#seeli is somewhere off-frame

[guildwuff2]

commission for @rata-whitz of a cute lil rp scene we did, in which Gritt met a whole scratch of skritt in the cave systems beneath LA (and got his ear cuff stolen for his trouble)

[rockingbytheseaside]

✦ The Legend of a Faceless Harbinger

(Imagine Headless Horseman Capitano x reader. No, I won’t elaborate.)

✧ In an unassuming village nestled by a quaint, insignificant hamlet, you lived in a humble farmhouse. A modest living, with but a few sheep and a tightly held community. Everyone knew each other in the village, for its residents were few, fostering familiarity among its inhabitants and their whereabouts. 

The villagers liked tales of premonition and the paranormal – stories of vengeful Hilichurls, weeping Seelies, or berserk Witches who burn everything in their path. However, one of the legends was about a Faceless Knight, bloodstained and brooding, with a mighty steed supporting his towering frame. Legend has it that the Knight’s armor once shone silver and pristine, but after years of bloodshed and gruesome battles, the knight’s body shifted to that of a monster; the same ones he once swore to destroy. Now faceless, monstrous, and donning a void-like helmet - the Knight rides off into the night, galloping between the living and dead. 

✧ You, on the other hand, disregarded such gossip. If the night was scary because a headless knight reigned dominion over it, then why did you always find solace in it, when the sky is clear and the stars are shining? 

You lived by the outskirts and were content taking care of your small flock of chickens and sheep. You had your fresh bread, a small basket of eggs, and homemade dairy. In the early hours of dawn, you took care of your abode, small patches of vegetables sprouting by the sunlight. And in the late hours of dusk, you sat by the windowsill from your bedroom, gazing up at the stars above. 

Yet as you silently watched the night, a hidden figure, merging with the shadows gazed back at you. His horse neighed softly until a clawed hand patted its head. 

✧ One day, a couple of sheep wandered off from your farmhouse and went missing. The weather was cloudy and the gray clouds threatened a heavy pour if you didn't hurry and found your wandering flock. With your trusty shepherd's crook, you hurried off to run into the forest hoping you'd find them somewhere nearby.

Once you reached the wild forest, it didn't take long to spot your wandering sheep, running in the direction of their baaing. They huddled close by the bushes, grazing on the grass leisurely. You smiled in silent relief, reaching closer toward them until suddenly - you halted. Amidst the dense foliage, a figure emerged, and it dawned on you that your sheep were not simply loitering there by chance. They had been intentionally led here, and at the sight of the stranger, you tensed, clutching your trusty crook. A man on horseback drew nearer, his jet-black steed carefully moving. But the figure was even taller. Dark armor and clanking chains were not as imposing as the sight of his featureless, hollow helmet met you head-on.

It was the faceless Knight. He kept his distance, but his helmet directed straight at you, wordless and careful. With a slight incline of his head, he observed your sheep turning towards you, providing you the opportunity to safely guide your flock home. And as for you? You quivered like a lamb, petrified at the sight of a man of his stature, with only the murky depths of his helmet meeting your gaze.

Thus, you fled. Pushing your sheep hastily from the forest, you didn't look back at the mancing knight. Your heart hammered and you swiftly led your animals back to your farm, locking them in their barn and fearing for your own life. 

✧ In the upcoming days, you didn’t dare to exit your house’s safety. You were convinced that you were living your last days, however, nothing amiss occurred. Instead, things got better in your farmhouse. You don’t know why, but The animals scarcely strayed, the howls of wolves seldom pierced the night, and neither hilichurls nor bothersome slimes encroached upon your land.

You felt an air of change in your quaint farmhouse, despite your sense of alarm remaining after meeting the brooding Harbinger. 

Occasionally, at the earliest hours of dawn, when you get up, you are greeted with small flowers on the steps of the house. Sometimes it’s plucked lamp grass, and at other times it’s a wreath of valberry leaves. In a state of befuddlement, you’d blink, looking back and forth around your entrance. 

You had a secret protector, and your heart yearned to thank whoever that was. 

✧ If someone was leaving you small gifts of flora and guarding your house, it was only courteous to thank them. Therefore, you came up with a plan to leave a small assortment of items in a basket as a response. From time to time, by the footsteps of your house, you’d leave a basket with fresh apples. Sometimes, it would be a loaf of bread you baked. These signs of gratitude persisted, and in return, the gifts grew in magnitude. From small bouquets to rare artifacts and even warm pelts. 

