#room Restoration

[mythigal1966]

Restoring a 150 year old Bedroom - From the Mind of Christine McConnell

[residentialpaintingmelbourne]

Roof Painting and Restoration

[syndrossi]

Restoration AU: Robb I

Previous part, Arya I, here.

x~x~x

Robb was not allowed out riding, or to join his father’s knights and men-at-arms in search of the ruffians who had kidnapped his young half-brothers and dragged them to Winterfell for ransom or worse, which meant he had sought the yard instead. Even that was a mistake. He could not thrash the targets the way he desired to, not with all the curious eyes upon him.

Show anger, and all would know that there was strife between him and his lord father, that the dishonor had caught their family unaware. And while it would be satisfying to express his fury at the depths of his father’s disloyalty, it would draw attention to his mother as well, inviting cruel whispers.

Robb lowered his sword, stepping back from the target. He exchanged it for his bow, and although the rhythm—draw, aim, release—stilled his thoughts for a short time, they wandered instead to Bran’s excitement when he had found Robb and Jon in the yard that afternoon, touting his discovery.

It seemed a lifetime ago, rather than mere hours. A part of him had known from the moment he laid eyes upon the boys, the dark-haired twin so alike Jon that it had felt like staring at his brother from across the span of five years. Jon’s own shock had been little comfort.

The rumors had not reached his mother before Robb did, after his father’s curt dismissal, and he had been faced with an impossible choice: let her learn of her husband’s betrayal through the whispers of her ladies or break the news himself as gently as he could.

I do not know for certain, he had told her, still fostering the faintest hope that there might be another explanation, but she had paled nonetheless, her attempt at masking her heartbreak to spare him all the more painful.

She loves him. She has always loved him. Robb had thought the same true of his father, and he did not know how much it would hurt to learn otherwise. That Jon’s mother had not been the tryst of a man who thought he might die in battle, but a bed he eagerly sought out the next time fate took him south for war.

Robb lowered his bow, the arrows of his quiver spent, and stared at the distant target, flickering in the torchlight. For once, he was glad that Theon was nowhere to be seen. His friend would have nothing but crude japes, and Robb was in no mood for such.

He desired answers.

His feet took him past Sansa’s room, where he had gently guided her after supper and promised her, with a kiss to the hair, that things would seem less bleak in the morning. Then past his father’s solar, where he could see the glow of light escaping from the crack beneath the door.

Hiding away, like a coward. It was not how he would ever have described his father before today, but there was no other way of putting it. If he is not begging Mother’s forgiveness, then he should be comforting the terrified children whose dishonorable birth turned them into pawns.

Robb paused outside Jon’s door, then rapped lightly with his knuckles. A few moments passed before the door opened, and it was not Jon who he found himself staring at, but rather his smaller counterpart. Willam, Robb reminded himself.

“Would you like to come in?” Willam asked, gazing at him with such raw longing that Robb found himself torn between tenderness and fresh fury.

Did Father even look in upon them since hiding them away in Jon’s chamber? A glance past him revealed no Jon. His twin sat on the bed, his gaze at Robb more wary, and telltale plates from the kitchen were stacked on the small table in the corner of the room. Their supper, taken alone to spare the family further shame today, when it was their father who should be shouldering its brunt.

His little half-brothers were innocent in this. Had they even known of their origins? They had the bearing of highborn children, but none of Jon’s quiet acceptance of his lesser standing.

“Yes,” Robb said, realizing he had not answered. He stepped into the room, quietly closing the door behind him, and found that the other child had risen to his feet, though he maintained his distance. “I—” Has Father even told them of their siblings? “I am your half-brother, Robb.”

The boys reintroduced themselves, Willam tripping over his own name. Robb wondered whether their mother had knowingly named another son after her first. Or was Jon’s name of their father’s choosing?

Now that he was in the room with them, Robb did not know what to say. His gaze kept straying to Raymar, who was as unalike his trueborn siblings as Ghost was to his littermates, as though their birth had split them between each parent.

That is what she looked like, then. The woman he traded his honor for. Pale hair, silver as the moon’s glow through the window, his eyes an unnatural violet. They both shared Jon’s slighter build, which must have come from her as well.

A foreign woman, with that kind of coloring. A courtesan, perhaps. That was the fancy name they gave their whores across the Narrow Sea, and bravos fought for the honor of bedding them. But where had his father stumbled across her?

He had been silent for too long, Robb realized. He did not know what to say to them. “Where is Jon?”

“He went to take Ghost back to the kennels.”

“Oh.” He felt almost numb, staring into the face of a strange child who looked like his brother, and another who looked like betrayal. “How are you faring? Did your captors harm you?”

