system of beliefs known today. Onmyōji with official status like Abe no Seimei would be kanjin onmyōji (官人陰陽師) or official onmyōji. Non-official onmyojis would include hōshi onmyōji (法師陰陽師) or priest onmyōji, who had the appearance of Buddhist priests (like how Getou was dressed as a cult leader), and presumably the control of the Onmyōdō did not extend to them. Official onmyōji, under the strict supervision of their superiors, would not have been permitted to have any connection with criminal acts such as curses. Instead, the Heian nobility turned to hoshi-onmyojis like Dōman to lay curses on their political rivals. There were many incidents involving curses within aristocratic society in Seimei’s time, and in a majority of cases the curses were placed by hōshi-onmyōji. Dōman himself had been spotted visiting a noblewoman, Takashina no Mitsuko, who employed hōshi-onmyōji to put a curse on several prominent political figures. Getou: "Let's curse each other... to our hearts' content!"

War onmyojis (and questioning of Gege's probable naming sense)

The Sengoku era treated court onmyojis poorly (ceremonies were expensive to fund). Warrior onmyodo being more practical (divining auspicious days for battle/forming alliances and exorcising evil spirits) became prominent instead. Academies that taught Confucian studies with divination and medicine as part of the curriculum flourished and the most famous was Ashikaga Gakkō (足利学校) (not as modern as Tokyo Jujutsu High though). Like Nanami and co. who became professional sorcerers, many of its students went to the battlefield as diviners and doctors. When peace returned during Tokugawa Ieyasu's rule, a few practitioners thrived by attaching themselves to powerful men. One would be Tenkai (天海) and another Kanshitsu Genkitsu, head of the Ashikaga Gakko. Being Ieyasu's bff, a temple Fushimi Enkoji (伏見円光寺) modeled after Ashikaga was built and Kanshitsu appointed as its head. Ieyasu also sponsored Kanshitsu's Fushimiban (伏見版), a publication project printed with wooden blocks. I'm definitely reaching here for Tengen and Fushiguro but I do wonder if Gege ever chanced upon those names.

🦆A Tail of Many Kamos: 鴨川, 下鴨, 鴨, 加茂, 賀茂 🦆

鴨川 - the Kamo river northeast of the Heian capital (modern Kyoto)

下鴨 - the Shimogamo Shrine (下鴨神社), a Shinto shrine dedicated to the Kamo family of kami

鴨 - the clan associated with the Kamo shrines and the famous poet-priest Kamo no Chōmei (鴨 長明) who witnessed the end of Heian. Also Bucephala albeola.

加茂 - Kamo no matsuri (加茂祭) or Aoi no matsuri (葵祭), an annual festival of Shimogamo Shrine and Kamigamo Shrine and one of the three major festivals in Kyoto, also one of the three big jujutsu clans (加茂家) in JJK. It's funny that Gege would choose a name with the same pronunciation as a real-life historic clan, which brings to the next point.

賀茂 - the formal name of the Shimogamo Shrine (賀茂御祖神社), also a once-prominent Heian Onmyoji family that died out during the Sengoku era. Thereafter, the Tsuchimikado (former Abe clan) took over their hereditary duties of keeping the calendar. Abe no Seimei's teacher was the astrology scholar (tenmon hakase 天文博士) Kamo no Yasunori (賀茂保憲). Could Kenjaku be based on Abe no Seimei as well?

The Musical Exorcist

The rock-n-roll grandpa, Gakuganji, might be based on the lesser known lute-priests called biwa-hoshi (琵琶法師) or zatō (座頭). Their musical style is referred to as heikyoku (平曲), which literally means "heike music". Accompanied by their mōsō-biwa (盲僧琵琶), the often-blind lay priests would chant Buddhist mantras, placate earth deities, perform spirit pacification chinkon (鎮魂) of vengeful spirits including onryō, communicate with the dead (Principal Yaga 😢), purify defilements haraikikyomeru (祓い清め) and border rites kyōkai girei (境界儀礼) that expel malign forces. The thesis "From Heike to Nomori no kagami" suggests that the musical practices and theories of Heike correlate with Yin-Yang principles. Which I will not further expound bcos I haz zero music theory knowledge and also this ask is far too long 😛 Hopefully Gakuganji will not remain blind to the less-than-holy intentions of the jujutsu higher-ups as the story continues.

Hello, lore anon! Thank you for compiling another stellar read!

Aaw, you'll be missed, but it's fine. Just do things and drop by if you feel like it.

Yes, onmyodo has a large influence on Japanese pop culture. Numerous manga takes their inspiration from onmyodo, jjk only one of them. Onmyouji had a very large political influence in the court. They were also a legit government position, literally civil servants back in the day.

The legend of Abe no Seimei and his rival Ashiya Douman is also famous. Abe no Seimei was said to be born from a kitsune (fox spirit) mother and human father, so he is often thought to not be fully human, hence his supernatural ability. I wouldn't be surprised if one of these characters is inspired by either Seimei or Douman; Sukuna, Kenjaku, or Tengen.

Kamo, yes, it seems that Gege actually takes the name of the clan. The fanbook said that Kamo clan arised to influence during the heyday of Heian period, the Golden age of Jujutsu. While it's lesser known, Kamo family is quite a legend too alongside Abe no Seimei in onmyoudou. As you said, Kamo no Tadayuki and his son Kamo no Yasunori has been known to teach Abe no Seimei.

[werevulvi]

You know how often I ask myself, why can't I just be normal? It's quite a lot. I wanna talk about something I've never told anyone before, aside from a few strangers online. I've suppressed this my whole life, since childhood. I've acted with anger towards others with the same thing as me, told them how it's offensive and awful. Refused to allow myself to even think about my own urges and desires. It worked for a long time, until I wrote my book this summer, a fiction story about a couple who end up disabled from their dangerous work as assassins. My intentions were just... to try to give good representation and explore something I knew very little about.

So I did a lot of research into my characters' disabilities, and even briefly pretended to have those specific disabilities at home alone, just to get an idea of what it's like to manage daily life with them. It was just a writer's thing, just being a dedicated writer, I told myself, as I researched those disabilities far more in-depth than I did about assassins...

At one point, I would cover my eye with a makeshift eye patch, as one of my main character's loses an eye, and I... it brought forth what I had suppressed my whole life, and I can't suppress it anymore as a result of that. The bottled feelings have escaped and I can't put them back in again.

I think I have Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID.) There, I said it.

It's a very rare mental illness that makes you want to become disabled, usually in some very specific way. Most are males, and most desire amputation, but it can pertain to wanting blindness, deafness, or I guess, any conceivable disability. There's only been a few thousand reported cases, but it's also said to be a very secret disorder, so numbers are probably not accurate. It's very poorly researched, poorly understood, and still not recognized as an actual disorder. So you can't be diagnosed with it currently, and there are no set criteria for it. However, it will be in the upcoming ICD-11 (the International Classification of Diseases.) It will then also be re-named to Body Integrity Dysphoria (BID) as it's being recognized as a form of dysphoria, and as a neurological condition.

And now for the obligatory life story:

I don't remember when it started, but as a child, I'd say roughly age 5 or 7, I was obsessed with fictional characters that had a distinct scar over one eye, and either blind in that eye or entirely missing it. I would on occasion play around with a hand covering one eye, and wished I could have that for real. For a long time, I didn't know why I was so obsessed with that. If I was just admiring that kinda physical feature, or wanted it myself, or both. Throughout my teens and adulthood thus far, I've made a lot of drawings of people with only one eye, and scarred faces. I wrote another book back in 2013 with one of the main characters being a woman with a large scar across half her face. I've always been a little too fascinated with facial deformities, having only one eye, and facial assymmetry. And I've tried to express it with assymmetrical makeup looks (not made to look like I'm injured) throughout my teens and 20's.

So it's been with me for a very long time, even though I've tried super hard to suppress it, and tried to tell myself that I should just be happy to have a mostly abled body. But that wish/urge/whatever it is, has never gone away.

When I first heard of BIID, back in 2016 or so, I was angry, and thought of people with it as despicable. I was in deep denial of how much I could relate to them. Didn't want to think of that. But since learning more about the condition, and listening to others who have it, and learning it is actually a real condition... I guess that has helped me eventually come to this point that, well fuck... it me.

Up until recently, I thought it was just a self-harm desire, as I used to be a cutter, but now I understand that the self-harm was not the intention behind what I want with that, but merely the means to achieve it. Kinda like how I wanted to cut my own tits off before I had my double mastectomy. It wasn't about specifically wanting to injure my chest, but to not have tits anymore, and I much preferred the much safer way of doing it, through proper surgery. However, wanting half my face re-arranged is a little bit harder to achieve through elective surgery, even if surgeons were allowed to treat BIID through surgery. So I do not think my desire to get rid of my left eye and surrounding tissues is about wanting to harm myself. It's about wanting to have and live with the result of such an injury. Although I get that might be very unimaginable.

So then, have I ever made any attempts?

Yeah... I have. Once, I think it was when I was 22, I took a blade to my face, but chickened out, and ended up only making a very superficial cut on my cheek, which I was then extremely ashamed of. I didn't want for people to find out I had made it myself. Since then, I've stopped self-harming and have no desire to make a second attempt. I'm scared I'd fuck it up and cause damage I don't want, or... not enough damage. And I'm worried I'd be beyond myself with shame if I would take out my own eye and then other people would show sympathy for my injury, knowing I'd have caused it myself. I just kinda wish it would happen accidentally somehow.

So, to clarify, my BIID targets my left eye and left side of my face. Why left? Honestly because I'm deaf since birth on my left ear, so it would be extremely inconvenient to be deaf on one side and blind on the other. Much more manageable to have one side be blind-deaf and the other fully seeing and hearing. But at first it didn't matter to me so much which side of my face would be affected. I have no desire to become an amputee or fully blind. I also don't have a fetish for disabled people.

Would I date a disabled person?

Yes, but that's because some attractive people just so happen to be disabled, and I wouldn't think I'm particularly judgemental, not that I find their disabilities in and of themselves attractive.

I try to quell this desire, to lose an eye and half my face, by on occasion wearing an eye patch in secrecy. I know it can worsen my vision, but why on Earth would I mind that? It's kinda what I want. But my mom almost caught me wearing it today as she came by for a quick visit, and I have worn it at the grocery store, and out and about in my village. It feels so damn right, yet so fucking wrong...

Let's tackle this question as well: Do I feel like an ass towards disabled people?

Yes and no. Thing is, I'm already disabled myself. I'm not an abled person to begin with. I live on permanent sickness compensation, classified unable to work, for life, with little to no chance at improvement, due to my autism and adhd. I have the energy levels of an old cellphone that drops to 2% battery ten minutes after being fully charged every time. And I hate it. I hate that there's so much in life that I'll probably never be able to do. So disability, is already part of my life, and always has been. So why then would I want to become more disabled, instead of less? Well, yeah that is what I want...

I've faced a shit ton of ableism since childhood, and I actually think that's why I got BIID. Because my actual disability is invisible and not taken seriously in society. And I think that's what I deep down want: to just have my disability be visible and taken seriously. Physical disabilities are taken more seriously. I've even heard that straight from the mouths of people who have both mental and physical disabilities. How often have I not been called lazy for something I've been literally unable to do, just because I "look" capable? How often do I get to hear I "don't seem autistic?" How often do I get told that autism is not even a disability, but merely a personality trait and being socially awkward? How often do I get told I would be able to work if I just tried harder? All. The. Fucking. Time.

I think that's why, ever since I was a child, I've wanted to have a physical disability, which is fully visible, and cannot be ignored. And what's more visible than the face? We interact with it the most. Because I don't really want to be less capable or lose a lot of movement, I just want for my already disabled existence to be visibly disabled.

So that's a big reason for why I think I have BIID. Which is to say, I don't feel like I'm being an ass towards disabled people, because I'm already disabled to begin with, merely wishing I was more disabled and in a more visible way. Had I been abled to begin with, I think that would have been different, but even abled people with BIID don't choose to have this condition. I read a quote from a person with BIID, who got the amputation he wanted, and he said basically that he didn't know what's worse, having BIID or being disabled. I can relate to that. And I think that is the irony here, that simply having BIID is like being disabled in and of itself already.

That said, however, I do understand why disabled people would be greatly offended, angry, or otherwise insulted, by people with BIID. Honestly I cannot understand why they would not be. I'm greatly offended by people who say they wish they were autistic! And I'm offended at myself for wishing I had a facial deformity and only one eye. Why do I want this!? I keep trying to shake sense into myself. It's what's causing my shame and wishing I could just be normal. No disabilities, and no wish for disabilities I don't have. That'd be great.

There is one more aspect I also feel the need to tackle: Transabled.

BIID has recently been rather often labeled as "transabled" in the same vein as "transracial" (wanting to be another race) and transgender. As a transsexual, this comparison is of course something that I have not missed. I'm painfully aware. This is how I see it, alright: Although I do feel like my body integrity dysphoria is incredibly similar to my sex dysphoria, I feel like it would be extremely rude and tone deaf to identify as for example vision impaired, deaf or an amputee, without actually having those disabilities. And I do not know if anyone actually does this. As far as I've seen, some people with BIID may pretend to have the disability they want (like with me walking around with an eye patch despite having no medical need for it) but they don't lie about it, or they try hard to avoid ending up in a situation where they'd feel pressured to lie. So I dunno how much validity there even is in anyone with BIID genuinely identifying as transabled. But regardless of that, I think it's absolutely abhorrent to identify as disabled in ways you are not. And I'd never tell anyone that I'm missing an eye when I do not.

So, I really do not like the term "transabled" and much prefer the BIID and BID terms. I do not like BIID being conflated with being transgender, although I want to very carefully say that the two conditions are so incredibly similar, that... I think that's another big reason I ended up with both. That I've always felt a strong disconnect from my body, which has merely expressed itself in a wide array of ways, ranging from sex dysphoria to body integrity dysphoria, dissociation and even having previously identified as otherkin. I don't think that's a coincidence at all. But then what caused all of that? I don't think there is a simple answer, but a multitude of reasons, and it may even connect with my autism as well as my trauma.

So, I'd say most likely it's caused by a cocktail of neurological and social issues. I was just clearly meant to be a broken person, making the most of my life with the sucky cards I was dealt, and on good days... I guess I'm kinda okay with that. At least it's not boring. Let's end on that not super tragic note. Feel free to ask me anything, if you’ve got any questions.

[egoiistas]

jewel of the sun (4) - baleful

ffxiv - (Ancients Era) Azem dissents.

ao3

---

“For the summoning, it will require the aetherial energy of half our star’s population.”

The wandering of Azem’s mind halts when those wary words are uttered. Half-listening to the bureaucratic solutions being tossed in these meetings because it is always followed by indecision and inaction, she doesn’t even realize it has gotten to this point.

At first, she thinks it’s surely a joke. When she glances around to read the expressions and body language of her peers, they are receptive, smiling even, towards the Emissary at the end of the table as if proud to have arrived at this point. If anyone is as horrified as she is, they do not show it. What’s worse, the papers shuffle from the Emissary’s end as if to continue on.

Azem stands from her chair as Elidibus opens his mouth. “I’d like to discuss this further,” she says firmly - enacting a pause to their procedures. She looks around and finds Emet-Selch’s mask for some... she doesn’t know what she looks for in his face but she doesn’t find it. Her words fail to come to her too. “...I must say, I’m horrified to find this isn’t some kind of prank.” Her body falls to her seat when no one responds to her and her mouth finally closes. “Surely, there is another solution. There is always another solution.”

“Have your ventures provided any insight to alternatives?” Pashtarot asks.