The routine of offerings and gifts became a way of silent communication with your generous benefactor.

Until one late afternoon, you heard screaming right outside your farmhouse. You dashed out of the house and noticed that the usual basket was gone. You just had it filled with homegrown fruits and baked goods, yet it was missing entirely. When you turned your attention towards the commotion, you gasped in surprise at the sight.

The same faceless Knight, in his clad black armor, dragging a kicking peasant with a firm grip. The man was kicking and screaming in horror, his wrist already marred by the Harbinger’s grip. However, what surprised you, was that the basket was in his arms.

“Please let me go-! I didn’t know! I didn’t know to whom it belonged,” - the peasant was thrown hard onto the ground right in front of your feet, the basket and its good rolling out. 

“Lies are inexcusable. And stealing deserves its punishment.” 

The Harbinger spoke firmly, marching straight at the man. Overcoming your shock, you understood - this person stole the basket of food you left, but then the receiver who protected your farmhouse all this time is… 

You shook your head, and before the faceless entity could take a step closer to the thief, you stood with your arms out - “Wait!”

The Harbinger stopped in an instant, that faceless mask going silent as the armored hand tightly closed into a fist. The peasant was shaking behind you.

“It’s not worth it, just some homegrown food anyway. P-please, let this man go.” 

“He stole what you worked hard for. That which is not meant to be his.” 

“I know, but it is not a fair punishment to spill blood in return!”

The headless harbinger let out a low rumble, his massive form towering over you and the begging thief. After a prolonged moment of tense silence, he stated his verdict.

“You were lucky to be granted mercy. Heed my words, there won’t be a next time. Go.” 

The words were short but decisive, spoken out of pure malevolence towards the one who took your offerings that were intended for him. Crawling on his knees, the man shook and thanked you both for mercy, scurrying off the ground of your farmhouse and running away. 

✧ You kneeled by the fallen basket, picking up some of the flowers and fruits that rolled to the grassy ground. As you silently picked them up, you almost flinched when an armored hand appeared in front of you, offering you assistance to get up. When you raised your gaze - a hallow, pitch-black helmet looked back at you. 

You placed your hand delicately onto his.

“Excuse me, Mr… uh, Knight. I thank you for catching the thief and my goods. But may I ask: was it you who brought those gifts by the entrance of my house?”

He remains silent for a moment, and you couldn’t tell whether he was contemplating his answer or studying every nuance of your face up close. After a long moment, he slowly nods his head "Yes." 

A sigh of relief escaped you. Partly due to your fear of the frightening figure, but also because of your suspicion about who the unseen protector of your farmhouse was.

“Then it was you who kept my rural home safe from monsters or predators.” - you nodded, remembering how your flock of sheep was huddled close and safe even when they all got lost before. “You won’t hurt me…?”

“I could never. You have my vow.” 

His voice no longer held that firm animosity it did when he spoke to the thief. Now it was low and deep. His form helped you pick up the dropped belongings and walked you back to the farm.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, a tranquil stillness enveloped the surroundings as you dutifully trailed behind him. A novel sense of anticipation washed over you, distinct from the usual apprehension. For the Harbinger, it was not his first time remaining close to the soil of your modest abode. In fact, he always remained nearby. However, he felt immense guilt for giving you such fright. 

“...I owe you an apology. I intruded on your ground when I caught the thief. But even less honorably so, I never revealed myself formally to you. I did not wish to see you scared.”  

You listened closely, witnessing the sincerity in his movements. You stood close to the pastors, the grass rustling idly by the night breeze. His ominous figure is a stark contrast to you and your cozy dwelling.

“I understand… I do not blame you. I must also apologize for my startled demeanor. I never expected it would be you who actually helped me all this time.” 

The knight tilts his head to the side, keeping a polite hand with yours as he lets you sit on the grass. Every movement he did for you was cautionary and gentle. The two of you sat on the ground, the night sky illuminating the first stars of the night. 

“I just wish to know… Why such kindness?” - you asked at last, easing up the courage to look him straight into the hollowness of his helmet. 

The anticipated question made the Harbinger go quiet. He couldn't deny it, but he found solace in watching you work. How diligently you took care of your animals, how you watered the vegetation, how you smiled joyously when you’d return with a basket full of fresh eggs. It was a tender sight, even as the harbinger maintained his distance on the forest's periphery, secretly yearning to draw nearer to you.