There were no obvious bruises or cuts upon them, but then, his father had said that their captors had dosed them with dreamwine. The twins assured him, however, that they had been unharmed—unbound, even.

“He said that if either of us caused trouble, he would hurt the other.” It was the first Raymar had spoken since introducing himself, his expression haunted. Willam too had tensed, watching his twin with obvious upset.

I should not have asked, Robb thought, chagrined. Not when they have yet to sleep. These are questions for morning.

“Father’s men will find him,” he said, offering his best reassuring smile, but it did little to ease their distress. In fact, both seemed on the verge of tears now, and he stood helplessly. If it were either Bran or Arya, I would go to them. Comfort them.

But the circumstances of their relation held him back. They did not know him, he reminded himself. It was not the same as Father abandoning them with Jon, all of them tied fully by blood.

Jon’s return caught them all off guard, his brother quiet as his direwolf pup as he slipped back into the room. He halted in place as he marked Robb’s presence, and they stared at one another for what felt like an age. There was no hiding from Jon, or Jon from him.

What hurt was the wariness, as though his brother was expecting Robb to lash out at him, when he had always strived to intervene whenever Jon happened to draw his mother’s ire. And what cut even deeper was the way his brother’s eyes narrowed as they fell upon the twins.

Jon rushed over to them, then turned back to Robb. “What did you say to them?”

“Nothing,” he replied, unclenching his fists. “We greeted one another, and I assured them that whoever kidnapped them would face justice.”

“Is that why you came at this hour?”

“I came to see how you and our new brothers were faring,” Robb said defensively, but he knew it to be a lie when he spoke it, and by the tightening of his mouth, Jon did as well. “What did Father tell you?”

“About my dead mother?” Raymar flinched, and his twin’s hand grabbed for his, but Jon did not seem to have noticed, his gaze locked on Robb. “What business is it of yours?”

Jon did not often snap at him, and he felt himself bristle in response. “It is my mother who was dishonored by their actions.”

His brother regarded him coldly. “She was beautiful, born to a noble house of Lys, and Father swore beneath the weirwood tree that he loved her.”

The words hit like a physical blow. Robb’s fists clenched again, denial rising in his throat, hot and ugly. “Whatever love he had was for her cunt, or he would not have left every time he stuck a bastard in her belly.”

His vision whitened as Jon slammed him into the door, knocking his head back against it. He could taste blood in his mouth from where his teeth had cut into cheek, and it did not matter that he had deliberately provoked his brother, all he could feel was a betrayal that quickly soured to anger.

“I do not care how beautiful her face, but how rotten her heart,” he said, ignoring the glitter of his brother’s eyes as his grip tightened around the fistful of tunic he had grabbed. “She knew of his marriage and still enticed him into her bed. A woman can be highborn and yet a whore.”

Jon’s right hand drew back, and Robb could feel his brother quivering from the effort of refraining from punching him, so he stared back in challenge, inviting it without knowing why. Let him prove himself to be what all bastards are, said an ugly voice that sounded like his mother. But he also longed for a scrap, to throw his fury at someone if it could not be his father.

The castle itself rattled then, a rumble of what sounded like thunder resonating deep within his chest. But the night is clear, he thought in confusion. Jon took a step back from him, the tense moment broken, his expression equally confused.

He became aware then of one of the twins speaking in a foreign tongue. Valyrian, he assumed, gazing past Jon to find Willam speaking frantically as he held back his fiercely struggling brother, who was staring death at Robb even as tears streamed down his face.

It is their mother too. His anger abandoned him, taking its short-lived respite with it and leaving Robb with a fresh guilt atop the hurt that ached within him.

The castle rattled again, the thunder more distant this time. An apology danced along the tip of his tongue, but he could not force it out.

“Just go, Stark,” Jon said, releasing him. His jaw worked a moment, then he turned his back on Robb, steps quick as he closed the distance to the twins and wrapped his brothers both in a tight embrace. His true brothers.

More words caught in Robb’s mouth, some remorseful and others not. Misery rose in his throat, bitter like dandelion tea, and he swallowed it, feeling worse now, with more answers, than he had before foolishly deciding to come here.

Robb left, closing the door quietly behind him, and stood in the hall for a time, staring at the opposite wall. He could hear crying in the other room, soft and pitiable. Father’s doing, he told himself, but it rang hollow. A few minutes passed, Jon’s voice muffled but audible as he spoke to the twins, and Robb awaited another roll of thunder that never came.

Finally he left, mumbling something he could not recall to Cayn when the guardsman’s patrol crossed his path back to his bedchamber. His nerves danced with the need for action, and he desired nothing more than to court his father’s displeasure by slipping out to the stables. He could claim a horse and ride into the wolfswood—find the men in search of the twins’ kidnapper and join their efforts.