She shakes her head. “No, but I am but one soul - I can’t be everywhere at once to gather the information to learn more about the Sound.” Her breathing quickens as the gravity of the situation takes root - the insinuation that they are ready to proceed. “The implication alone that half of our people… We are the caretakers of this star. If the sacrifice should come from anyone, it should be from us for failing it so tremendously.”

"There can be no greater joy than to use our wisdom for the good of our people.” Igeyorhm smiles. “No greater pride."

“Look at our skies, Azem, the creatures killing our own from the magicks of our own,” Elidibus offers softly.

“Yes, the heavens are ablaze and the land rent asunder. What will become of the world? Is life itself to be denied?" Loghrif’s elegant voice provides.

“What of the souls you’re asking-”

“We will deliver our star from its doom, this we swear. So please, dry your tears,” Emmerloioth tells her.

Azem swipes at her cheeks, unaware that she is silently weeping. Her busy mind is now a void, but she holds fast to the handles of her chair as if to still the dizzying scenarios of half… “When was this discussed - in earnest? The decision seems unanimous, save for myself.”

“During one of your latest travels.” It’s Emet-Selch this time, and she feels the entirety of her weight drop, head light, to have him participate in this conversation. She would have preferred him to remain meekly quiet and neutral though it is not his way.

Azem shakes her head. “Please hold off on this...baleful approach to our salvation, until I return.” She stands abruptly.

“There is no time, Azem. Our brethren anguish every moment we delay,” Nabriales adds.

“Please quell your fears, for I’ll be the vessel for our savior. The souls of those who would save us would be under my care.” Elidibus says.

A vessel? “You would lose yourself, Elidibus,” Azem warns. “Do not ask me to murder you too.”

“If you leave, we will proceed with or without you, but as our esteemed colleague, we’d prefer with.”

She doesn’t know who says it, but it matters little to her; they are adamant. Azem reaches for her mask for the last time and places it on the table. “I will not be made part of this…” she says and departs, leaving surprised and shocked faces behind in her wake.

Flashing through her mind are the people she can turn to, the ideas of where she can go to figure this out before the Convocation makes a horrible mistake.

Half…

It seems monstrous, this summoning.

So caught up in the roaring din of her own thoughts, she fails to hear her previous title called after her until her pursuer catches the bend of her arm.

“Azem, please.”

She looks at her arm and then rises to meet Emet-Selch’s mask.

Dazed, she says plainly, “Apologies, honored Emet-Selch, that is no longer my title.” She frees her arm to aetherically call upon her the elevator, pushing the button with impatience.

“Persephone, wait.”

“You cannot ask me to reconsider,” she says and even then she feels her voice breaking once more despite trying to remain firm. “You cannot ask me to consent to the elimination of half our population, our people, Hades.” A pleasant bell dings to alert the arrival of her lift and she steps inside without another word.

He follows her - for what reason, she hardly knows. But he removes his mask - something a staunch rule follower like him never does.

“Why didn’t you warn me?”

“After you summoned me to provide assistance in the Midlateral Peninsula. It was first brought up then.”

She holds herself at the elbows, tighter even as the tears begin to fall freely. She remembers: the people, their hospitality, the overnight stay she indulged with him, and they want half of them eliminated.

Hades turns her towards him and she looks up to him as he wipes her tears. “Save your tears, my dear, for we are not lost yet.”

Persephone leans into his touch then her brow creases from her thoughts. “We will be if this comes to pass,” she whispers. “All the people I’ve met, the cities and towns and villages and hamlets of everyone I’ve come to know… What you’re implying… we cannot be sure if this will work or what the effects of a summoning of this scale will fall on the star.”

“Lahabrea and his office assures safety of the souls used. And I would not trust another to lead in that concept.”

Her heart drops again. “And who approved of this concept?”

She watches him swallow. His face is steadfast, eyes betraying no emotion as he answers, “My office did. It all happened in quick succession due to the nature of the concept and the need to save those who are suffering.”

At that moment, her heart shatters and she steps away from his touch. Hurt flashes across his eyes, but she cannot parse if it’s from her movement or if she cannot be convinced or another matter entirely. “I’m so sorry, Hades.”

As if on cue, the lift reaches the ground level and the doors slide open.

“I’m sorry your hands are stained red with the blood of half the population, but I would not be me if I did not try to find a way to save them.”

[tatyana-dreaming]

Potenza irresistibile: Leonora is Unstoppable

aka an empowered reading of (yet another) tragic opera heroine

aka my thoughts on Il Trovatore pt 3

(title from Manrico’s line in Act 2: Potenza irresistibile hanno de' fiumi l'onde! - The waves of the rivers have an irresistible force!)

with pictures because I have provided you ample walls of text as it is

Quick aside before we get into the libretto: in part 2 I concluded that both Azucena and Leonora are the only ones who really get what they want in this opera, and I think it’s pretty clear with Azucena... “Sei vendicata, o madre!” (even if we are unclear if she intentionally organized Manrico’s death and/or was conflicted by it or not).

Leonora. “I just came out to have a good time and honestly I’m feeling so attacked right now.” @ Ines, @ di Luna, even @ Manrico at the end

Because, out of everyone in this opera, Leonora is... happy? (I mean, yeah, she’s kind of set 100% of her hopes and dreams on this guy, and when she thinks he’s dead, she’s ready to head to the convent to pray to God until she can be reunited with him in death, saying “un riso, una speranza, un fior la terra non ha per me!”  - earth no longer has for me laughter, hope, or flowers! But look at her circumstances and context, and it’s still a choice she’s making, herself, about how she wants to live. Respect.)

[sociological examination about religious/cultural factors influencing WHY she would make that particular choice: coming to a bookstore near you in 2022]

“I swear go God, Ines (literally, I just did) can you just support me for once and trust me on this” (jk I love Ines she’s just doing her best too)

Okay, but to get back to the point... Leonora just has this sparkle. She’s filled with life and joy and happiness in the beginning (and - while yeah, my 21st century feminist me is like *facepalms* don’t make it dependent on another person, especially not a guy, especially not a guy who isn’t really even that focused on you as a person, but more as a possession he has to jealously protect from Rivals - her joy is revived when Marico returns and honestly thank gosh he does, since otherwise di Luna was gonna wreck those convent plans.) ANYWAYS  - di Luna clearly sees and wants to possess this sparkle, clearly having none of it himself.

Some exerpts from the libretto of this sparkly joy none of the characters ever get....(di Luna tries, haha...“la gioia che m'aspetta, gioia mortal, non è!“ but learns that maybe trying to seize someone against their will isn’t the best way to Spark Joy)

We’ve got Act 1 - “Gioia provai che agl'angeli solo è provar concesso! ...Di tale amor che dirsi mal può dalla parola...”  Joy only the angels can feel...such love that cannot be described by words! - Act 2, upon rescue by/reunion with her beloved - “Non regge a tanto giubilo rapito il cor, sorpreso!”  My surprised heart cannot bear such joy! - and finally, Act 4, once she is certain of saving Manrico - “ Vivrà! Contende il giubilo i detti a me!” He’ll live - my joy strips me of words!

Gosh, for such a tragic opera (if you take it seriously), Leonora is just this bundle of joy. Even in Act 4. It’s impressive.

She just has this energy, and I think it’s some sort of radiance from self-awareness and knowing exactly what she wants. You also may notice Leonora doens’t leave a body count the way di Luna, Manrico, and Azucena do. Well, unless you count herself :( but my point is she’s not about hurting people to get what she wants. And Leonora makes it explicitly clear from Act I: “ S'io non vivrò per esso, per esso morirò” - if I cannot life for him, I will die for him.

Leonora knows what she wants and nothing, NOTHING, and NOBODY is going to get in her way! And HOO BOY does di Luna try! So the convent kidnapping shit he tried to pull with the “not even God can claim [Leonora]” attitude didn’t pan out... but it also proved to Leonora that God wouldn’t necessarily save her (convent-style at least) so she leveled up and remembered OH YEAH PLANTS! *cue Juliet line*:

“ I'll to the friar, to know his remedy: If all else fail, myself have power to die.“

And honestly, she’s badass about it, too. From Act 1, she’s pretty fearless, from the moment Ines expresses fear and doubt about her infatuation with Manrico -

INES: Quanto narrasti di turbamento m'ha piena l'alma! Io temo...   What you say disturbs my soul, I fear [for you!] LEONORA: Invano! [You fear] in vain! (or: don’t fear!)

Leonora’s not afraid. She’s simply on a mission. Once Shit Gets Real and di Luna promises to kill Manrico, maintaining strict alignment with Mission “S'io non vivrò per esso, per esso morirò,”  asking di Luna to “Piombi, piombi il tuo furoresulla rea che t'oltraggiò, vibra il ferro in questo core che te amar non vuol né può”- Let your fury fall on the evil girl who offended you; plunge your sword into this heart that cannot, will not love you!

[again, not condoning Leonora’s choices, such as throwing herself under the ‘di Luna is going to blame Leonora for all his psycho actions’ Bus, but I respect her making her choices and fighting back]

Of course, di Luna is like “YOU CRAZY!” and literally tells Leonora her blood wouldn’t be enough to quell his rage. “l tuo sangue, o sciagurato, ad estinguerlo fia poco!” - Your blood, wretch, would hardly be enough! ~really playing the romance here~ :)

Leonora doesn’t get the point, since in Act 4, she repeats her pleas to exchange her live for Manrico’s - still not getting the Blood is Not Enough memo, apparently - “Svenami, ti bevi il sangue mio!” - Take me out**, drink my blood!

**no, di Luna, she isn’t asking you out on a date (sorry it’s so hard not to just 100% shitpost this opera) - but I couldn’t find a better translation. You don’t really say “faint me” in English and I don’t think the direct translation is “kill” but “take me out” seemed like an acceptable euphemism.

Of course, Leonora ultimately ends up accomplishing her Mission. [Like I said in part 1, my initial reaction to her self-sacrificial death was just anger and disappointment. But in context, she’s pulling a valid Juliet move... her circumstances are awful and suffocating and there are very few ways out for her in the world she lives in... but she ends up exiting the game on her terms.

{At the subjective level, at least. Objectively, her only choices are a vampire who will suck her life dry [di Luna] - in which life might be merciless - or choosing to withdraw from life with Help from Plants [poison] - in which death is merciful. Again, sociological exploration of Leonora’s CHOICE ARCHITECTURE coming to booksellers near you. Might even include Alternate Ending: running away into the mountains with the gypsies instead, but we all know that isn’t part of Mission “S'io non vivrò per esso, per esso morirò.” Plus I think we are all familiar with the concept that as humans we are more likely to stick with the evil we know rather than strike out into the great unknown. Heck, somebody stop me, these asides will be the death by boredom or exasperation of us all. Wait, are you reading this!??! WOW and bless you!! Thanks and I’m sorry}

Unfortunately, Manrico has to be a little turdball and start cursing Leonora, being the jealous self-centered guy that he ultimately is, before he realizes what she’s done to save him. “Manrico I’m literally dying FOR YOU and this is how you repay me?”

In Act 1, she begs di Luna to see reason through his jealous rage, but by Act 4 it’s her own beloved, the person she’s organized her Life Goal around, who is displaying the same jealous, blinding rage, refusing to listen to her. “Oh come l'ira ti rende cieco! Oh quanto ingiusto, crudel, crudel!” Oh how rage blinds you, how injust, how cruel you are [Manrico]!

Oh, the sweet and cruel irony Leonora getting her unconditional, immense, “eternal” love dismissed because Manrico doesn’t get it the way he wanted it [i.e. uh oh are we going to circle back to possessiveness/jealousy? Is Leonora the only one - and granted, she is a little psycho/obsessed/infatuated à la di Luna, but without trying to POSSESS her object of affection -- who can love in a semi-healthy way in this opera?? apparently]. My poor girl. At least Manrico Comes to his Senses before she dies (just in time for him join Leonora’s fate himself). *sad cheering*

Let me end by emphasizing that Leonora did not die JUST to “save Manrico.” Yes, the libretto says “Prima che d'altri vivere, io volli tua morir! “ - Rather than live as another’s, I wanted to die yours. But to me, it’s pretty clear she’s dying for herself - dying as her own self, as hers (I mean, technically she never became Manrico’s “legal property” anyways if we want to get into the morbid lack of womens’ rights, so she wasn’t even “his” in that way). And in the end, choice architecture aside, the point is that all the way, Leonora knew what she wanted, made her own decisions, stayed true to herself, and accomplished what she set her mind to. Nothing and nobody stopped her. Who’s to say what else she might have wanted if she had had different opportunities, choices, knowledge, or most importantly had been born in a different context.

(*faceplams* had been born?!! She’s a fictional character god Karo go to bed already) (*peels hands off face* it’s okay you are processing outrage over the Female Experience and Leonora represents a lot of real women, living and dead)

I conclude. LEONORA IS UNSTOPPABLE. Let’s part with some lovely lines from our complex (if a bit compulsively devoted), tragic, yet joyful, empowered, and fearless heroine:

Tu vedrai che amore in terra mai del mio non fu più forte: vinse il fato in aspra guerra, vincerà la stessa morte. 

You will see that never on earth was there a stronger love than mine; it defeated Fate in violent strife, it will defeat death itself.

*              *              *              *              *               *              *             *        

Screencaps from IL Trovatore (Met 2011) ft. Sondra Radvanovsky, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, and Marcelo Álvarez

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space Orcs, “One Flag and a Thousand Arms.”

Back with the major conclusion to the LFIL arc after months of not getting to it. Didn’t know I was going to write this today, but here we are. I hope you all like it, and sorry it is kind of long, but my typing was at light speed today (nice warm hands) :)

Anyway have a good day everyone!

“Please everyone, calm yourselves. The G A is addressing the issue as we speak.” 

The crowd roiled and churned like the bubbles in a pot of boiling water. Flags waved and voices rose high into the air.

The chanting increased in fervor.

“Please!” The rundi struggled to raise his voice high enough to be heard over the crowd, who only grew with strength and intensity.

Commander Vir keyed his mic, “Delta units to the GA side of the crowd, some of these protesters are looking extremely agitated. Let's make sure they don’t do anything we’re all going to regret.

HE stood with his back to the GA chambers, its wide arching courtyard devoid of life except for those unfortunate  Rundi ordered to carry messages from one side of the compound to the other, otherwise they tried to keep their distance from the front facade of the building and the churning mass of protesters.

White flags waved and fluttered.

Commander Vir held the energy shield with one arm pressing it back firmly against the crowd, so they could not pass the dedicated marking point. 

“Commander, the crowd here is getting violent.”  he grimaced and reached a hand down to open the line, “stun them and let them calm down, do NOT catch anyone else in the crossfire. We do not want this escalating.”

“Yes sir.”

Something pushed against his shield and he grunted pushing back. The white bandanna on his arm was pressed against the clear blue force field and helped to at least confuse the crowd before them. And luckily, they would be kept too confused to get violent.

The aliens among the human protesters helped as well. If this was on earth, things would have broken out into a riot by now, but the Drev the Tesraki and the Finnari tended to be more level headed when it came to these kinds of things, and they managed to rein in their humans from doing something stupid.

He closed his eyes tight for a second praying that the GA would rethink their position.

It hurt him to watch these people struggle like this. It just felt so strange that anyone should be here in the first place.

Beside him, Sunny had taken control of two young humans who were getting a bit more than rowdy, “Lets keep this a protest, and not a riot.” She growled giving them a look that would have made anyone quell in their boots. It sort of made him half smile, Sunny was such a badass, he wanted to be more like her when he grew up.

His thoughts were cut off  as the crowd churned a bit pressing into his shield.

Hey keyed his mic again prepared to go over the loudspeaker and tell them that if they didn’t calm down he was going to turn this protest into a mass nap time. He had the power to do that if things got out of hand, though he honestly didn’t want to. 