He wished to tell you so much. About how he finds you to be the loveliest person in all of these lands, the most sincere and hardworking. How he enjoys gazing at you the same way you gaze at the stars. Yet now, being in your proximity, the sight of your beauty up close had rendered his thoughts useless and all he could manage was:

"Perhaps I’m utterly infatuated by you."

[the-sayuri-rin]

A guessing game:

If what Ashikai said was correct, then:

The Seelie Civilization (that the Enjou was talking about) was indeed destroyed before Zhongli was born. However, it might not have anything to do with a moon cycle.

Perhaps Celestia was from somewhere beyond Teyvat. Maybe their world was destroyed, and they wanted to find a new world to make home? Or maybe they just wanted to colonize and take over?

Maybe one of their people, that "certain traveler" visited this world and did indeed fall in love with a seelie sister who was in fact a ruler of this nation. But The people of Celestia either did not like this, or saw as a chance to take over Teyvat for themselves? Maybe the Seelie and that 'traveler' tried to defend themselves but failed and were cursed for this via the ghostly forms they have now?

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Not long after, the humans the Seelies use to look after would eventually try to build upon the rubble and would see or would be forced to see the people of Celestia as their gods. But there were some out there who would refuse, and would be left to their own devices as such, possibly because they were seen as weak 'dregs'???

Maybe the reason no one really knows about those who live in the dark sea, is because in the beginning it was forbidden? They were seen as outcast and thus shunned and cut off from the rest of the world. Meaning they would have to try and make connections with other kingdoms themselves via sending envoies to spread news of their kingdom/nation. Maybe try to convince other places to abandon the 'gods'?

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Thousands of years later, Khaenri'ah was at least in the works during that time. Maybe it was too small to be considered a kingdom/nation yet. and was still growing and making connections with other kingdoms (Enkanomiya and Sal Vindagnyr).

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Enkanomiya was destroyed when Zhongli was born and when the people Khaenri'ah were still trying to learn the truth of this world. Which Enkanomiya had books that held the answers they needed (hence someone from Khaenri'ah had tried to steal a book from there, and the 3 people who were framed for it) and the people were left, there leagues under the dark sea.

Orobashi was found by one of their people, protected them and became their god.

He learned the truth of the world, and ordered the books and information to be sealed forever before bringing the people to the surface via creating Watatsumi Island

Celestia found out he knew the truth of the world, and had him killed

Since Khaenri'ah had yet to learn the truth and there was probably some doubt they ever would, the gods let the be, but created a contract with the Archons that should the day came when the people of Khaenri'ah learned the truth, then that Civilization would meet the same fate as the people of Enkanomiya and that they could tell no one of this.

By the time of Sal Vindagnyr fell Khaenri'ah had advanced and flourished without the need of gods, people from other kingdoms, that were destroyed by the gods started flocking there. Maybe even telling their stories and sharing their hatred towards them. The people of Khaenri'ah started souring even more towards the gods.

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Perhaps this pushed them further into exploring for the truth, maybe they decided they should try and destroy the gods and Celestia. They start plotting and planning, creating war machines and abyssal creatures. They start messing with things they should not and maybe even discover a certain 'veil' that may have well been the origin of Celestia and their gods?

and when a certain black furred Kitsune visited their nation, he let something slip that was the final straw, an Khaenri'ah decided to finally make a move.

and when they did invade, Celestia was already well prepared to handled them, and despite the loss of most of the Archons, they were still able to succeed in getting rid of Khaenri'ah . and the cursed laid upon them was for daring to challenge the gods, something the people of Enkanomiya and Sal Vindagnyr (save for Ukko the scribe) did not.

[sparklyfairymira]

Prompt & Fic Updates (Updated 5/9)

Because I have a lot of fics and prompts upcoming, here is a list so you can see what's in queue and when my WIPs are set to update. Generally speaking, I will stick to this schedule as much as a I can, though it might change from time to time.