But his mother would need him, and Sansa too, so he stared at the ceiling instead and settled into a long, sleepless wait for dawn.

[thesaintofpatience]

No skeletons or constructs of any kind on the Mithraeum which leads me to wonder what kind of unholy chore wheel they're operating under. We know everyone cooks (more or less) but who is doing dishes. Who is dusting the ossuaries. How many decades of accumulated grime have to build up before Gideon, Saint of Duty, pulls on the marigolds and gets to work.

[sassydefendorflower]

As much as I want Roy and Riza to spearhead the restoration of Ishval post-canon, I want Roy to be barred from going to Ishval to do the work himself even more.

Hear me out.

There is something incredibly selfish about Roy wanting to be the one to return the Holy Land to the Ishvalen people. It makes sense for him to strive for that goal - he feels personally responsible for the destruction of Ishval, he sees its restoration as part of his path towards becoming the Führer of Amestris, he considers it to be the rightful way to ease some of the guilt weighing him down.

It is also the easy way out.

Because if you think about it, Roy being the one to do all that, is not a narrative that centers the Ishvalen people. And I think they deserve to be the driving force behind their own salvation.

There is a reason General Armstrong doesn't try to take on the Ishvalen restoration at the end of the show - and it is not just that she has no personal investment in the matter. No, if anything, she entrusts it to Major Miles. She entrusts the future of the Ishvalen people with a man who shares their past.

(her blind trust into the military state be damned)

And who does Miles choose to help him rebuild what was once lost? Scar. He chooses the feared serial killer. The Savior of Amestris. The Scarred Monk. The One Who Killed A King. The Hand of God Striking Down a Monster.

He chooses someone who suffered through the Ishvalen genocide, who was raised not only in the culture, but was an active practitioner of the most common religion of the region.

These are the people who rebuild Ishval for the future.

I think Roy would only ever do it to escape the past.

And if we're being honest, I don't think anyone in Ishval would greet him with open arms. These people might hold a great ability to forgive within their hearts, but I think many of them would consider it an insult to let the man who burned down their cities back into Ishval to become their savior.

To become the public face of the restoration of their Holy Land.

And being denied the ability to spearhead this campaign, it would hit Roy hard. Because in a way, hard labor and the arid desert air, would have felt like a just punishment. Being hollered at by the survivors of the genocide he participated in would have felt good. Getting blisters and sunburns and swallow down his own spit... pain was always a sign of hard work. Of doing the right thing.

But forcing him to stay in Central? To pull the ropes behind the scenes? To be denied this public repentance? To be kept from the most straight-forward way of repaying his sins?

The restoration of Ishval was never the end-goal, and it is just one part of a long list of things both Roy and Riza want to fix before facing a trial, but I think Roy hoped he could pay for that in blood. Cut-up knees and burned hands, dry throats and countless hours spent digging up wells.

But facing up to what he's done isn't that easy - and the people of Ishval deserve to live a life free from Roy Mustang and his damned flames.

[melveres]

letters from his Spellbinder

[0vergrowngraveyard]

obsessed with the idea of surge and kit realizing that they were created to replace the world’s biggest losers. they had such a larger than life view of the brothers, the dynamic duo, the heroes of the world, only to join the restoration and go “damn, these guys are annoying as hell”

[periodinteriors]

Theodore Lebrun, Woman in Pink Reclining on Canape, 1819, watercolor.

[asha-mage]

Here's what I'll say about Siuan for right now, since their are still a lot of unknowns floating in the air: I think her actions in this episode are largely in accord with her book characterization no matter which way the show breaks on certain details.

Siuan's central character flaw in the books, the thing that largely leads to her downfall, is her default response to most problems being to exert raw force and control. It was how she handled the Hall of the Tower which allowed opposition to coalesces around Eladia and Alviarain, it was how she handled Gawyn creating a resentment in him that would drive him to side against her during the coup, and how she forced Min to remain in the Tower against Min's wishes which was the catalyst for Eladia realizing she could strike against Siuan at all.

And it's what Siuan does in this episode when confronted with a problem she does not have another way to deal with. Moiraine is with holding information from her? Go to Cairhien herself and seize the tiller of events with her own hands. Rand is running wild, derelict in his duty? Take him captive and bring him to the Tower where at least he will be under her eye and safe from the Forsaken. Moiraine is attempting to abscond with him as a result? Cut off her avenue of escape by any means necessary, even if it means damaging her personal relationship with Moiraine, possibly forever.