The GA needed to see this.

He was so preoccupied with the crowd that he barely noticed as the Rundi ran up from the inside of the compound flying forward on its long spindly legs.

It stopped by the first Rundi to say something, and the conversation that passed between them didn’t look particularly encouraging.

HIs heart sank into his stomach.

He felt…. Surprisingly disappointed, very sad for all those people who were going to get their day ruined.

The rundi waffled around at the front of the crowd for a bit before turning and looking over to where he stood.

Oh great.

The rundi walked over, and he backed off from the crowd allowing Sunny to take a step in his place with her shield at the ready. The people looked as if they were about to start something, but seeing her expression, they decided not to.

He dropped his shield and lowered his head to hear the rundi over the roaring of the crowd.

“The GA is not budging.” The rundi whispered, “They are asking the protesters to leave.”

Adam growled in frustration.

Behind him someone in the crowd pointed at him, “They’re  saying no aren’t they!” Others took up the call, and soon enough the rest of the crowd had been alerted. Adam was forced to run back to support sunny as everything suddenly grew more intense.

Fights were breaking out on the left and the right.

People were hitting the ground as the guards were forced to stun them.

That only agitated the rest of the crowd who also began to buck and fight.

Adam keyed the mic for real this time filling the intervening space with his booming voice, “ALL OF YOU KNOCK IT OFF RIGHT NOW OR I WILL STUN YOU ALL.” 

The aggression in the crowd died down, though the anger remained sizzling at the surface.

Overhead clouds passed over the sun, before him the crowd roared like a wave, and behind  him the GA council chambers were as silent as a ghost town.

“LISTEN, QUIET DOWN ALL OF YOU.” it sort of felt as if he was floating. The world around him hardly seemed real though that was not the best way to explain it.

The crowd died down a bit, “You may not understand this! And I have said it before, but these are not humans. Protests don’t work on them. When they see a group of angry humans they get scared and when they get scared, they double down even further. I know it does not make any sense to you NOT to protest for what you believe in, but if you are going to do this, you MUST remain civil. Even now the GA is frightened by you. They don’t believe you are rational, and they are not going to listen to you if this keeps up.”

The crowd had quieted down to a milling sort of confusion.

“Then what should we do!” the shouting came from somewhere and in anger, though he couldn’t pinpoint the source.

IN frustration he nudged Sunny, and she allowed him to climb on her back as he had before.

The crowd could see him now, and he could see them for the most part.

He waved them down trying to cut off the others who had taken up the chant.

“I understand what you are trying to do, and I support your efforts, but you are only hurting ourselves. The GA can only be won by rational discussion.”

“The GA won't see any of our representatives.” One of the crowd’s people snarled.

The call was echoed 

Adam stared at them in shock, “Are you serious.”

There was a muttering throughout the crowd.

“For fuck’s sake.” he muttered under his breath 

“The Rudi think none of us are high ranking enough to be allowed into the council chambers, and none of the representatives will take up our cause. The human ambassador thinks we are disgusting, so she won’t do anything.” 

The muttering through the crowd grew louder.

Adam looked around head turning to see all the angry faces, blushed with red, or streaked with tears.

These people were frustrated, and hurt, and he understood why.

This wasn’t right.

He closed his eyes again and took another deep breath. 

What was he thinking?”

He stepped down from Sunny’s back and walked over to one of the protestors in the front row pointing to his large flag on a pole that was about eight feet tall.

“May I borrow your flag?”

The protester stared on at him in confusion, “What, why?”

“Because, I am going to give you the representative you need.”

***

Commander Vir and Sunny walked alone down the length of the GA outer courtyard.

A billowing white flag streamed lazily  over his head suspended there by way of the pole which rested heavily on his shoulder. The white of the fabric had been marred now by many colors as hundreds of rushed signatures had been scrawled on its face.

He was armed with the backing of a thousand protesters, a hundred signatures, and more than a few dozen stories.

Sunny turned her head to look at him, and he fancied that maybe he saw an expression of pride in her eyes, though she didn’t say much except, “Pretty brave.”

He didn’t feel very brave, and as they walked through the front doors of the GA atrium his hand was shaking against the cold metal of the flagpole.

He was stopped by a pair of rundi guards on his way into the chamber, but was let in after they recognized who he was.

He could hear voices up ahead, and the sounds of the protest going on outside had all but died away, “They have proven that they cannot be civil, and based on the humanizing effect, we can assume they will do similar things to any non human lifeform that they encounter.”

“I may not agree with their decision  counselor, but that sounds like your prejudice against humans is seeping through.”

There was an uproar in the council chamber.

He paused for a moment with Sunny just out of line of sight and took a deep breath.

She lay a hand on his shoulder.

“Here goes nothing.” he muttered before stepping his way out onto the GA floor.

At first no one noticed his presence as he made his slow way into the center of the circle, but his large, white flag soon changed that. The council chambers went silent.

The chairwoman stood, “Commander, what are you doing here. Shouldn’t you be taking care of the protesters.”

His lips drew into a thing line, “I am.”

He rammed the flagpole against the stone sending a loud cracking sound out and around the wide atrium silencing the council, “I have been made aware that you refuse to see their representatives based on a ranking issue, well I assume my rank is high enough.”

The Human rep leaned forward, “Commander, this is not your place.”

He shot her a look, ”Then whose place is it counselor.” 

He turned his head in a wide arc at the watching crowd, “Counsel, you have known me, longer than you have known any human currently in this galaxy. You understand that I know your rules and your customs. You understand that I have only ever striven to protect and uphold the GA and the planet’s it encompass. I have thwarted wars, signed treaties, and broken my own body for your best interests.” There was silence about the room.

“Will you let me speak now, with the understanding that my loyalty has never wavered from you, and never will.”

The silence continued.

Aliens understood the power of human loyalty. Or at least they should.

The chairwoman took a seat, “Very well, commander.”

He lifted his head feeling his heart slow as he took a few deep breaths. There was a muscle in his face that had begun to twitch, like it always did if he was extremely angry or nervous , but he held it down, “I understand you are frightened, and I understand that you are confused, but I want you to know first of all that those people outside are good average people. They don’t mean you any harm. They are hurting, and they are afraid for themselves, and they are trying to get your attention. Historically, humanity has used protests to right the injustices of government to combat prejudices brought on by one’s sex or the color of their skin. You must understand that they see this as an impingement on their happiness and a decision made out of line.”

There was a murmur around the room .

“So I ask you now, that I may, perhaps, answer your questions and ease your worries. Why are you so against them?”

“It’s unnatural.” 

It was the Bran representative that had spoken, and he did it quite emphatically.

“Why?” The commander asked

“Because they aren't even the same species.”

“So?” 

The bran seemed caught off guard, “They…. It's not natural. They can’t reproduce, so it isn’t…. A thing that should be done.”

The commander shrugged, “So if one can’t reproduce then they aren't natural? I see a couple issues in that logic relating to prejudices against people with infertility.”

There was a murmur around the room.

“So they can’t reproduce, so what. You know who we can reproduce with though….. Adaptids.”

There was a sort of hushed exclamation form around the room.

The commander shrugged, “They can’t have kids…. Hardly a good enough argument to bring to the floor of a government discussion.”

“What he is trying to say is that this practice equates itself to bestiality.” It was the human representative this time, and she stared at him with her eyes narrowed in anger. He kept his cool though he very much did not like her.

“That is absolutely disgusting and wildly insulting of you because that implies that one or both parties are no better than animals, beasts as you will.” The room was silent, “So which one is it, are humans animals, counselor, are the Finnari animals.” He turned to the Drev counselor, “Are the Drev just dumb animals that have no understanding, and no decision making abilities.”

The Drev representative stood angrily cracking his spear against the stone, “We are most certainly not.”

The commander held up his hands, “Then what is so bestial about it? Bestiality is absolutely disgusting because you are taking advantages of a creature that can neither understand or protect itself form what you are doing. It cannot say yes, and it cannot say no. It has no greater understanding than that of a child, and so cannot make its own decisions.”

He looked towards the Finnari representative, “Tell me counselor, is your species a species of children, with no greater concept of their own decision making.”

“Of course not. Why would you even imply such a thing.”

“I imply nothing, counselor. This is what YOU imply with your decision. So far we have established that all parties are intelligent consenting creatures, and none of you have managed to give me an actually good reason for banning the practice.”

The floor was growing more agitated.

“They will be a poor example for the rest of the galaxy. If we make it legal others will surely follow.”

Adam turned his eyes on the speaker, an Iotin, “You’re worried that they are going to turn the rest of the galaxy extrial?” He laughed, “That is a poor argument which is not only selfish, but foolish. People should be allowed to make their own decisions. And assuming you are right, what then? Oh no…. There are a few more extrials….. And it does…. What exactly?” He turned in a wide circle, “If you are worried about population growth  or in this case population falloff due to this issue then you should be reminded that extrials comprise a percentage of the human population so small that I could fit the greater majority of them on my ship comfortably. This occurrence is not common, and even if the numbers were to rise, it would not be of enough significance to cause issues .”

His heart was hammering hard inside his chest. He felt like he was doing alright, but that might mean nothing.

“In any event, these relationships do not affect the vast majority of the galaxy. Humans cannot be with the bran or the Rundi due to the water we shed from our skin. The grimm and the Iotins are out for similar reasons. Vrul and Gibb are incapable of having feelings for humans in that way, and both the Tvek and the Celzex  are too different from humans for either party to be interested.”

He walked around in a circle allowing the flag to trail behind him, “Furthermore, the humanization phenomenon happens with or without romantic intent, and as it is, its mention is more a mark of prejudice on humans than it is an argument against the two groups being together.”

He left the floor open for a little while as the council muttered with each other.

Finally the Drev representative stood, “My species culture and our way of life has been upturned by the GA. I fear relationships with humans will result in the loss of our culture. We have already strayed far from what we originally were. We are hardly recognizable as Drev anymore.”

The commander let his voice soften, “I understand that the Drev have lost a lot in joining this….”

Sunny held up a hand, and in surprise he was cut off.

She took the floor, “Your Glory.” She said bowing her head, “If you upheld those ideals, you would not be sitting on this council.” The Drev pulled back in surprise at her words, “Yes, we lost a lot in joining the GA, and after the war, but I would argue that some of that was for good. Before the GA people like me, with perceived imperfection were cast into the fire and perceived as no better than animals. This practice still takes place on our planet, where these traditions are still alive and well.” 

Her words made the room shift nervously, “However, culture changes and adapts, and it must to survive. We changed in order to live among the GA. We found other alternatives to fighting that still maintain our honor and our prowess in war, and this includes the sports that the humans have brought to us. Furthermore, the vast majority of the Drev I see  who are with humans are those of us who would not be accepted by our own kind, perceived as ugly or malformed. If this is the case then your traditions remain sound, and those like me are removed from the mating population.”

The counselor almost looked ashamed at her words turning his head away so as not to look her in the eyes.

“As far as a change of culture goes it was bound to happen, and it seems you are more worried about change than you actually are about human drev relationships.”

She went quiet, and Adam nodded to her taking the floor again.

A finnair counselor stood, “I am simply worried about our birth rate. The Finnari were farmed by the Gnarlak for many years, and we are only now replenishing our population.”

“I don't think you need to worry. The amount of actual relationships is so small that it will not affect the Finnair population in any significant manner.” The representative sat back down with no real argument to combat him.

The chairwoman stood, “Your arguments have been heard commander, though, what the others do not mention is the issue of disease. We have seen a great increase of illness transmissible from humans to non humans and-”

“I hate to cut you off chairwoman, but that has a simple explanation, the rise in human tourism.” 

She paused, “Explain.”

“You all know very well that humans are not allowed to leave their planet unless they are tested for all communicable non-treatable diseases. This means that those of us that you see here cannot physically pass our diseases off onto other people except for the germs that are found naturally on our skin. In this case these issues did not stem from relationships at all but poor vaccination, the poor regulation of tourism, and allowing aliens to travel onto earth where infected humans are located and not testing them as they leave.”

He looked on at them pleadingly, “You see. You don’t even have problems with them, but you are using them as a real scapegoat for the actual issues. And I am here to tell you that, in fact you are causing more problems by banning this.  The more you push, the harder they will push back, and eventually someone is going to get hurt, because they are not allowed to be together legally they do it illegally, and because they do it illegally, they end up in dangerous places exposed to greater rates of crime. They get hurt, and they get involved in things they would otherwise not have gotten involved in if you had not banned it. Just look at Noctoplis. It has the highest rate of extrials living there and the lowest policing force and the most corrupted system. There are no legitimate jobs there, so we see an influx of crime by desperate people who won’t be accepted anywhere else. Not to mention that it increased the depression rates, which increases suicide rates. Your laws have ostracized them, forced them to become criminals, and turned many of them to think that killing themselves is better than living in a world where they are seen as disgusting when they don’t actually do any real harm.” 

He had to take a deep breath, “Earth has seen all of this before, and one way or another, eventually someone will see what I am trying to say.” He rested the flag on the floor beside him feet planted at shoulder width.

“I hope that this rational conversation will allow a more open mind on the council. I encourage you to talk to their representatives. They are more rational and educated than I am, and they can give you hard facts and statistics. But please, they don’t want to cause trouble, if you allow them to do as they will, you might find these problems going away for you.”

The human representative clearly did not seem convinced, but he didn’t expect to convince her, he expected to convince the others who were more afraid than they were prejudiced.

“It seems as if we have some other potential policies to discuss, Commander.” The chairwoman said tapping her fingers on the table before her.

“I have a suggestion, ma’am.”

“And that is?”

“A temporary revocation on the ban, that way you can SEE what the universe will be like without it, and you can judge for yourself whether The ban does any good. You don’t have to overturn the law just yet, but temporarily suspend it, that way you can re institute at any time. THan you will have concrete proof. You can do testing, and poles and whatever else, but you would know for sure.”

His suggestion turned into a discussion, that dragged on for many minutes before the chairwoman raised her hand, “It has been decided, all in favor of this temporary proposal please indicate.”

The voting lights flashed above them.

Commander Vir waited.

*** He walked from the venue hours after he had entered exhausted.

The flag felt heavy in his hands and his boots thudded with exhaustion on the white marble below him.

Outside, the protest field was surprisingly silent, though he could still see their flags.

As he walked closer he could see that the vast majority of the crowd was sitting down. Thei voices reached him from a distance at first until he realized they were singing with each other. 

Waiting for his verdict.

He was still a ways out when they spotted him.

A lone man and Drev walking form the building, the man wearing riot gear, a full helmet, a shield, and carrying their flag resting against his right shoulder.

The group of them began to stand rising to their feet and yelling.

Pointing in his direction.

They quieted as he got closer.

“What did they say! What did they say!”

He stayed quiet holding a hand in the air to silence them. He passed the flag to the original protester who looked on at him with such an expression of pleading that he felt his eyes tingle a bit with rising emotion.

He had to look away boosting himself onto sunny’s back keying his mic.

The crowd was silent.

“I spoke to the GA.”

They waited on tenterhooks , “And after a long debate, and a slim majority the GA have decided….”

Flags whipped in the wind, “To temporarily revoke the ban on inter-species relationships until a-”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence drown out by a powerful wave of noise and joy so overwhelming that he was nearly knocked backwards off his feet.

The crowd surged forward, and Sunny staggered as the group surrounded them pressing inward and upwards. 

Adam found himself on the ground on his feet packed in by bodies enclosed by hundreds of pairs of arms slapped on the shoulder and the arm, as every person tried their best to get one hand on him.

The flag from earlier was ripped off its stand and pressed into his hands.