A HEART PERMANENTLY BOUND TO YOU

BELLARKECAVE

Chapter 3 (Final): 6/23/21

BETWEEN THE FIRE AND THE FLAME

CLURPHAMY

Chapter 3 (Final): 6/30/21

WAIT 'TIL I GET MY MONEY CH 1

BELLARKE/MINTY/HARPHY Chapter 3: 7/7/21 Chapter 4: 7/21/21 Chapter 5: 8/18/21 Chapter 6: 9/1/21 Chapter 7: 9/13/21

HE'S NOT THE ONLY ONE (WHO HAD A SECRET TO HIDE)

BELLARKE/MURVEN

Chapter 2: 7/14/21 Chapter 3: 8/9/21 Chapter 4: 8/25/21

YOUR HEARTBEAT NEXT TO MINE

BELLARKE

Chapter 7: 6/25/21 Updating every Friday

UPCOMING PROMPTS

See below the cut for my upcoming prompts

FIND ME IN THE DARKNESS

BELLARKE

Expected publication date: 6/26/21

Seelie Princess Clarke is set to marry Unseelie Prince Wells, her childhood friend as has been arranged since their birth, but there is nothing less in the world that she wants to do. So she decides to run from the court but somehow ends up in the Shadow Court—somewhere that no Seelie should ever be. But then she meets the King of the Shadow Court Bellamy and something is drawing her to him. Bellamy can’t believe his luck with one of his subjects shows up at his door with a Seelie Fae and not just any Seelie, it turns out, but the Seelie Princess. He thinks that he’ll be able to use her to finally have his court recognized by the other two. He wasn’t expecting her to be his soulmate but as soon as their eyes lock, he knows. And he knows that he can never let her leave him.

COLD SWEAT

ROARKE

Expected publication date: 7/3/21

Clarke is a nurse who works hella late nights in the ER and walks home. She’s attacked one night while walking home — nothing happened because a (tall, muscular) stranger happened to be nearby and pulled the guy off her. But the man in question, Roan she learns, tells her that if she’s going to walking home in the city at night she should learn how to protect herself. So she signs up for a self-defense class...and Roan ends up being the instructor. He teaches her how to defend herself, and she starts growing more confident in herself in general. Confident enough to ask him out after class one day. Let’s just say they never make it to their dinner reservation.

TIL DEATH

BELLARKE

Expected publication date: 7/10/21

Clarke falls in love with Bellamy the moment she lays eyes on him. He's smart and handsome and has a fire inside of him that she finds mesmerizing. Sure, he's always been secretive, but his secrets are a small price to pay for his love. But then she learns what those secrets are, and suddenly the price doesn't seem so small. He's not what she thought he was, and even though she loves him, she plots to take him down

JUST KEEP BREATHING

BELLARKE/MINTY/MURVEN

Expected publication date: 7/17/21

Their group consists of six. Bellamy, a convict with a thirst for revenge. Miller, a sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager. Monty, a runaway with a privileged past. Raven, a spy known as the Wraith. Clarke, a Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums. Murphy, a thief with a gift for unlikely escapes. Somehow they managed the impossible heist only to be backstabbed and Raven to be kidnapped. They get Raven back and they get their revenge but nothing ever comes for free. "We were all supposed to make it, " Monty says softly. Maybe they'd been naive but they had never questioned their survival—no matter how dicey the situation seemed. But Bellamy is dying in Clarke's arms—the only place he wants to be—and Raven is telling her that she has to accept it. Only Clarke knows that she doesn't have to. She may not have the jurda parem but it's already changed her powers. She can do this. She knows she can. She pulls on all of the power that she can and forces it into Bellamy's body as the last breath leaves his lips. Or a Six of Crows AU that picks up at the end of Crooked Kingdom with slightly different results.

REMEMBER THOSE WALLS I BUILT (WELL, BABY, THEY'RE TUMBLING DOWN)

BELLMORI

Expected publication date: 7/19/21

Emori isn't the sentimental type. When you grow up the way she did, you tend to learn to not get attached to things. When you get attached, that opens you up to loss. And she's had about all the loss she can handle. But then she meets Bellamy. He's a grad student at NYU, this hot book nerd whose hair is always a mess and who comes to her bar to do homework like some sort of weird. Says he grew up basically in a bar, and the background noise helps him focus when his apartment gets too quiet. And he's...not her type. He's got kind eyes and his hair is always a mess and he's getting a master's so he can teach history and he wants to travel the world to see all of the places he's going to teach students about in person. He wears his heart on his sleeve and makes stupid jokes and chats with everyone he sees. Meanwhile, she's got hard edges and a rough exterior no one's ever gotten close enough to even try to crack. Well, no one until Bellamy. And the closer he gets, the more she starts to think maybe the risk of opening up is worth the reward...