And that's the other thing to keep in mind: Siuan, like Moiraine, fundamentally does not trust anyone except her partner in conspiracy. She can't. For twenty years she's been on a quest that will lead to her stilling and execution if it is ever discovered. She and Moiraine are each other's confidants and allies, their deepest and most important loves. But even in the books Moiraine is withholding information from Siuan out of a sense of greater good. The difference is that in the show Siuan becomes aware of it in the show and of course she begins to doubt and loose trust in Moiraine as a result.

In her mind she has gone almost at once from being a partner, one half of a team that trusted in and depended on each other, to being on her own against the storm. If Moiraine didn't tell her about being stilled, what else might she be holding back? And if she is stilled, then realistically, how much good can she do for their cause now? How can she keep Rand safe from himself and the Forsaken, prepare him for what's coming, when she might not live another year? And that agony- that pain that the person she trusts and loves most didn't just betray that trust but also might not be around long enough for Siuan to be mad even be mad at her- has to be put aside because the mission, the duty, is everything to Siuan, just like with Moiraine. The stakes are too high for anything else.

So she falls back on the safety net of the Tower's traditions and secret plans. Take Rand to the Tower, keep him safe, prepare him for what's coming and trust to the Light for the rest. Take away his agency for his own good and the good of the world (something it should be noted she's wistful for the ability to do in TSR when she wishes she could keep hiim from a learning a word of the Prophecies, which is the same scene where she outright admits to Min she intends to try and control him in), and bring him firmly under her thumb. And what does Moiraine do? Enlist the aid of one of the Forsaken to break Rand free and flee to Falme through a Waygate, which is at best an INSANELY risky and potentially very stupid play, and at worst tacit confirmation of her worst fear, that Moiraine has gone over to the Shadow, and everything is on the brink of being lost.

And where does that leave Siuan? Isolated and alone and with no other fallback by her same response: to keep exerting raw force, to pressing the spring down until it snaps.

[idk-bruh-20]

Irondad fic ideas #139

NWH AU where Tony's been in a coma this whole time. He still is. But the world thinks he's dead.

One day, Rhodey is in some science place (maybe SI, maybe a community college where he was giving a speech?) and he sees this kid tinkering who looks exactly like Tony Stark. The teen Tony Stark from when he first met him at MIT. Even down to the mannerisms. He goes up and has a brief conversation with this stranger, just curious. Then he leaves.

Unbeknownst to the kid, Peter, Rhodey managed to grab something for a DNA test. The kid just looked too much like his best friend. Like seeing a ghost

When they analyze the DNA, they learn that this kid is in fact Tony's biological son

Rhodey goes back to find the kid, this time bringing Happy. Peter gets to have the super fun conversation where two people who should know him but don't tell him that the person he saw as a father was his actual father, only it's too late

They convince Peter to come with them eventually. And Peter gets the shock of his entire life

Over the next little while, at Tony's bedside, Peter gets to know Morgan (who he would've seen as a sister anyway but this is insane). He also gets reacquainted with Rhodey, Happy, and Pepper, who all admittedly find him a bit sus with how much he seems to know.

But...this is Tony's kid. His son. So they let him be there, let him talk to Tony and hold his hand. 

Finally, finally, Tony wakes up.

And it turns out, being in a coma and thought dead by the entire world, including wizards, makes one exempt from certain magic

Bonus:

As he sits by Tony's bedside, Peter has to grapple with a lot of emotions. One of them is the realization that he was never actually related to Uncle Ben, which makes him feel like his uncle and aunt died for nothing

Pepper helps him through it. Even not knowing him the way she once did, she knows plenty about guilt complexes and chosen family. She assures Peter that he's still a Parker, no matter what, and that his aunt and uncle wouldn't have given him up for the world

Another thing Peter deals with is the fear of Tony waking up and not knowing him. It breaks his heart just thinking about it.

Cue THE most relieving hurt/comfort reunion ever imagined

[the-home]

[making-you-in-spore]

if you had to make a creature for every creature request you got, how many creatures would you have made?

thankfully most people seem to have gotten the idea. maybe 15 or so by now over the course of the blog's lifespan. considering i have several dozen asks in my inbox right now and have answered quite a few more, i'd say that's good rates.

one person sent an ask begging for me to make their oc, and then sent another ask a couple minutes later apologizing profusely for not reading the multiple warnings that i don't take requests

[syndrossi]

okay but consider: the would daemon assume that the mad king aerys stuff is just pure slander?

i wanna be in the room when he's sharing that opinion with rhaegar

[llitchilitchi]

some rough concept art for the throne room in Monarchy Restoration AU

[gladiatorcunt]

han solo wants what atton rand has

[vykodlak]

idek why this motel room in the hitcher (the little of it that's shown anyway) always stuck in my brain as being extremely cozy. whenever I send my characters to a motel in my daydreams I put them in some variation of this room