He was deafened by cheering and an outpouring of gratitude so profound he had simply never experienced such emotion.

He looked up at Sunny pressed in with him by the enthusiastic crowd.

And she nodded her head in approval.

He grinned.

He had to admit.

This felt pretty good.

Though, weather it was all over was a question for another time.

[aggresivelyfriendly]

Tryst-Chapter 10

I did it! I finally edited this thing. Still not completely happy, but they are, so 🤷‍♀️s! If you enjoy let me know. I love a like, reblogs are love, and anons are lifeblood! 😘!!

Tam

Inglewood

There seems to be an equilibrium they have reached, Helene decided one balmy afternoon home alone of her tiny apartment patio. She pictured it like a piece of a Johnny Cash song, them walking the golden line in the middle of U.S. streets. If they were to veer either way the emotional equivalent of oncoming traffic would flatten them.

Though she supposed that line felt pretty roomy, like an estate broker's favorite word, spacious.

Maybe it's a tightrope, and any imbalance means they smash upon the hard, unforgiving ground.

Helene had convinced herself that this was her own conception, that her lover, her boss, her Harry, didn't feel it as well.

Until she heard the album.

She'd been at the Paris listening parties, so she'd heard snippets, and she'd been in the studio a time or two, so she had heard rough stones being polished to diamonds, chord progressions and roughed out lyrics and melodies. That was all up until this point.

Helene was offered a choice, the whole of staff was, to hear the album early or with everyone else.

She had declined. Because she had a very clear picture of what it was about, who it was about. It stung. Not because she was unaware of his sorrow, or how he missed her, the other French girl, the one worthy of homage, but because, she had been there too- with him too. Every step of the way and through Paris and Rome, and Japan and Australia too.

It hurt.

As much as her eyes were open, muscle memory of the drill, the words cemented on her brain to console herself. He was in an open relationship, Helene was not in that relationship, she was simply a reason for the unbolted window. Always making cameos, never the headliner.

So, the album, as great as she kept hearing it was, would be confirmation of her role, or lack thereof. She wasn't ready for that truth.

She'd better get ready. Helene would be hearing it soon no matter what, and seeing him. It had been a little bit since Cancun, but the show was going on, and she was involved, expected. It wouldn't do to cry over her lack of lyrical odes in front of the fans, they all knew her name and face, and she wasn't so good a liar they'd believe a disclaimer of happy tears.

Before the first show went on, her own show needed to get on the road. It was time for her to break a leg, or her heart as it were. Her set up was optimal for a breakdown.

Empty hotel room, qui Tissues on the toilet seat, qui Full hot bath, qui Goblet of red wine, tout a fait.

Helene was as ready for heartbreak, or it's residue if that's where she was now, as ready as one can be.

Her clothes are easy to quit, sweats and a TPWK tank exclusive to crew. The water is hot, her skin will redden to match her tear streaked face.

The level of melodrama she's reaching for this is impressive to even herself.

"Allons-y" she mutters and presses play.

And Clairemeant, she loves it. From first cord, she can imagine being in his stupid convertible driving to Shanghri la. Helene wishes he had played this when they went, a moment of California dreamin. She knows the next couple, as everyone does, in his world at least. Soon the whole world probably. They were radio besties, not just friendly.

It's the next few tracks where her preparations pay off. The tears come. For him, for her, and for Helene herself. The worst part isn't even her own pain; the waterworks are for Harry. She can hear his broken heart and bad decisions.

God, she hopes he does not count her among those.

But She, She is a new place to be. It's exactly what she would expect him to make and miles beyond expectation.

Then Sunflower, god, is it ridiculous to feel like there are glimmers of them? If kraft services counted as kitchens. It's the toothpaste. It's the fact that on their first go, they didn't know each other. Not really. She was his employee. She knew him, intimately, from all the watching, much less creepy than it sounds when it was her job. But she was somewhere between an insider and an outsider. Always an observer, never a participant was the lot of a photographer.

Except when Harry pulled her into the shenanigans, onto his lap, or some other harmless flirty gesture she couldn't forget.

Helene never lived in a canyon, though all of Paris seemed to rise around her some days. That one was nothing to do with her, and after a couple songs reprieve her heart seized all over again.

Helene loved that he'd made a song for his motto. It had all the silly he made cool. Even if he broke her heart sometimes, she loved how her kindness grew watching him cultivate and sow his own. The harvest was in the venues, and her heart.

After that happy high, she's not ready for the closer. Though she suspects she may never have been, no matter practice or preparation.

Fine Line throws her, thrills her, and makes her think.

Is it her? Is it them? Is it like most of the rest,  Camille?

Helene is aware she is simplifying. Music isn't exactly clear in its inspiration or intention. There may be shades of her throughout.

In this last song, she feels more than shades.

Had they ever been anything besides a fine line? Somewhere between one thing and the next.

She hesitates to think something more, that denigrates their friendship. Romance isn't necessarily superior, that's a bought and sold fairy tale she has tried to unlearn.

But, if she is honest, being together would have felt like more, better. Because she wanted him, wanted him to want her.

Some of the lyrics trouble her.

She didn't think she was unknowable though. Maybe at the end, when she let him open her completely everywhere, and then promptly hopped over into one territory and only tread their old familiar line  accidentally once.

Could she ask him? Would she? Tomorrow?

Non, that's not like her. Helene's direct in desire, but not in definition. Probably why they got stuck walking the line.

But they were alright. What a comfort that was.

Whatever the truth, the inspiration, when she heard it live, tomorrow, she would pretend or hyperextend. Believe. She'd believe it was about her.

———————————————————————————

Helene always forgets what it's like to see his face in person, be in a room with him. On paper and in her mind when she is away, she can rationalize. 'He's handsome. But not extraordinary. You know better looking men, have shared more time with some.'

And then he is nearby, and her entire body is aware of him.

Moreover, so is everyone elses. That is his power, super prowess. He has this energy that galvanizes every libido in range. The hell of it, it turns on a dime and you want to ruffle his hair just after riding his face. He's so sexy and frustratingly endearing.

His gap between adorable and sexy is so small, and bowtied to perfection.

"What's new pussycat?" He whispers near her left shoulder before she can even fully take him in.

"Enfin!" She could see the rear of her brain case. Harry turned her body into his hug and was responding to her exaggerated exclamation.

"See Jeffrey, I told you she had the best eye roll!" He giggles a bit and holds her long, in that way anybody else probably couldn't get away with. Someone might rightly think they'd tasted every part of one another if he didn't hold everybody like this.

Helene takes the opportunity to smell him. He always smells good to her, even his stink. Sweat drenched and ball's empty or dandied up and stage worthy, he tasted like her first meal out when she returns home to Paris.

" I cannot believe you remember that conversation." She said into his neck.

It quelled his laughter.

"How could I forget the look of disgust on you and Sarah's faces. Too good to not use!"

"You gonna use it on Sarah too? Or would Mitch put your nose between your pretty eyebrows?"

"Don't mock my eyebrows!" He pulls back, but she's still within the walls of his body, bracketed by his arms. "They just grow like this."

"Qui," she snorted. "Don't forever I've photographed you being groomed, ma belle."

"She's  just cleaning them up! I swear."

"She just took your man card Harry." Jeff 's snickering.

"He didn't have a man card since long ago." She and Jeff laugh together.

"Heeeey!" His offended face goes soft around his smiling eyes. He tilts her body away from the small backstage crowd and she wonders where they are going. She's still going; her toes have all but left the ground while he leads her with his whole body.

She follows her heart.

Helene always feels small, but he makes her feel deliciously tiny. He leads her down a corridor, past people he waves to and she would have stopped to hug in other circumstances. She'd missed this circus family. Finally, she just has to ask, "Harry, where are we going? I don't have my equipment." If he wanted her to capture the moment, she needed a camera. He did this sometimes, this drag to a piece of personal history or set up he saw well in his mind's eye. His enthusiasm always contagious.

He didn't exactly have that energy going on now, he seemed nervous rather than excited.

"That's a bit unfortunate. S'ok though I only want a mental picture of your face. When you tell me." He pulls her through a door, a different dressing room from last time, which she realizes upon entry is actually an office.

"Where are we?" Helene asks as he positions himself between her and the door like she might make a break for it.

"Irving's office." He explains off hand. "Now tell me, what' d you think?"

"Quoi?" She can feel the screw of her face to the left. She has no idea what he could mean, she'd been so busy keeping up with his footsteps, she had no idea what he was on mentally. They didn't always connect easily, he wasn't always an open book, but she'd figured out how to crack him a time or two. It was easier with a camera at her eye, or both of them naked.

"Of the album, my album." He pinches his bottom lip and wrings his hands a tad.

"The album?" Her brain's slow. Why were they talking about this?

"You' re the only one who hasn't text me, or responded. That's included I mean."

"Included?" What?

"Please stop repeating me in one word questions, Helene!" He looks up and blows out a breath. "Did you like it? Are you upset?"

"Upset?"

"Helene!"

"Harry, lower your voice."

"Apologies." He takes her hand. "Now, did you like it?"

Ah, it was easy to forget how praise was like water on a neglected plant to him. He just wanted assurance that her love of his work would fill her photos again.

"Qui, clairement, it's gorgeous."

"And?" He looks, she couldn't quite place it, Like a puppy trying to sneak into your bed. Hopeful but preemptively scolded.

"And?" She opens her palms to him, subconsciously trying to release his nerves about whatever he's asking her opinion of.

"Did you hear it? At all." He rolls his eyes, but it was so clearly at himself that Helene takes no offense. "Hear us I mean?"

"I didn't want to presume." She starts after a pregnant pause.

"Presume, tournesol, presume." He leans close and she can really smell him. Not pungent like Mexico after hours of sun, or after a night on stage. But, days lazing or loitering in Italy under warm skies.

She shakes her head at him. She felt a spark of recognition that she'd classified as hope during that song, but, "that one is not all me."

"No, not entirely. It is an idea, a feeling fleshed out, but an ode none the less." He assures her, all eye contact and vulnerability.

He's closer now, enough to touch. And she could have? Would, but she had a more important question, a deeper song to address. Though she had to admit, most days Sunflower was her favorite. "Am I in any others?"

"Glimpses. Though one is mostly you." He gives her an encouraging smile, mischief around its edges.

She sucks in a breath. She really wants to know, she's become so much more that she was since she met him. Braver, kinder, richer in many ways. Could she be direct as well? What would Dominique, her most forward friend, do? "And the ending. That feels like a beginning?"

"Fine line?" His dimple's out. Helene might feel upset that he's a cat and she's the mouse if he wasn't a Tom to her Jerry.

"Qui, fine line?" If she just lifts her hand, his jaw will fit just so, always has., or the beautiful curve of his shoulder.

"That one," he's smiling like the time he presented her cake on her birthday. "I realized in Mexico is you!"

"Not until Mexico?" Now she didn't want to touch him, not even his fine shoulder.

"I knew while writing, the glimpses of you, but only one part was, her, was" he swallowed. She hoped it wasn't still pain slicing his throat as he forced the feeling down. She'd even take regret. "Camille" he took her hand. More friendly than the conversation. "The rest, the hope, is you." The nerves were foreign to him when he was with her, he didn't wear them well, his only awkward fit.

Helene let's her eyes fall closed while his breath wafts over her face. That was more Harry. The taste of caffeinated mint. The familiarity messes with her head, it's a bit false but never forced.

She wants to accept his compliment, even though he's undercut it with an inconvenient truth. Their relationship was not one. They were friends, they slept together sometimes, he was her boss and her muse. But they were never together, and  "that's nice, Harry, but, forgive me if it seems, well convenient."

"Convenient?" Oh, his brows are as tangled as his growing curls. Damn him.

"Me belle, it's hard not to notice who is not here, but everywhere on the album." He narrows his eyes in response to her observation. "And I also have someone else to call baby."

"You're with someone?" His pretty brows nearly touch above his nose.

"Qui." It was a bit of a stretch, really. A man she is dating, fucks occasionally. They're not exclusive, and she likes him, Rene, but no more has developed With anybody else, since she gave Harry Carte Blanche with her body. She had liked him, them, a few of them, thought they had potential. She supposed they still did, it just hadn't developed. Helene has never pushed them down the hill.

It hadn't stopped her from being with Harry in Mexico.

Helene talks about him now, hoping it will slow down the ball rolling from the top of the hill in Harry's mind. If he'a just realized he wrote about her and still believed sharing that notion just after she spent several hours marveling, begrudgingly, over his words to another woman, her clothes would fall off over one song for herself, well, he might be right. But she needed some kind of defense mechanism.

She's lacking a chastity belt, Rene's specter would have to do.

"How long?" He asks quietly.

"A bit." She wasn't going to give him details. That was showing him the chinks in her honor.

"Oh, ok, well, that's good." He clears his throat, looks at her with murky eyes. "I'm happy for you."

"I'm happy for you, as well." She hugs him, to touch him and reassure him. "This album, tour, will be a great success."

"Yeah, yeah." He says trying to believe it. "Now that it's out there, I hope so. But we are going to make it fun. You up for some fun, Helene? This time out?"

She's  confused, last time was fun, but she supposed her life was changing so fast, she had no grand expectations to carry on her shoulders and no one broke her heart during tour.

That came after. He must be going into this round with a different attitude.

"Yeah, fun sounds good." He high fives her and she can't help but laugh at him. It turns into another hug, and all the distancing she'd done during this conversation ceased when he kissed her flaxen hair.

"Break, break a leg, Harry." He smiles, the nerves making it quiver just a bit as they go their separate ways.

—————————————————————————— The album closer is approaching and Helene is suddenly nervous. Sunflower kinda made her shake, luckily it's such a damn happy jam, her feelings didn't sweep her away. It's already been a magical night, and she knows the magic doesn't end with the album. Harry has some amazement up his pink sleeve.

His outfit had been distracting, not like Paris or Madrid, but it's so pretty and such a cute silhouette. Helene realizes while she is snapping away. It was distracting because she wanted it herself. It might overwhelm her small frame, but that pink would look good on anyone. He might loan it to her, Sarah and Mitch wore his clothes sometimes.

She's at least as close.

Closer.

He says something before he begins, and it's loud so Helene has to translate it twice, figure out his words and then think them in French. The song's started before she realizes he's said its a difficult song to perform for the first time.

She can't put her finger on why, but she feels for him, for herself. Her brow is knit up like that time she tried to make a Christmas scarf and the little piece of her heart she took back from him breaks free from its stitches and goes to him, right where he stands on his big stage.

The music starts and it's the build that gets her. Just like the first time. She admits she listened to this one repeatedly, Listen one- physical experience, listen two- listening for the glimpses she thought she had caught of herself. Listen three- cry time.

Helene does not want to weep, but it seems she might be in good company. Harry's doing his closed eyes thing. She teased him about that onetime.

"Is it easier to hear how good you are if you close your eyes?" She'd asked this from the head of the bed while he lay across the bottom rubbing her feet.

"What?"

She supposed it was a nonsequiter. "When you sing and when you fuck, you close your eyes sometimes. Is it so you can focus on the screaming?" She pushed him with her foot and gave him a flirtatious smile.

"I don't need to hear the screams to know I'm good." He'd smirked at her and she would have kicked him off the expensive high hotel bed, but he continued too quickly, "To be honest," oh he was serious now, "It's when I get emotional. Or I need to focus."

"Like to hit a note?" She likes his explanation. He keeps his eyes closed sometimes when he's inside her. She hopes that, she, makes him feel; she's too afraid to ask him about that though.

"Or to make you hit a note!" He'd dropped his emotional temperature quickly, grinned and tackled her. "Let's see if we can get you to a G7!"

She did not hit any whistle notes, her orgasm had actually been pretty silent, but the build up had been harmonious.