WELCOME TO TEMPTATION

BELLARKE/CLURPHY/ROARKE

Expected publication date: 7/24/21

Riot Night changed Clarke’s life forever. A gang war between the Grounders and the Reapers had reached a head that night. The first riot began at the abandoned amusement park where Clarke and Raven were attending an underground MMA fight. Clarke makes sure that Raven gets away but finds herself in danger only to be rescued by three extremely attractive mystery men. Three mystery men that framed her as the ringleader of Riot Night. It’s eleven months later and she is coming back to Arkadia for the first time in the eight months since she was acquitted of all charges. As she arrives at her mother’s house she discovers that the three mystery men are her new housemates and they have no intentions of leaving. Now all that she desires to revenge—no matter the cost. When she finds herself in danger it is her new housemates that vow to keep her safe. Can Clarke learn to trust Bellamy, Murphy, and Roan? Does she need to trust them to sleep with them? Because it has been a long eleven months of celibacy and they are all stupidly hot. Based on the Madison Kate series, a reverse harem enemies-to-lovers story involving lots of sex and lots of violence.

Will be added to WIP list w/ expected publication dates after the first chapter is posted.

THE AFFAIR

MEMORI

Expected Publication date: 7/31/21

Murphy is married to Clarke Griffin, a hotshot doctor who's on her way to becoming the youngest chief of surgery ever at Arkadia Memorial. But their marriage is more show than anything these days, and neither of them is in love anymore. She's constantly at work, and he's left to his own devices. That is until he meets Emori at one of Clarke's hospital galas. The affair they startup is supposed to be fun, a bit of distraction from Murphy's otherwise mundane life. But then real feelings develop, and he isn't sure how he's supposed to tell Clarke that he thinks he's found the one...and it's not her.

IT'S YOU (IT'S ALWAYS BEEN YOU)

BELLARKE

Expected publication date: August

Clarke, Princess of the Arkadian ocean, and Bellamy, Prince of the Mecha sea, were not supposed to ever meet—let alone fall in love. There were engagements to uphold, treaties to sign, and wars to win. But they do meet and they fall in love—deciding to leave it all behind. Before they can run away together their two kingdoms unite to banish the princess and the prince to separate oceans, to separate their souls, despite the sea witch's warnings. But soulmates always find a way back to one another. Can Bellamy and Clarke find each other and right a wrong from centuries ago?

Will be added to WIP list w/ expected publication dates after the first chapter is posted.

THE ANIMAL AWAKENS

LINCTAVIA

Expected publication date: August

Growing up Octavia never understood why the foxes would follow her around. It wasn't until she hit her teen years that she learned that she was a Kitsune—the Queen of the Kitsune. In a world where the supernatural is viewed as evil, she has to learn how to rule her people but also how to live in the world into which she was born. Lincoln is a dragon shifter—a warrior with one purpose: wipe out the Kitsunes. He doesn't know why their two people are at war but he has never approved. When he meets Octavia it is easy to forget that their people are enemies. Can true love overcome everything for these natural enemies?

PIECE BY PIECE

LINCTAVIA

Expected publication date: August

Octavia's father left when she was just six years old, leaving her feeling unloved. It is her big brother Bellamy that picks her up and helps her put herself back together again. He is the first man to show her that they don't always leave and that she isn't unlovable. Octavia begins modeling in her teens and her father shows up under the guise of catching up and getting to know one another—but really all he wants is money. Luckily her stepdad Marcus is there to help her put herself back together again. He's the second man to show her that they don't always leave and that she isn't unlovable. When Octavia meets actor Lincoln she is cautious, afraid to put herself out there but he wins her over. And then they're married and starting a family. When she gives birth to their daughter she vows that she will never be like her father and it is Lincoln that shows her what it truly means to be a father. Inspired by "Piece by Piece" by Kelly Clarkson

REVENGE

CLURPHY

Expected publication date: August

Clarke and Murphy grew up together and they caused a lot of trouble together in their teens. They left Arkadia as soon as they were both eighteen and set out to make lives for themselves. They turned to robbery for an easy way to get some cash, but then a job goes wrong and Clarke gets caught and Murphy just runs. She’s spent the last six years in jail and he’s never once come to see her. Now she’s out and she wants revenge. But as soon as her eyes land on him, all those old feelings come back and she can’t decide which is stronger—her love for him or her need for revenge.