The conversation came back to her now. His eyes were definitely closed, as they had been during Falling, and a few other times. But, he'd said this was hers, theirs, and he seemed to be feeling, if her memory served, and she remembered so much about Harry, she trusted it.

And then, as her eyes are unquestionably about to spill over to wet the forum floor with her fellow Harry fans, his open. They find her like he's been tracking her all night, and that may be true, though that is more her job, to always be aware of him and his location. But she's rooted there now. She may never leave this spot, Because there is emotion in his eyes, it's not humid like hers, but it's intense.

He eventually shifts to connect with a paying customer, but Helene is a mess. She has to go back stage to collect herself.

She almost misses Stevie, and even if he wrote songs about her, Helene is fairly certain she would get fired for that. The rest of the show is a blur. She snaps it by muscle memory.

Helene also doesn't stay for the after party, it's all to much. It's a departure from her normal behavior, she would almost always stay, with her camera, and to be with everybody. Tonight she's planned to. She missed them dearly, she just couldn't after that moment.

Harry doesn't have that luxury, it's his party, which is why he doesn't knock on her hotel room door until 3am.

She thought she'd got away with it.

Helene's still awake, barely, and when she answers the door, she knows she's mussed. He's seen her like this before, he's caused it. She's too tired to care much.

"Harry," she sighs. "It's late, Cherie."

"You left, and I needed to talk to you." He walks in like he owns the place. She supposes he did pay for it. He just turns to look at her, and if she didn't already feel exhausted beyond measure, those eyes on her may have sparked the fire he lit long ago in her belly.

"Go ahead." The sooner he unburdens himself the better, she looks longingly at her bed.

And then he just sighs and says, "are we?"

She's doubts the face she makes is attractive, "are we what?"

"Alright? Are we alright?"

God, that's a major question. What they are is a shadow of existence, some half way place between what they could have been, what they should be, and then what they are. It a very strange set of loops, like the comparison charts from school. They are colleagues, no doubt, friends, thankfully, and lovers, occasionally. Do any of those designations mean they are alright?

Because she doesn't want occasional lovers. She's put distance between them because she wants more. Halfway is not alright to her.

"Helene?" Oh, she's just been biting her lip this entire time. She really wants to go to bed, but, they should get this done before tour. Does she tell him she wants to be the dead center of his life, or just leave it at they are alright and go to dreamland.

Either are scary in their own right and he's distracting.

He's wearing comfy clothes, the yellow shirt and large trousers she'd snapped him arriving at the forum in. The shirt hugs his body and it makes it difficult for her to pretend she doesn't want to be really open about her feelings. Sometimes isn't enough, not anymore, maybe not ever.

"Let's sit."

"Uh oh." Harry exhales.

"Uh oh?" She looks up at him.

"Is the next sentence 'we need to talk?'"

"Well, we do, or you wouldn't be here on the wrong side of the sun."

"Fair enough." He sighs and sits back, his head hits the back of the couch. He's stretched out, and her small frame would fit well between his hips and chin. She's tempted to do it, to straddle him. Then the talk won't happen, and all these things will be left up in the air. And she will be narrative adjacent, still.

But she's in his narrative, right? If the song is about her? Is that enough?

So she sits with him. "Harry," she takes his hand and he looks so hopeful. "What does it mean to be alright?" Helene is surprised by her own question. It's direct, perhaps not as direct as it could be. She's unsure what he's asking. Is he asking her for more of the same? Today's same, where they are flirty friends and colleagues. Or the alright of yesterday, where she's his friend and employee with benefit.

That's not alright.

Or does it mean something else, something more. Like the feeling after the build in the music, hopeful, open ended: a chance taken.

He finally yanks his eyes open, and Helene remembers he performed an entire concert and went to an after party. That he is center stage in many peoples life. Is she insane to want to be his locus? Harry opens his mouth, then closes it.

"I guess, I don't know."

Helene nods. It's not a surprise, he just wants harmony and everybody happy. He may not have thought beyond them being ok on the surface. He's not ready for the conversation she thought he was asking about.

"We're fine Harry. You're tired, you should get to bed." She stands to show him to the door,  is suddenly back to wholly exhausted herself.

He's shaking his head.

"Harry's it's 330. We need sleep."

"I didn't like that you left."

"You don't get to make me stay at a party. It's not part of my duties."

He's still shaking his head. "No, I'm not saying this right. It's not alright."

"What isn't?" God, she's frustrated, wants him to be clear.

"That you don't want to be around me. I miss you." Well that's obvious for him, and wrong.

She closes her eyes. "Did you ever consider, maybe it's that I want to be around you too much."

"What do you mean?" He looks puzzled but there is light around his eyes, blue skies and clouds.

She sighs. Someone has to be vulnerable, Might as well be her. She knows how straightforward he just was must pain him. "I mean, I don't want to be with you at the party," he's cringing. "well, not just." She takes a fortifying breath. "I miss you too, but I miss what we could have been as well. And I can't," she could do this. "I can't just sleep with you when you are feeling lonely anymore. We are either friends or we are more. It's not fair to me. I can't walk the fine line anymore."

He's looking at their interlaced fingers. A drop hits her hand.

"Harry?"

"I'm sorry." He whispers

Her heart breaks. He doesn't want this. She tries to take her hand from his. Dammit, why did they have to do this in her room? She can't run away now.

"No, no." He looks  up. Why's he sad when she's getting rejected? "I'm sorry I took you for granted, or made you feel like you were my second choice."

She'd not said that.

"I can read between your lines, Helene." He touches her cheek. "I had feelings for you, but I was already with Camille. And then, I was mourning. And it takes me bloody ages."

She wants to role her eyes. She supposes it's kinda true, but he was mourning his rejection.

"I've realized since then, my heart was bruised, but my ego was what got broken. And I wasn't in a place to offer you anything. Not until Mexico, but then things just got busy and we didn't talk."

"We never do." She purses her lips.

"We need to." He holds her chin in his hands. "So, I'm asking. Will you cross the line with me?"

God, her heart is swelling, and she's afraid to look at his face. Is he really asking what she is hearing? "Harry, amor, what does that mean? I can't speak in metaphors." She can, but it's trouble with him. He's a metaphor himself with his figurative edges and blurred meanings.

He sighs, chuckles to himself, and lets go of her hand. He cups her face and draws her eyes up to the tide pools of his. The tides in, he's teary. "I want to do it together, not have you cross the line hoping I follow, or me waiting on the side for you thinking you understood what I was asking for. But together."

She huffs, she stilll, always, doesn't know what the fuck he is talking about. "What line Harry?" She assumes when someone is holding your face gently you shouldn't be yelling in their face in return, but he is so frustrating. "I still don't know what you are saying."

He laughs at himself, or at her, or them. "I'm saying, we should do this, you and me. Like a real relationship. Not just when we are together on tour or meeting up for me to work. But you come home with me to London, or Malibu, or wherever. Or I go with you to Paris, and we don't leave."

"Are you suggesting we move in together?" She's smiling, finally. The edges of her lips would be at her  earlobes if they could be. "You may want to ask me to be your girlfriend first."

"We've been moving at a glacial pace for years. But that's not really what I meant—"

"I know." She shakes her head fondly. "So?"

"So-" he takes a big breath. "Will you be my girlfriend, Helene?"

Oh god, this is what it feels like to look at the sun. To be the sun. "Yes!" It's a whisper, but full of emotion if not voice.

She's not sure why she is so overcome by it that she can't speak, but she can move, she's straddling his lap a moment later.

He laughs, "it's hard to kiss you when you are giggling." But he's vibrating along with her and his bunny teeth clack against hers just as much. His hand is in her hair and it's not until it slides down to cup her jaw that she can't laugh anymore.

Not when he is looking at her like that. His heart is in his eyes and her face is in his hands. Harry's eyes always sparkle, but the combination of mirth and awe shakes her like an earthquake.

The kiss goes better then, or it more closely resembles a kiss, in that their lips form to one another, going from right angle to straight line to acute in time. His tongue has always been devilish and she wonders if it's vocal training that renders it so.

She's more vocal than him, as always, and she's panting his name when his hand engulfs her throat before sliding her silk pajama top off her shoulder to kiss her neck, collarbones, the tops of her breasts. Her nipples stand high on her plum sized mounds and they always trill along the roof of his mouth deliciously. His other hand is around her hip and he's gripping it fiercely to move her over him.

She's halfway there on his question alone, but their venue seems a bit uncomfortable. Helene almost reconsiders her position on their positioning when Harry has that perfect mouth between her breasts and below and the back of the couch is perfect to hold onto while she arches back, back, back. She's bent in two when he pulls her up to his mouth.

This time she is getting his teeth. Why's he giggling again, this is serious business? If she could just concentrate, get him to focus for a moment, she can have her first orgasm of the night.

"Harry, Cherie." She tríes again, her tongue ready to slide over his lips and into that pattern that makes her shiver when his teeth block her again. "Please kiss me!" She's frustrated.

"I was going to ask you if you wanted to move to the bedroom, girlfriend, but you're very focused." He's still smiling and her ire melts at the appellation.

Does she want to go to the bedroom? She won't have the back of the couch to hold onto, but she will have Harry.

She stands and drops her loose shorts. As is usual, Harry has most of his clothes on and she's suited up for her birthday.

"Alright." He breathes and she's in his arms and he's finally giving her the tonguing she loves en route. Her in the altogether seems to have finally got him from mirth to girth, pressing against her and filling the void at the apex of her thighs the way only he has.

She's happy Harry seems to have been enjoying their bodily arrangement as much as she is, when he sits on the side of the bed and maneuvers to the middle with her still draped around his waist. He's said before he loves how maneuverable she is, and she is loving her tiny stature at the moment too.

Her hands are pulling his t shirt free and tossing it away. She loves the golden hue of his skin, he's always a little tan, even in winter. The milk and honey of their bodies against one another always delights her. She goes for the button on the jeans she'd like for herself. They won't fit her, but he always fits, snug at first and then just right.

He kicks them free and then she's back on top of him doing the wiggle to get his inside her, pressing over the largest part before the pressure keeps up and then everything slips into place, the audible pop of his tip still her favorite part.

They both exhale, and smile into each other's eyes. Helene touches the corner of his eyes and they twinkle back at her. "Hi boyfriend."

He chuckles and she moans over the tiny vibration it causes. "You're ready then?"

He already knows the answer to this question. Helene braces her hand behind her while she nods and then his hand is beneath her ass flexing her pelvis over his own.

He really is her prince of rock and roll. She rolls up over him and rocks over his dick until he's closing his eyes and drilling her hips. He's split her open, bottom up and it's intense.

"Give me a minute." He chokes after less time than she expected.

"Too much?" She likes that the shoe is on the other foot, usually she needs a break from his unrelenting physicality, Harry the athlete in the bedroom as well.

She supposed it takes emotion to force Harry to a quick release.

She's keeps flexing around him until he puts his head to her collarbone and then looks up to glare at her. "You're walking a fine line!" He says before he laughs at his own joke.

"I'm not waking anywhere. I'm loving you." She let's that sit there while her hips are quiet. That's all she's going to say about that. He stares at her intensely.

"Let me see you love me, then." She likes when he gives orders, even when their sex is closers to making love than fucking.

Helene obliges him, caves her belly back and starts the ride again, notches her head next to his, like the teeth of zipper, so she can watch with him.

It gets her there, but he's a little ahead of her. He's stilling her hips again. "Stop." It's a beg.

"Just come bebe." She whispers into his sweaty skin.

"You're not ready." He protests.

"We have all night, you can spread me open, all. night. and all day tomorrow, and after." She smiles at him. "All the time in the world to know me!"

"Yeah?" He's gleeful like a kid finding tooth fairy money.

She nods and starts moving, directs his gaze down. The edge of pleasure closer than she expects. Harry is rarely wrong about pleasure. Helene's happy her climb surprises them both.

She reaches the peak and plummets with him on the rollercoaster of emotions tonight's brought. Screams with the thrill.

It's more than fine, the white light explosion behind her eyelids. They've found the right side of the line.

They'll be alright.

[foursideharmony]

The Cat, the Prince, and the Doorway to Imagination (Chapter 4)

Summary: Roman and the White Witch make their move. Then the Witch makes her move. Then Roman makes his.

Pairings: Platonic/familial LAMP/CALM, Platonic/familial DLAMPR

Content Warnings: Nothing serious, some descriptions of mild sick feelings

Word Count: 2614

Read on AO3: here

Aslan, the Great Lion, son of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea...the true and ultimate King of Narnia...loped westward across the ocean, the deep rose light of pre-dawn at his back, bounding over the swells as if they were grassy hills. The spray did not even dampen his mighty paws. He was very near his destination, occasionally leaping or dodging floating chunks of ice that had broken off from the freeze that gripped Narnia. They tended to melt as he passed—indeed, a careful observer would have noticed that a span of water around the Lion was tinted a pleasant blue-green, contrasting sharply with the dismal, wintry gray of the rest.

The time was near. Very soon, Narnia would be liberated from its oppressor.

Aslan was within sight of the shore, running over whitecaps. Another half-minute or so and he would be on the beach...but someone was approaching from the north, skimming over the water on an enchanted ice floe. He recognized his old enemy, Jadis the White Witch, the very one he was there to oust from the land...and she was accompanied...

...by a Son of Adam. The young man was richly dressed and held aloft a faceted stone the color of iron or tarnished lead. The Witch wielded her wand. When they were scarcely a stone's throw from Aslan, the human shouted “Now!” and the two of them began to chant:

“Dragon smoke and harpy’s shriek

What was mighty, now is weak

Pluck the mane and quell the roar

Let Narnia have her King no more!”

This they repeated thrice, circling Aslan on their makeshift watercraft. The Lion roared with dismay as a golden nimbus coalesced around him, pulsating and coruscating, and then was drawn off and toward the young man. Honey-colored light flowed into the strange gem, and Aslan appeared to shrink into himself. A wave crashed over him as the two enemies completed their spell.

Jadis and Roman rode the ice floe back to the shore. “How will we know if it worked?” said the White Witch.

“Take a look, Your Majesty,” said Roman, holding up the gem, which had lost its dullness and taken on the clarity and fire of a diamond. Nor was it any longer cold to the touch.

“I cannot touch it, you know,” she said. “Even so contained, that power would burn me alive. He is my opposite in every way. And you guarantee that he is now too weak to do us harm of himself?”

“Judge for yourself,” Roman said, pointing back toward the sea. Some small creature was feebly paddling through the cold gray waves, barely staying afloat amid the breakers. Just as the dawn broke, the tumbling waves deposited it on the sand, where it staggered to its feet, sneezed, shook off a coating of seafoam...and was a cat. A tawny long-haired tomcat, looking perfectly ridiculous as drenched as it was, mewling piteously. It didn't have the strength to run away when the pair approached.

“It would not have worked if he had made landfall first,” Roman said. “The soil of Narnia bolsters him.”

The White Witch raised her wand. “And now the stone of Narnia will be one with him.”

“Wait!” Roman barked. The Witch turned a furious glare upon him. “A slain enemy cannot feel the humiliation of its defeat,” Roman explained. He lunged, caught the cat by the scruff of its neck, and lifted it to his eye level. “We'll cage him back at the castle. And when we tire of him...I think a public petrifaction would send an irrefutable message to your subjects.”

The Witch's eyes widened ever so slightly and she almost smiled. “You have an admirable understanding of these matters, Prince Roman.”

Roman brought the cat right up to his face. “Is this villainous enough for you?” he muttered.

“Roman,” the cat said in the unmistakable deep, regal voice of Aslan, “what have you done?”