NOT EVIL, JUST HURT

LINCTAVIA

Expected publication date: August

When Octavia discovered her powers to control the weather she had been excited but a little overwhelmed. She tried to teach herself how to use them since there were no sorcerers or sorceresses in her village. Unfortunately, she’d lost control and massacred her entire village—her mother and brother included. When she was found out they tried to kill her, spewing hate and telling her that she is a monster. So she became the monster that they accused her of being. Years later when she meets a soldier named Lincoln who has been injured, something happens that she never expected—the ice around her heart begins to melt. Lincoln isn’t afraid of her and he is kind to her. She doesn’t understand it but she finds herself falling hard.

CUTS DEEP DOWN THROUGH YOUR CHEST (INTO YOUR SOUL)

BROARKE

Expected publication date: September

Bellamy and Clarke have been married for five years and they're just as happy as the date they got married. They love their jobs, their dog, their friends, their life. When Clarke's childhood friend Roan begs Clarke to be his date to his mom's wedding, she and Bellamy decide what's the harm—especially with Roan willing to foot the bill and pay her for her time. Bellamy's only condition is that he goes to. Roan agrees which should be the end of it—until the couple realizes that they're falling for Roan.

CITY OF CLOUDS

BELLARKE

Expected publication date: September

Clarke found the staircase in the middle of the woods—a place she’s been a million times before and it had never been there. Something was drawing her to them and as she climbed and climbed, clouds began to appear around her. When she pushes through the door she finds herself in a whole new world. Bellamy welcomes her to the City of Clouds and explains that the only way she could have found her way there is if she was looking for an escape. Clarke doesn’t want to admit it but she was looking for an escape from the pressures of her life—her mother’s expectations and pressure to marry Finn. It was all just too much. The City of Clouds is beautiful and she’s never known a place like it. And she’s never known a man like Bellamy before. And now she’s not sure that she ever wants to go home.

HOT & COLD

BELLARKE

Expected publication date: September

Clarke, the Winter Queen, has only ever known cold and logic. Bellamy, the Summer King, has only ever known warmth and emotions. When their two realms suddenly start bleeding into one another they have to figure out how to stop it. If they happen to fall for one another in the process, who can blame them? Can he teach her how to feel? Can she teach him how to use his head and his heart?

THE CRUEL PRINCESS

BELLARKE

Expected publication date: September

Bellamy Blake was seven years old when his mother was murdered and he and his sister were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, and Bellamy desires nothing more than to belong there but many of the fey despise humans. Especially Princess Clarke, the youngest and wickedest daughter of the High Queen. To win a place at the Court, Bellamy must defy her and face the consequences. Consequences deep down he's not ready to face—like falling in love with Clarke even though he can't stand the mere sight of her. A Cruel Prince AU

FORBIDDEN

MURVEN

Expected publication date: October

The sorceress of Arkadia, Raven, has only one job—to keep Prince Murphy alive until his coronation. There have been multiple attempts against his life and it has been decided that she is best equipped to protect him. She takes him far from the palace so that she can protect him. What she wasn’t expecting was to fall into bed and then in love with him.

BORN WITH TRAGEDY IN HER BLOOD

BELLARKE

Expected publication date: October

Clarke is the beloved queen of Arkadia and when Azgeda declares war on Arkadia, she is right there beside her soldiers fighting. During a battle, she is wounded and she’s not sure that she will survive but a man rescues her and nurses her back to health. Bellamy tells her of the chaos that the world has become since she went missing—water turning to blood & crops dying. It seems that there is some kind of curse on the land. Clarke immediately tries to drag herself from bed but she can’t even stand. Eventually, he agrees to see her home so that she can right their lands. And if he’s a little bit in love with her, who can blame him?

SOULMATE AU

BELLARKE/MINTY/MURVEN

Expected publication date: October

A continuation of chapter 39 of "We are all caught in the in between (Of what's real and what's a dream?)"