Roman recoiled as if bitten, and the cat twisted in his grasp, slashing at his hand with unsheathed claws. Roman lost his hold; the cat dropped awkwardly to the sand and took off like a shot, straight up the beach to the shelter of the scrubby shore plants. They lost sight of him within seconds...but not before Roman noticed that the frost in a very small circle around the animal vanished, only to return after he moved on. He carried a tiny sliver of spring with him.

“Perhaps I spoke too soon,” said the Witch in a clipped tone. She strode up to Roman and slapped his face, and her strength was such that he spun off his feet. “FOOL! You let him escape!”

Roman waited a moment for his ears to stop ringing before he even ventured to sit up. “Madam,” he panted, “will you treat me so discourteously?”

“I will treat you however I please. I am Queen. Do not delude yourself that this is a partnership of equals. Now get up. We have to intercept these 'friends' of yours.”

Roman felt a little flutter of fear for his fellow Sides. “Is that really necessary?” he said as he got his feet under him and checked that he still had the gem. He put it in his pocket for safekeeping. “We've won. Aslan can't crown them now. Once he fails to show up at the meeting place, they won't know what to do except go home.”

“Stripped of his power or no, I will take no chances as long as he is free. And our likelihood of capturing him again is miniscule.”

Roman opened his mouth to urge her not to harm them, but thought better of it—with the mood she was in, she would take it as a reason to be crueler. He simply lapsed into silence as the Witch's sleigh caught up with them and they climbed aboard.

“Is it done?” asked her Dwarf driver.

“More or less,” the Witch sighed irritably.

“Home, then, Your Majesty?”

“No—head inland. We must track down the other three Sons of Adam.”

“What does Your Majesty intend with them?” asked the Dwarf, flicking the reins.

“You know...I really have not decided yet. A great deal depends upon Roman's own comportment between now and when we find them.”

Roman closed his eyes as they traveled on, wondering fervently what to do next.

He had to assume the story knew what it was doing. Not because that was the most likely scenario, but because it was his best bet to stay hopeful.

*****************

The weary group crested a hill, looking toward the breaking dawn. From there, nearly the whole eastern basin of Narnia was visible. “There, see?” said Mr. Beaver. “The hill of the Stone Table. That's where we're going. And if you look a little further on, to the coast, you can just make out Cair Paravel, the palace of the true rulers of Narnia. One thing about all this snow—the castle walls stand out a lot better at a distance.”

“But Aslan will bring springtime, right?” Patton said, fluffing the hood of his coat.

“Of course he will, dearie,” said Mrs. Beaver. “We should start seeing the first signs soon enough; he must have arrived in Narnia by now.”

Yet nothing changed for at least two more hours as the party trudged on, through calf-deep snow and freezing gusts. From time to time, wolf howls sounded in the distance: the Witch's enforcers.

They were crossing a broad meadow, out in the open, exposed, when they heard a sudden shriek of triumph, followed by: “There! Three Sons of Adam with the Beavers! Faster!” and a sleigh burst from the edge of the forest off to the side. The White Witch had risen from her seat in her murderous excitement, bracing one hand against the back of the driver's seat while the other held her wand aloft. The reindeer accelerated steadily under the Dwarf's goad, fog streaming from their muzzles.

Beside the Witch, slumped over on the seat, was Roman.

“Run!” shouted Mr. Beaver.

“But...Roman!” said Patton. “We have to rescue him!”

“Nothing we can do right now, dearie!” said Mr. Beaver. “We've got to take cover!”

They fled, but it was utterly useless; the sleigh gained on them by leaps and bounds, whizzing over the snow that they struggled through. Ironically, what saved them in the moment was itself a minor misfortune—Virgil caught his foot on a large fallen branch hidden in the snow and went sprawling, but in the process it came loose and skittered directly into the reindeer's path, forcing them to veer off. Virgil scrambled back to his feet, adrenaline lending him both strength and grace, and though brief, the digression gave the party just enough time to reach the edge of the trees and lose themselves amid the underbrush.

“We have to go back,” Patton whispered frantically, tucked under the boughs of a bush. “For Roman, we have to—”

“Ssh!” Virgil interrupted, a hint of his Tempest Tongue coming through. Crunching footsteps were approaching.

“I will find you all, Sons of Adam,” came the silvery voice of the White Witch. “You cannot hide from me here in my own realm.” Mercifully, she moved away after a moment, and the party took her moment of inattention to scamper into a more distant bit of cover.

But there was no way to be quiet enough, and they soon heard her approaching again, more resolutely. She was going to find them, she was going to kill them (or petrify them, which amounted to the same thing)—

But she didn't. Something else happened instead, something that involved shouting and crackles of magical energy, and then virtual silence.

Five pairs of worried, bewildered eyes met each other in turn. No one dared to speak for a long moment. Then Logan carefully got to his feet and looks around. “It's clear,” he said. “She's gone.”

“Gone where?” asked Virgil with just a hint of Tempest.

“I...do not know. But I believe we can safely proceed toward our original destination.”

“Maybe now spring will come...” said Patton, getting up and dusting the snow and forest debris off his clothes. But he didn't sound very hopeful. “I just wish I knew if Roman was okay.”

“May I remind you, this is Roman's story,” said Logan. “He is fine. He is in control.”

Virgil made a derisive snort but said nothing.

“All right then,” said Mr. Beaver. “I've got our bearings again.”

They picked themselves up and continued.

***********

Mere moments earlier...

Roman squeezed his eyes shut all the harder as the sleigh swerved and skidded to a stop, sending up gouts of slush to either side. The seat rocked slightly as Jadis stepped down. “Remain here,” she said. “I will return shortly.” Roman heard her striding away.

Going after the other Sides. His family.

But what could he do about it? This was the role the story had chosen for him: the willing but ultimately outclassed ally of the White Witch. His cheek still burned where she had slapped him, more from the humiliation than the blow itself, which had long since faded. If he defied her openly, tried to stop her from attacking his fellow Sides, he would only share their fate.

Death? No. Story scenarios in the Imagination couldn't literally end their existence; that would make no sense at all. They would just be expelled back into the Mindscape proper, as if waking up from a bad dream. But it would mean he had failed.

I thought I was your hero...

Roman was suddenly furious. At the story for taking these turns, or at himself for setting things up so ineptly at the outset? Was there even a difference? It was his Imagination. Either way, he had trusted the story, and it was betraying him. He could deal with startling twists, downbeat second acts, even tragic endings, as long as the whole was satisfying. But this? Having the main bad guy just roll up and kill the heroes at what would normally be the midpoint? A travesty!

In a burst of inspiration, Roman opened his eyes, stood up, and vaulted lightly from the sleigh.

“Just where do you think you're going?” demanded the Dwarf, who had been adjusted the reindeer's tack. “You heard Her Majesty!”

Roman had been ready for it, and he whipped his sword out of its sheath and leveled it at the Dwarf's face. “Do not try to stop me.”

The Dwarf made a brief, tight nod, swallowed hard, and stood aside by a pace or two. Roman located the Witch's tracks, heading straight toward the nearby trees, and he followed them at a run.

The gem felt very heavy, and almost warm, in his pocket.

He spied the Witch some distance away among the trees, moving with purpose. He came just close enough to let her realize he was approaching, took the gem out, and began chanting.

“Dragon smoke and harpy's shriek

What was mighty, now is weak.”

She stopped short and turned to face him. “What are you doing?”

The second couplet leapt into his mind fully formed:

“Scoop the snow and scrape the frost

Her reign must end at any cost!”

The White Witch's eyes widened in alarm as the jewel began to suck her power away, just as it had Aslan's. Blue-white light ripped out of her in coils and flares, and her voice rose to a scream as she realized what was happening. For the gem was able to subtract enough of Aslan's power away to leave only a Talking Cat...but Jadis was nowhere near as puissant. The same amount of energy, taken from her, left...nothing.

A torrent of cold magic lanced toward Roman's gem, but it could not enter. The power of the White Witch—the power that was the White Witch—and the power of Aslan could not coexist in the same space. The bluish light shied away from the jewel and plunged, instead, directly into Roman himself.

Ice gripped his heart with a suddenness that made him gasp for breath. His head spun like a tilt-a-whirl. Roman managed to take two, three steps before the forest tipped up on edge and the snow-dusted ground slammed into his shoulder. The ice was spreading, spearing through his shoulders, encasing his lungs and stomach.

Roman made himself get up and staggered out of the trees back toward the sleigh. His head did not feel good.

“Where is the Queen?” asked the Dwarf.

Roman had no answer, but as he made eye contact, the Dwarf's mouth dropped open. He skipped back a step and then pressed his hands together in an almost prayerful pose and bowed so low that his head nearly brushed the ground. “Your Majesty,” he murmured. “Your Majesty.”

Roman climbed back into the sleigh. “Take me ho—take me back to the castle,” he panted. The ice continued to crawl outward from his core. He checked to make sure he hadn't dropped the gem along the way—he hadn't, but the flesh of his hand looked strange somehow.

Imagine if the others saw you now, said a voice not his own, from deep inside his head. He shuddered at the thought, and supposed that was why he had gone straight back to the sleigh instead of trying to find them himself. But the real horror, the one that had yet to sink in fully, the one he wasn't ready to let sink in just yet, was this:

He had no idea where the story was supposed to go from here.

[hidiingplace]

CASPIAN BENGAL + OPINIONS ON THE OTHERS

general. doing this for all my muses! here is what Caspian thinks of the other muses on this blog.

TODD REBANE. Caspian has a very conflicting view of Todd. He loves him. Todd is his brother in law and so he does genuinely care for him. Caspian disagrees with a lot of Todd’s opinions, but also agrees with a lot of them. Todd’s brash and harsh nature can be a lot for Caspian to take in at times –– his intensity and chaos is something Caspian struggles to understand or even accept because it’s just so the opposite of Caspian. While Caspian has grown out of his violent tendencies and his habit of getting into fights, Todd has not quelled that, and sometimes he cannot help but scold Todd for his reckless behaviour. Despite this tension, Caspian and Todd have a lot in common and Caspian has shared intimate parts of his childhood and past with Todd that he hasn’t shared with anyone else. He and Todd’s friendship is based on a lot for Caspian, but he finds Todd quite exhausting to be around, and frequently needs to take breaks from talking or hanging out with Todd. He respects Todd on many things, and admires his strength, his heart, and some of his views on life, but there are a lot of things that Caspian conflicts with Todd fundamentally on that makes Caspian’s relationship with Todd a little more strained that Todd even realizes. 

JOEY HAMILTON. Caspian has tremendous respect for his father in law. He sees Joey as someone to be admired, respected, and listened to. He sees him as a good father and a very accepting figure in his life. Joey’s calmness and level headed approach to the chaos of every day life is really something that Caspian finds pretty inspiring. He’s seen the close relationship that Emma (his girlfriend/fiance/wife) has with Joey and it makes him want to be a better father to his own children. Caspian looks at Joey as a sophisticated man, and in some ways, this does intimidate Caspian quite a lot. Joey’s love of traditional art is something Caspian cannot connect with, but he values it as he has seen the amazing benefit it’s given his and Emma’s daughter (Aubrey) in connecting with her own passions and finding her outlet. Caspian and Joey have a love for music as well, and Caspian has even asked Joey to help write piano parts into some of Caspian’s band’s songs from time to time. Caspian often seeks Joey out when he needs a calming, reassuring presence that isn’t as intimate as his own fathers’. He sees Joey as someone he can trust and express himself with without feeling like he needs to explain every aspect of a situation.

DAETON RUNE. Caspian knows Daeton as a friend of Todd’s and Todd’s girlfriend, Ella. He’s only met him a few times, but finds the way he interacts with his friends a little off putting. He’s not at all surprised that he keeps company with Todd or Ella, given that they’re both absolute spitfires. However, from the little bits of conversation Caspian has had with him, he can’t say he dislikes him at all. In fact, he finds Dae really interesting and borderline mysterious. Caspian finds Daeton’s understanding of spirituality really interesting, but hasn’t sat down with the man long enough to get a good idea of what he actually thinks and believes. It’s hard for Caspian to say whether or not they’d ever be friends, but he certainly thinks Daeton brings a certain energy into the room that, at the end of the day, makes himself and clearly Todd and Ella feel very playful and happy. Caspian will be the first to admit that he thinks there is a lot more to Daeton than meets the eye, but he’s not sure what it is. 

ASH YII. Caspian is absolutely terrified of Ash without a shadow of a doubt. He knows him as Joey’s sister’s boyfriend and has only met him a few times, and honestly, every single time he’s been so utterly intimidated he tends to just leave him alone. His daughters seem to enjoy Ash’s presence, and whenever they do, Caspian can be found close by keeping a watch on them. There’s something deep inside Caspian that doesn’t trust Ash as far as he could throw him (and given Ash’s size, he wouldn’t be able to throw him at all). He thinks Ash is bad news, but doesn’t feel as though it’s his place to tell Paige that either. He has voiced his worry and opinions to Emma, but otherwise he tries to be pleasant whenever Ash is around (which isn’t often, mind you). As a whole, Ash makes the hair on the back of Caspian’s neck stand up, though if he tried to tell you why that was, he’d be left without an explanation for you. 

MATEO MARCONI. Caspian has met Mateo a total of 3 times, and every single time, he thinks Mateo is a fucking delight. Like actual ray of sunshine, loves hanging out with him, loves talking to him. The pair know each other through Todd’s girlfriend and have stayed in touch since meeting the first time. They don’t often text or call, but follow each other on social media and Caspian routinely checks in with him and says hello. Caspian genuinely really likes Mateo and thinks he’s a very interesting and kind person. Caspian has even offered to give Mateo a place to stay in the event he ever comes to NYC and Ella cannot accommodate him. Caspian, himself, never really was able to have good experiences with therapy, and as a result, he was very surprised to see that not only was Mateo a huge advocate for it, but someone who worked in the field. Caspian has tried a handful of times to ask him about recommending a place to start for his own mental health treatment, but routinely gets too nervous and backs out of the idea. Mateo and Caspian have shared many conversations in their little time of knowing one another, mostly regarding work and psychology.

[ladyfl4me]

I know you like that good sweet worldbuilding, sooooo if you could add just one thing to amnesty canon, what would it be?

JUST ONE THING? JESUS FUCKING CHRIST YOU CAN’T DO THAT TO ME. THAT’S NOT FAIR. I’ll give you options and then, in a hypothetical universe, I’ll pick one and Make It So for amnesty canon. it’s almost 1:30 in the morning where i am rn, so bear with me.

If i may, for the first one, i would do a switch: i would remove the reconciliation in its entirety, and make the villain some sort of political intrigue/antagonistic force within Sylvain, making the light figures from there instead. I’m basically just spitballing all the things that I am going to do in TCOS here, but like. 

Okay, by keeping things centered on Sylvain, that would be a powerful thing to add. It could have been a possible domino for Griffin to push to do more Sylvain worldbuilding, and make them more fascinating as a society for the protagonists to interact with. Griffin called Earth and Sylvain sister planets, and then didn’t follow through on that connection at all, making it an artificial bond by fantasy space America trying to start a puppet war. Christ. You can’t reduce an entire planet down to one culture and set of political ideals. By making the villains have a more direct relationship to Sylvain, you might get a hell of a lot of nuance. 

That’s not to say i didn’t like the Reconciliation plotline; i think it was really thematically interesting and had a lot of symbolic weight. I just feel like it superseded a lot more interesting potential ones in Sylvain, which got abandoned. Like! The exiles thing! Dani canonically has parents and a brother-- what’s up with them? The drama surrounding that!  How do the councilmembers relate to each other? What are their individual politics? Alexandra’s dead fucking father - what kind of society puts a child  in charge, unless it’s a dire fucking emergency? What happened to her dad? What’s their technology like? Their culture? Their music? What has Sylvain done to try and stymie the quell in the past, before they got to where they are today? Why has that failed? A gateway to all of this could have been opened if Griffin had decided to make Sylvain as a whole more significant, and while the “these two forces are actually being threatened by a third greater power” thing is cool, i wasn’t entirely convinced.

And if i couldn’t remove the reconciliation, i would add this: there are other sylvan communities all over earth like the lodge. The lodge is a microcosm for a much bigger sociocultural migratory phenomenon that crosses galaxies. The two planets have been connected for centuries, if not millennia; you cannot look me in the eyes and tell me that there aren’t sylvan communities embedded near major geothermal hotspots the world over. 

“wait tin don’t they need energy to survive -” Barclay and Indrid had those crystals, and those kept them alive well enough. I specifically cite Indrid because that guy never once showed up at the hot springs for a dip, and seemed to be just fine living off his crystal - whereas the exiles who didn’t have a crystal had to make do with the springs. Like. Just imagine a whole society of crystal-wearing sylphs operating a society in the woods near a ski resort in Colorado, or a few miles from Yellowstone. Or a bunch of sylphs who’ve wired crystals to [throws dart] Manhattan’s power grid, and have created a gentle web of pseudo-sylvan energy over the whole city to give the sylphs and their descendants there sustenance. The idea of there being sylphs who were exiled to earth and formed their own communities - or sylphs who left lawfully and formed their own communities near gate locations, having children and settling on earth - is fascinating to me, and is completely in line with the lore griffin already has set out given how the gate travels.

I know you said just one thing, but i am still sitting here and thinking... If i wasn’t going to make it a worldbuilding thing, i would make it a character thing. I would dig the knife with stern to make him more of a developed character in arcs three through to the end - or at least make him more of a bad guy. I’ve talked about the “stern looks out the window during the post-arc-3 interlude, catches Boyd Mosche taking pictures of the lodge before his meetup with Ned, intercepts him, makes the mistake of hearing him out, and teams up with him in a quid pro quo effort to take down Ned in exchange for shade tree” AU at LENGTH. It is one of my favorite Amnesty AU concepts to think about. I still think that those two would be an absolute villainous powerhouse if they’d met in canon. (i have my own thoughts about them, related to the versions that show up in TCOS and TMWCIFTC, that i’ve been sitting on for longer than I’d care to admit, but, well. That’s for another time. Yes that’s an invitation to ask me to yell abt it if you’d like, their development in TCOS has taken a fucking U-turn that i’ve been excited about for a while and i like talking about my fic lskdjlskdjf) 

But if not that, I would probably just make Stern quit the fucking FBI, man. Idk what to tell you, the only good cops are the ones that quit and the fact that he stayed an FBI agent, with a team there observing the gate, and was implied to be rewarded with a romantic relationship with his former prey, never sat right with me. I could accept it if he left the FBI and was shown to try and make up for his mistakes. Four good deeds for every bad, and all that jazz. But alas.

I know i listed three things but hey, these would not all be implemented simultaneously. It’d just be one. So it still kind of counts! A lot of this bitching boils down to the fact that Amnesty-the-story and Amnesty-the-DND-roleplay-podcast are not necessarily the same level of quality in my head; as an overarching story, I think Amnesty might have worked better as a TV show or book series, in terms of its narrative, even though the TTRPG aspects of its execution were awesome. A lot of things I would want to add would suit this podcast as a Balance-length epic or a piece of textual narrative literature, not necessarily a podcast. Sorry for the long answer, it is 1:30 am and i just think a lot about the holes in amnesty meta and What Could Have Been because my specific AU bread and butter is trying to patch them lsjdflksjdf

ask me anything! all asks will be answered

[robininthelabyrinth]

Tedious Joys - Chapter 7 -

- Ao3 link -

“You could have mentioned that your father likes to kiss his saber,” Lan Qiren hissed at Nie Mingjue, who flailed helplessly as both of them tried to whisper outside of Lao Nie’s hearing – a task only rendered possible from the fact that he was currently scrubbing his hair extremely vigorously to get rid of all the dirt and grime, Lan Qiren’s extended hand firmly on his back. The jade pendant was back to hanging at his waist, since hasty experimentation had revealed that the physical contact with Lan Qiren was the key aspect, although the jade pendant seemed key as well - removing it appeared to make the contact less effective.

“He didn’t, did he? Are you all right?” Nie Mingjue asked, and he looked so serious and earnest about it, like he was going to march up to his father right then and there and challenge him over Lan Qiren’s honor or something if Lan Qiren implied that he should, that Lan Qiren’s irritation faded away at once.

“Only on the hand,” Lan Qiren assured him. “He didn’t take any liberties.”

That last part was more of a joke than anything else – however intimate Lao Nie was with her, Jiwei was still a saber – but Nie Mingjue looked alarmed. “You’ll say something if he does anything you’re uncomfortable with, right?” he asked anxiously, and Lan Qiren stared at him.

“Nie Mingjue,” he said stiffly, attempting to quell a little bit of possibly hysterical and definitely inappropriate laughter. “Is there something you need to tell me about you and Baxia…?”

“Tell you – oh! No, no, nothing like that,” Nie Mingjue said, turning bright red. “That’s not what I meant, Teacher Lan! Really, I swear!”

Lao Nie poked his head out of the water briefly to look at them both suspiciously, but accepted it when Lan Qiren shook his head at him and turned back away.

Nie Mingjue waited until his father was distracted to continue whispering. “I just meant – our sabers may be our partners, but it’s not…it’s not an equal distribution of authority, you know? In the end, they’re the weapons and we’re the masters.”

Lan Qiren frowned, finally understanding the nature of Nie Mingjue’s concern, and it was much more astute than he’d initially thought. “I see. So if Baxia refused to cultivate with you…?”

Nie Mingjue shifted uncomfortably from side to side. “Well, I mean, I wouldn’t, personally,” he said. “She’s my friend. But A-die’s always saying I’m too soft on her, that I need to take her more firmly in hand, so…I don’t know. It’d definitely be a few days before he forces the issue – uh, that is – I mean – not that he’d ever –”

“It won’t come to that,” Lan Qiren assured him. “A few days will give us enough time to come up with a plan, and at any rate I would not allow him to mistreat me.”

Nie Mingjue looked relieved, which was a flattering if perhaps not entirely accurate reflection of how strong he believed Lan Qiren to be.

“A good night’s rest will help more than anything,” Lan Qiren continued. “For him, and for you. I suggest you take advantage of it at once – actual sleep, not meditation.”

Nie Mingjue nodded again. “But he’s going to be all right?” he asked, anxious. “Eventually?”

Lan Qiren glanced at his friend, happily humming some bawdy song and appearing likely about to break out into actual singing at any moment, and felt a pain in his chest at the thought of what might be necessary.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I really don’t know. We’ll do everything we can for him.”

Nie Mingjue accepted that, taking a deep breath and centering himself, then striding away – he would probably go and do some work before he actually retired, rather than actually go straight to sleep, but Lan Qiren did not call him out on it. There was still a chance that Nie Mingjue would end up as sect leader, and then he wouldn’t have a choice in it at all.

After being tormented briefly by some rather off-key singing and extremely dubious lyrical choices, Lan Qiren found himself bundled off to Lao Nie’s quarters and into his bed, with Lao Nie curling up quite happily against his back.

“There are rules about judging other people,” Lan Qiren mumbled, staring at the wall and ignoring the feeling of Lao Nie’s chin on his shoulder. It was pointy, and they didn’t quite fit – Lan Qiren was the just barely taller of the two, although Lao Nie was broader, and his arms were heavy around him – and all in all Lan Qiren was not especially enjoying the experience of sharing a bed any more than he had any of the previous times it had been forced upon him by necessity, luckily small in number. “I am currently breaking it. I will need to think of a suitable punishment for myself later.”

“Judging me, sweetheart?” Lao Nie said into his ear, sounding amused. “What did I do?”

“Sleep in the same bed as an extremely sharp and angry blade, apparently.”

“Only when you’re angry at me,” Lao Nie said, completely shameless. Lan Qiren really didn’t know why he’d been expecting anything different, really. “You know, it’s much easier to hold you in my arms when you’re like this, all soft, even if your hips are a bit knobby. I like it.”

Lan Qiren sighed.

The next morning, Lan Qiren woke at the prescribed time and performed his morning ablutions in the time before Lao Nie woke, settling himself down beside the bed to play calming music and think about what could be behind Lao Nie’s current fixation on believing that he was Jiwei.

He thought it must have something to do with the jade pendant he had cultivated on Lao Nie’s behalf. Indeed, now that he thought about it, that might in fact be the problem – he had cultivated the pendant, not Lao Nie, and he had done it using Jiwei’s spiritual energy. A Nie saber had only one master, but he had apparently won enough of Jiwei’s respect for her to allow him access to some part of her; just as Lao Nie had intertwined himself with his saber, so to had Lan Qiren, albeit unknowingly and at a distance. There was certainly no overly intimate sharing of qi between them, but they had an undeniable connection. That might explain it.

There was also the ongoing mystery of why the pendant burned so fiercely. It had always been reactive to Jiwei’s anger, full of her spiritual energy and spillover rage as it was, but Jiwei was gone – shattered. Whose energy was powering it now? And how could it maintain such a high level of energy, so hot as to damage someone like Lan Qiren, who while not martially inclined was still a powerful cultivator in his own right?

He had more questions than answers.

Unfortunately, he did not have a great deal of time to find answers. If Lao Nie’s condition persisted – he hoped that it wouldn’t, that his friend would wake knowing who Lan Qiren was and not in a horrible rage, but he wasn’t optimistic – they would need to find a solution, and fast. Lao Nie was the unquestioned master of his sect and even he’d only managed to leave it behind for a month and a half before his duties forced him to return; Lan Qiren was a substitute for his brother, a pale and inferior custodian put in place solely to fill the time between the generations, and his sect elders would never let him forget it. There was no way he would be able to stay away so long.

And if he left…

“Jiwei,” Lao Nie murmured in his sleep, which had become restless. His face had gone from a neutral expression to a frown, twisted in anger and pain, and when he opened his eyes, they were once again red. The music was not helping. “My saber – Jiwei…where is my saber?” Lao Nie struggled to sit up. “Where is it? Give her to me!”

Lan Qiren stopped playing and reached out his hand, interlocking his fingers with Lao Nie’s as if they were back once again to all those years ago when he had been a slow, stuttering child and Lao Nie a kind young adult, taking him in hand to show him the basics of night-hunting without worrying about him falling over his own feet.

He watched as the red slowly faded out of Lao Nie’s eyes – not gone entirely, still there, a thin pink film that seemed as though it could be blinked out of existence.

He sighed.

“My friend,” he said. “I am going to need your help with this.”

“Anything,” Lao Nie said, then paused and amended to, “Anything that won’t cause undue harm.”

“It involves research.”

“…one could argue that that would be undue harm to my ability to enjoy my free time.”

Lan Qiren shook his hand lightly. “You are in need of healing. Do you understand what I am saying?”

The humor slowly faded out of Lao Nie’s face.

“You had a qi deviation,” Lan Qiren said bluntly. “The one you’ve been afraid of, the one you always knew was coming – it happened. You went mad, years before your time. But you did not die, and so there is still hope…but I will need your help. I will need you to try to get better. I cannot do this without you.”

Lao Nie looked at him, lips pressed together tightly.

Lan Qiren waited, patient. Whatever the reason for it, Lao Nie regained much of his clarity when they were in contact – and if he could think, he could be an ally in this. He would have to be.

“The strangers weren’t strangers, were they,” Lao Nie said abruptly, and it wasn’t a question. Lan Qiren looked at him. “A-Jue…I was the one who did that to him, wasn’t I? I was the one that hurt him. That’s why you wouldn’t tell me about it yesterday.”

Lan Qiren nodded.

Lao Nie looked away, angry – real anger, this time, and entirely self-directed – but it was only a few moments before he collected himself and looked back, his eyes bright with tears but fiercely determined. “What can I do to help?”

“For now, answer my questions, no matter how unusual,” Lan Qiren instructed, and Lao Nie nodded. “First question: who am I?”

“…Jiwei.”

They were still there, then, although Lao Nie sounded much less sure about it than he had the night before. Lan Qiren fumbled for the pendant at his waist. “Can you sense the spiritual energy in this? Whose is it?”

Lao Nie reached for the pendant and focused. “Also Jiwei.” This time, he sounded more confident.

“The energy in the pendant exceeds what I previously put in there,” Lan Qiren said. “Do you know why?”

Lao Nie frowned down at the pendant. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Have you cultivated with it recently?”

Lan Qiren arched his eyebrows, think that that would be rather difficult without Jiwei around to transfer energy from. “No, I haven’t. Why?”

“There’s something strange about it, that’s all.” He shook the pendant lightly. “Familiar. Same as you, but not; same as me, but not. It wants to fly.”

Lan Qiren stared at him blankly.

Lao Nie shrugged and scratched at his beard. “What did A-Jue say about it?”

“…Mingjue?” Lan Qiren asked blankly. “Say? About what?”

Lao Nie blinked at him. “Well, he’s the only other one with a similar pendant, right?”

Actually, Lan Qiren had made one for little Nie Huaisang, too – he used it as the base of his fan tassel, transferred from one fan to another – but it wasn’t really relevant to him yet, weak cultivator that he was. But that was a good point: in his fear for Nie Mingjue’s health, his worry for his safety, he had forgotten that Nie Mingjue was the closest thing they had to another perspective on the connection between pendant and saber.

Lan Qiren frowned at his oversight. “I’ll ask Mingjue to join us.”

Nie Mingjue looked better already, even if Lan Qiren’s heart hurt at how cautious he was around his father, at how Lao Nie could barely stand to look at the colorful bruises littering his son’s face. “What can I do?”

“Take this pendant,” Lao Nie said, holding it out.

Nie Mingjue extended his hand in return and Lao Nie dropped the pendant into it before Lan Qiren could intervene and point out why it was a terrible idea to just hand it over to someone who was both unprepared and little more than a child, however talented a genius he might be. The second it touched Nie Mingjue’s palm, he yelped and nearly dropped it, Lan Qiren snatching it away from him with his free hand before it could fall to the floor.

“It hurts!” he exclaimed, as Lan Qiren might have expected.

What he did not expect, however, was that Baxia abruptly drew herself, hurtling out of her sheath to hang in midair, emanating the distinct sensation of rage that was the characteristic of a Nie saber.

The pendant abruptly flared up, the heat in it rising as if in response to Baxia’s challenge, and Lan Qiren had to temporarily free himself from Lao Nie to quickly loop a guqin string through the pendant, letting it dangle away from his flesh, and then returned his hand to his friend before the red got too far into his eyes.

“What in the world is going on?” he demanded. “Lao Nie – explain.”

“I have no idea,” Lao Nie said, rubbing his eyes as if he realized something had happened to him in the brief interlude where they were separated. “They’re…fighting. I think? How can they be fighting? Why would a saber start a fight with a piece of jade?”

“Can you ask Baxia?” Lan Qiren asked Nie Mingjue, who was still clutching at his hand and looking blankly at them both. “I know it doesn’t exactly work as cleanly as all that, but your father always said you had an unusually strong connection…”

Nie Mingjue reached out and caught Baxia by the hilt, brow creased in a frown. “It really doesn’t work that way, Teacher Lan. All I can tell is that she’s angry.” He hesitated. “She feels betrayed.”

“Betrayed?” Lan Qiren asked, surprised. “But – how can she be betrayed? That would imply an initial association, familiarity, that something changed…”

“Jiwei,” Lao Nie suddenly said. He was staring at the pendant swinging in Lan Qiren’s hand. “Jiwei’s in the pendant.”