CONTINUATION/EPILOGUE OF A WALKING DREAM OF LIFE AND LIGHT (HATH LEFT ME BROKEN-HEARTED)

BELLARKE

Expected publication date: October

A continuation/epilogue for my fic A waking dream of life and light (hath left me broken-hearted)

SUPERNOVA GIRL

BELLARKE

Expected publication date: October

Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century AU — Clarke grew up on the Ark with her parents and loves everything about her life in space. But after getting into trouble one too many times, her parents are sending her to spend some time on Earth with her Aunt Diyoza. To say Earth is a huge culture shock would be an understatement. But things begin to look up once she manages to make some friends, especially Bellamy, the cute boy who is fully fascinated by her life living among the stars. Everything is actually going great until Clarke discovers something that puts life on her beloved space station in jeopardy.

DARK MAGIC AU

BELLARKE

Expected publication date: November

Arkadia, once a prosperous land filled with magic is slowly crumbling beneath the darkness that spreads from the forest that borders their lands—the magic all but lost and forgotten. As the darkness spreads, Arkadians begin to sicken and die. Following his mother's death and his sister falling ill, Bellamy decides that he shall brave the darkness and destroy Wanheda. Wanheda, the Commander of Death, used to have another name—Princess Clarke of Arkadia. In order to keep her people and her lands from being overwhelmed by evil, she took it upon herself to keep the darkness at bay. Into the forest, she went and made her home in a tower far from anyone and everyone that she has ever known. For centuries she has taken the darkness into herself to save her people and it has slowly been seeping into her soul until she has forgotten her former self. Now all she knows is the darkness. Can Bellamy save Arkadia and Clarke?

WEREWOLF AU

BELLARKE

Expected publication date: November

Clarke bought a little cabin in the woods so that she could get out of the city. She just can’t do all of the people and all of the constant going anymore. Everything is going well until she gets bit by a wolf and then on the next full moon, she turns into a wolf herself. She’s scared and confused—not to mention lost—when the black wolf finds her. She immediately knows that he’s like her—a werewolf. He helps her through the night until they fall asleep under the stars. When they wake up naked, she finds out that the black wolf is a very hot guy named Bellamy who has a proposition for her. Bellamy was born a werewolf, a gene passed down by his mom. He was raised as part of the pack and Marcus, the pack leader, was training him to take over when the time came. But then another pack came and killed most of their pack. Those that they didn’t kill they took prisoner—his sister being one of them. The only reason he’s alive is that Marcus had sent him out of state to meet with another pack. He knows that the wolf that bit Clarke is in this pack because he’d been watching her when she got bit—he just hadn’t been fast enough to stop it. Bellamy tells Clarke that he can help her get revenge on the man that turned her into a werewolf as long as she helps him get his people back. She doesn’t hesitate, her thirst for revenge and blood running too deep.

MERMAID AU

LINCTAVIA

Expected Publication Date: November

Lincoln sets sail one week following his wedding to Octavia, promising to return in six months, leaving her with nothing but a paper boat. It's been two years and everyone thinks he's dead. But then rumors reach her of a man who looks likes her dead husband, swimming in the sea—with a tail instead of legs. So she steals her brother's boat and sets off to find her husband.

UNTITLED

BELLARKE/CLEXA

Expected publication date: November

Clarke finds herself in love with two people: Bellamy and Lexa. Neither of them can stand one another and it's probably at least in part due to the fact that she refuses to choose between them. Tired of the pair's fighting she tricks them both into coming over at the same time and tells them that she will not choose. If they cannot get along then they can both leave. It's either both or neither of them. Reluctantly they get to know one another and realize that maybe the other isn't so bad.

UPCOMING OTHER

TRY AND STAY OUT OF YOUR HEAD SERIES (MURVEN HOLIDATE AU SERIES)

Holidate AU. FWB. June holiday. Expected Publication Date: 6/28/21

Holidate AU. FWB. July holiday. Expected publication date: 7/12/21

Holidate AU. FWB. August holiday. Expected publication date: 8/23/21

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Witches, Chapter 22: catching up with some old friends

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

----

At the end of August, a hand-drawn - some of the graphite or charcoal or whatever it is that smears off onto Apollo’s hands when he opens the envelope - invitation arrives at the Wright Anything Agency. Addressed to Mr Justice, Ms Trucy, and Mr Wright, it cordially welcomes them over to Deauxnim Studios on Saturday. “Guess Larry finally found a place he wanted to get settled,” Phoenix says, picking up the envelope and turning it over. “He’s been bouncing around for a while.”

He passes the envelope back to Apollo, and on the back side of it, a scribble on the flap in a childish, spiky scrawl, very different than Vera’s writing, reads, V. says your new lawyer can come too, forgot about her. 