Nie Mingjue glanced at Lan Qiren, clearly concerned that his father had simply started seeing Jiwei in everything, but Lan Qiren bit his lip, thinking it over seriously.

He had initially thought that the reason for Lao Nie’s mistaken impression of him was because he had cultivated with the pendant using Jiwei’s energy, acting in Lao Nie’s place, and thereby he had been imprinted with the qi of the saber, that it had been that shadow upon him that Lao Nie had recognized.

But what if he had thought about it backwards?

“Is it possible,” he said slowly, wishing he knew more about the saber spirits, wishing that he’d had more time, wishing even that his Xinfei could speak as clearly as a saber could, “Mingjue, is it possible that Jiwei’s spirit is in the pendant? The saber spirit itself, I mean, as opposed to the physical saber?”

Nie Mingjue goggled at him. “In the pendant, Teacher Lan? A saber? But how?”

“I tied the two together using resonance,” Lan Qiren explained. Poor tone-deaf Nie Mingjue had never really understood what he was doing with his music, which Lan Qiren couldn’t blame him for – it was esoteric even by musical cultivation standards. He’d more or less made the entire thing up over the past few years. “Adjusting the internal music of the jade to match Jiwei, so that the two recognized each other – and, once recognized, forged a connection between them. That’s what allowed me to continue to draw out Jiwei’s anger even from a distance.”

Both Nie nodded, listening intently. Good students, both of them, for all their occasional faults; if only he had three dozen like them. As a teacher, it was the highest compliment he knew to speak.

“The unusual heat started, as far as we can tell, when the saber shattered,” he continued, now thinking out loud. “If Jiwei’s anger can transfer from one container to the other through the pathway forged by the resonance, why couldn’t the rest of her spirit do the same? Why couldn’t she come to possess the jade if she so wished?”

He wasn’t sure what to do with that idea, in all fairness – he might speak of questioning the sabers, might have reluctantly accepted them as having some form of sentience, but the idea of an entire spirit transferring from one body to another within the same lifetime in a method not unlike possession was rather disturbing. But at the same time he couldn’t imagine any other reason for Baxia to try to challenge a jade pendant to a duel.

Proud, strong Baxia, the only match to Nie Mingjue’s matchless talent, so fearsome that even other saber spirits yielded before her…

“But –” Nie Mingjue glanced sidelong at his father. “Teacher Lan, he also thinks you’re Jiwei.”

“Because I cultivated the pendant,” Lan Qiren said, because it made a certain amount of sense. “There are two types of spiritual energy in there: Jiwei’s and my own. Perhaps when I offered him the pendant, he recognized Jiwei in there, and also me, and thereby conflated the two…”

“I’m right here, you know,” Lao Nie interjected. “Being talked about as if I’m not.”

Lan Qiren leveled a quelling look at him.

Lao Nie gave him an arch look in return. “Just reminding you that I understand spoken speech, in the event you’ve forgotten.”

“Very well,” Lan Qiren said tetchily. “In that case, who I am again?”

Lao Nie paused, eyes traveling between Lan Qiren, the pendant dangling from his hand, and Nie Mingjue.

“You feel like Jiwei,” he said hesitantly. “But – the strangers felt like strangers, and weren’t. So you’re – not Jiwei. You’re…” He glanced at Nie Mingjue again, seeking external confirmation that his senses were misleading him; Nie Mingjue nodded eagerly. His gaze slide back to Lan Qiren. “Qiren?”

“Well done,” Lan Qiren said, full of relief. “Full marks, passing grade. Would it be possible for you to stop calling me ‘sweetheart’ and ‘darling’ now?”

Lao Nie – despite being the shameless scoundrel that he was – abruptly flushed bright red, while Nie Mingjue covered his face with his hands.

“I understand, of course,” Lan Qiren assured him. “What passes between a man and his spiritual weapon is very private, and –”

“Stop talking,” Lao Nie growled. “Just – stop talking.”

[border-spam]

Leech Lord AU

Tyreen Calypso / Tyreen DeLeon / God Queen Calypso / Holy Mother Tyreen (differences from canon)

List of character traits and  world-building facets for this character within my AU that differ from / are of more importance than in canon. 

One of these coming for Seifa shortly. Same AU as all other twins content I’ve written. TW: drug use.

Troy’s is HERE

Traits: ✓ Positive x Negative:

✓x Confidence is not a façade.

Unlike her twin, Tyreen's self confidence is rock solid to an unquestionable level. Her God Queen persona is not an act, it's her natural disposition ramped into overdrive.

✓ Highly Empathic.

Ty is very emotionally charged as a person, and is notably in-tune in general to the energies of people she is in proximity with. She has always used this to her advantage, capable of reading a room very cleanly and modifying her behavior and approach to play on the emotional state of others.

✓ Excellent Actor.

Her enjoyment of positive attention since childhood nurtured her into a very convincing natural performer. She can switch her emotion worryingly easily from sorrow to mirth, and it can be difficult to tell at times which is the actual genuine state she is feeling.

✓ Extremely Adaptable.

Tyreen is almost impossible to deter as she automatically approaches any situation with complete belief she will overcome it. She is not easily stopped by plans going awry or not panning out, and rarely breaks momentum. Ty is so naturally assured of achieving whatever goal she is aiming for, that she see's barriers others would see as impassable, as mere setbacks.

✓ Highly Charismatic.

Her ability to draw the billions of worshippers that now compose the COV is no fluke. Between her natural charisma and intuition, and the excellently researched scripts and persona Troy writes for her, Tyreen is extremely magnetic to others.

✓ Natural  Leader.

Her rock solid self confidence and personal strength makes Tyreen highly attractive to those looking for guidance and a personality they can lean on. Her royalty is unquestionable, she was born to be a God Queen, and is very, very aware of it.

x Incapable of admitting fault.

Ty's extreme self confidence and regard for her own opinion means she cannot face failure. She will aggressively, to at times a physically violent level, defend her actions and beliefs regardless of whatever evidence is presented to her that shows she is incorrect or made a mistake.

x Easily loses control of herself in high pressure situations.

Her highly emotionally charged and empathic personality can leave her unable to control her reactions when under stress or pressure. While Troy's response to conflict or risk is to become exceptionally calm and dangerously in control, his twin's is the opposite. Tyreen can easily descend into screeching, violent tantrums, or lash out physically and verbally at people she sees as the source of the emotion she is currently experiencing, regardless of if they are at fault. She is often a danger to herself and others, and cannot be trusted to stay in control when stressed.

x Self centered.

Tyreen's galaxy revolves around Tyreen. Tyreen is Tyreen's universe. She's aware that there are people she should value, she should value Troy, she should value Seifa, she should value the other Saints like Mouthpiece, but she does not feel that value. This can lead to her questioning herself at times, there is concern eating her internally that maybe she actually doesn't feel anything for anyone else, but she knows that's wrong. She knows that's weird, and Tyreen isn't a freak, so she avoids dwelling on it.

x Manipulative.

Tyreen learned at an early age that getting what she wanted was easier if she played on what the other person wanted too. She's woven this so tightly into who she is over time, that she is no longer really aware of when she's actually manipulating someone, Troy being the most common victim. If you asked her, she'd convince you she was being completely genuine and had the other person's needs at heart. It's a lie.

x Illogical.

Her firm belief that she is automatically correct and infallible is a huge threat to her, and despite having endured injury and hardships over the years due to not listening to advice or ignoring facts in favor of her own opinion, she is not open to changing.

x Greedy.

While The Leech has amplified this negative trait 100 fold, it's still one of Tyreen's natural characteristics. Her greed by mid COV is insatiable, her hunger impossible to extinguish. Nothing will ever be enough. Any satisfaction she finally feels at achieving or gaining something she has lusted for is short lived, The Leech consuming the sensation and leaving her chasing it desperately again. She is endlessly spiraling downwards, she can never be content. She is cursed.

x Values her life over anyone else.

Tyreen has built her throne on the bones of family. She has opened her arms to billions, given lost souls the belonging they craved, become a mother to the heaving masses of damaged minds across the Galaxy, but it does not contain a single person she would die for. There is no one she wouldn't kill to survive. Leda knew. Typhon knows. Troy... Troy would snap your neck before you managed to finish asking if he does.

Backstory:

Bl3 canonical backstory till landing on Pandora where the AU begins, with additional points of:

Completely incapable of physical contact with any living organism bar Troy. Her power is wildly uncontrollable, and absorbs through any barrier within seconds. Its been this ravenous since the day it first revealed itself when the twins were 8 years old, and has never given her a moment of relief from its constant hunger since.

Did not receive as much attention as she deserved as a young child due to her parents needing to provide constant care to her deathly ill twin. Tyreen suffered in silence for a long time during this period, too immature to be able to explain to her mother and father how she felt.

The Leech negatively warps her over time as it feeds within. Tyreen would have blossomed into an extroverted, empathic, loudly spoken center of attention without its influence as she grew. A positive, if slightly needy woman, with an irresistible charisma and penchant for theatrics. Her feelings for Troy would not have decayed into something so grotesque, and she could have been happy. Her insatiable, yearning, demanding half of The Leech has doomed her to inescapable misery.

Personal:

Likes:

Positive attention and recognition.

Care or concern towards her emotional state, or mental/physical wellbeing.

Very few foods, but has a great love for citrus fruits and cured meats.

Textured fabrics, her inability to touch others has over time left her quite sensitive to tactile sensations, and she is a huge fan of expensive, high end fabrics and clothing created from them

Smoking. While she has little appetite for food or drink, joints and clove cigarettes are her go to relaxants. She enjoys the physical sensation of holding and smoking one, as well as the mental relief provided by the herbs Troy grows and dries for her.

Horrendously bad romance movies. The more cringe, the better. She's seen everything, and forced her brother to watch at least half. She knows in a way she's living vicariously through them, but it feels like an innocent pleasure.

Interacting with her fans and worshippers. Tyreen is very loving and open towards the COV cultists, and genuinely sees them as the family she was able to choose to have. This doesn't change that she values them less than insects however, and she's as likely to pause for a selfie with one as she is to husk them seconds later.

Dislikes:

x Her natural hair colour.

The dark brown was Leda's. Her eye shape is Leda's. Her mouth is Leda's. She doesn't want to see her mother in the mirror, so she's focused on those parts of her that remind her the most for changes in her aesthetic. Bleach, heavy eye makeup, liner to try and alter her lip shape. Tyreen is happy with her appearance, but it's her appearance she wants to see. Not the memory of her greatest fault.

x Being challenged.

While Ty is aware there are people who's opinion's she needs to heed, like Troy and Seifa in the earlier years of the COV, she doesn't like following their instructions. It's a personal insult to her deepest core when she has to choose to not follow her own volition. Over time, it breeds contempt inside her that she doesn't care enough to quell. A trusted advisor will become someone to eventually mock, a valued sibling or mentor will become the enemy, a burden, someone she knows better than. Tyreen hates so easily, it's like breathing.

x Being looked down on.

Tyreen is a God. There is no question, no space for disbelief. She is a deity, she is not human, she transcends that term. Ten billion people across the galaxy praise her hallowed name nightly, so the idea of some corporate scum fucking bastard acting like he's above her in a meeting room, sitting in a suit he thinks is showing off his wealth when she could literally buy the company that made it, is an insult she cannot bare. Troy has to accompany Tyreen in any face to face interaction with a sponsor. He has to do the talking, he has to control the situation. Without her twin to maintain her calm, Tyreen would tear these people to chunks of viscera. She cannot abide mockery.

x Her Father.

While Typhon genuinely believes he did his best for the twins and was trying to protect them from the horrors of the Galaxy, he has ended up becoming the focal point of every single thing Tyreen loathes. The indignity of being controlled by this tiny, weak little man. The insult of being caged on a planet he decided to enslave her on. The shame towards the overbearing control and fear he showed her as she grew up on Nekrotafeyo. She hates him. She hates him. She hates him.

x Her Brother.

Troy took everything she could have been away from her. It's that simple. He did. There is no way to defend what happened. Regardless of her consuming him in the womb, regardless of what he wanted or not, he crippled her for life. He destroyed her Siren power, he stole her future, he tore any happiness she could ever have felt away from her, and left her with nothing but hunger, and hatred, and need. He's also the only person in the universe who knows her. He's the only person who cares for her. She despise him so much, she despises him so much that it almost feels like love.

x. Herself.

Not human. Not divine. Just a Leech. Just a fucking monster.

Physical differences to canon:

- Scarring is more noticeable:

Ty was glassed in the face in their first week on Pandora. Their first week. One of their earliest attempts to approach a bandit camp, and she'd had a broken bottle swung at her before she could even open her mouth to start Troy's rehearsed speech. It was also the first time she'd husked after landing, and was in self defense while the blood blinded her. The scars across her nose are jagged, and a little more set into her cheeks in depth.

- Left hand has long term damage:

Her hand sustained severe damage in a childhood incident. The white glove she wears is more to hide what she perceives as a weakness than to protect others from her powers. Cloth does practically nothing to prevent The Leech  consuming what she touches, a lesson she learned the hard way in the trauma that lead to her fingers being crushed.

- Troy was attached to her stomach:

Tyreen began to absorb Troy early in the pregnancy before her Siren power flowed into him when they had merged enough for it to consider them the same being. He was attached shoulder to her sternum, and was born with her wrapped around his smaller body. Separating them did no long term damage to Tyreen, unlike her twin, but she has a massive puckered scar running from below her sternum to her navel. This is very cool if you ask her, and the sole reason she doesn't display it is to keep their origins secretive, not due to any form of shame.

Asks are open! Any regarding AU will prob get priority for now as I work to flesh it as we go

[filtzgood]

Artist Statement:

Recycle Tree/ Plastic crisis awareness

  Human beings and their presence have finally pushed the planet over the edge.  We are now living in a new age of Earth history, an age they call the Anthropocene.  The Holocene that was the epoch prior to what they are deeming as having its start at the Industrial Revolution, lasted 11,700 years. We have officially brought the Earth’s environment to a state that can never be brought back to original. Thus the Anthropocene is the name given to our age in Earth’s history.  

Part of the irreversible condition is the phenomenon of petroleum based plastics. 80% of ocean debris is plastic, and by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. Petroleum based plastic does not “biodegrade”, and in fact biodegradable plastic is a misnomer. Plastics have a single carbon bond that cannot be broken in order for the molecules to be consumed and converted to energy.  The material is never reduced to anything beyond a microscopic piece of what it is. Every molecule of plastic ever created is still in existence on this planet, and the smaller the particle, the more likely it is to enter the biomass of the ocean, and in turn the food chain.  We as a population are consuming micro-plastics found in fish and now in the terrestrial animals that we consume. The buildup of these inorganic molecules is causing a number of unexplained endocrine system issues in humans, livestock and fish populations.  Tumors, abnormal growth patterns, and mutations are on the rise and attributed to micro-plastic pollution levels in consumed food.  

The technological revolution and lifestyle enhancements that came with the advent of petroleum based plastic are undeniable, and our lives are fully entwined in its usage. While the production of new petroleum based plastics needs to be drastically quelled, recycling is our only hope of pulling the plastics in existence out of our environment, and to reuse what we have already created.  If we don’t take this as a serious endeavor, the health of the ocean’s biomass and conversely human beings will suffer for our conveniences.   My hope with the Recycle Tree was to remind us all that while plastics are interwoven into our daily lives, seemingly forever, the only thing we can do is be responsible consumers and RECYCLE. The city of San Francisco has gotten their recycling and composting to a point that only 20% of all of the city’s waste goes to a landfill.  We can only hope to reach such an efficient level of recycling as a community.  This needs to be the case globally to begin to slow the issues of plastic pollution.