“Better not let Athena see that.” Phoenix chuckles. “She’d hate to think she’s forgettable, even to a girl she’s never met.”

Apollo and Trucy arrive first on Saturday, after grabbing ramen for lunch somewhere that isn’t Eldoon’s, leaving Apollo with a strange guilty feeling that he isn’t patronizing Salt Hell. It’s a weird thing to think. Like he’s grown attached to that place, whether he wanted to or not.

He spent the morning, before he left his apartment, arguing with himself about whether or not he needed to bring iron with him. He doesn’t want to hurt Vera by accident, but he’s wandering into an unknown household of Mr Wright’s acquaintance, and that gives him a real sense of fear. Like sure, he’s met Larry before, but the guy accidentally became a witch. Doesn’t really inspire much confidence. And Apollo can’t even ask Clay’s opinion, because he never told Clay that Vera is a changeling, and he doesn’t want to get into that. In the end, he decides that he’ll be careful, but it’s better to take precautions, and slipped the iron ring onto his finger. 

No one answers the door but Trucy tests the handle, finds it unlocked, and bounds right in. Apollo decides that he can’t really be faulted if he’s following her to keep her out of trouble, and heads in after. “Helloooo!” she calls, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Vera! Uncle Larry! We’re here for the artists’ loft grand tour!”

Apollo wouldn’t call it a loft, but the fact that it’s an artist den is obvious. On the wall right in front of them there’s a half-finished mural of a snowy landscape. To the left, canvases and poster boards spill out through a doorway, resting on the floor and propped up against the walls, depicting landscapes and fruit bowls, the Steel Samurai, a portrait of Vera with her face divided down the center as human and fae both, and one that is just splotches of blue like someone dipped a sponge and threw it. They pick their way carefully between the canvasses and enter the room, brimming with more paintings and charcoal sketches. There’s one of an orca leaping out of the water; another depicts a demon that, all considered, appears a bit like Tenma Taro would it drawn by someone who got a third-hand description. It doesn’t have arms, simply wings where its arms would be that have talons at the joint, and the drawn tongue reaches halfway down its chest, while its head lacks its weird batlike ears. But it’s definitely Tenma Taro, enough to send a shudder through him. 

A year ago, examining the paintings to find that someone he never met had been following along to every case Apollo defended, and an accompanying feeling nothing short of horror in discovering it. This time, this is - she is - a friend keeping up with what’s going on even when they haven’t spoken in months. It’s nice to know. 

Footsteps hurry down the hall. “Hey, Vera!” Trucy says, and did she say it before or after Vera actually appears in the doorway to let them know that it’s her and not Larry? “We arrive! Good to see you!”

Vera looks better than Apollo remembers last, bright-eyed and not as pale as she used to be. Written in her face, the color in her cheeks and the curve of a smile, is that she is not a scared shut-in anymore. She explains that she lives here now, got her father’s house sold to escape the trauma associated with it - well, she doesn’t say the latter clause of that statement but they all know it well enough - and Larry bought this place and she’s subletting a room from him. “Though I asked him a month ago how much it would be and how to pay him and he said he’d get back to me and hasn’t.” Vera frowns at the wall. There’s a framed photo of her and her father hanging there. “I should probably remind him.”

“God, I wish my landlord would forget to collect,” Apollo mutters.

Trucy laughs. “I think that’s Polly telling you not to remind him,” she says. 

“I’m a lawyer,” Apollo says. “I would never say that.”

The three of them stop in front of a painting of a weird-looking but familiar dog and in silence, stare at it. Loud, exuberant knocking on the door heralds Athena’s arrival. “I’m not late, am I?” she asks. “I know the rule is that you’re not late unless you get here after Mr Wright, but that’s for work and not social events, right?” Apollo shrugs. Athena thrusts her hand out toward Vera. “Hi! I’m Athena Cykes, the new lawyer at the Wright Anything Agency! Nice to meet you!”

“Uh - h-hi.” Vera hesitates a moment and then shakes her hand. “I’m Vera Misham. Nice to meet you.”

“Trucy and Apollo said you were a client of theirs - oh! Did you paint all these?”

The panic in Vera’s eyes subsides. Wondering what all they’ve told Athena about her, why she was their client or whatever else. But Athena’s asking about her artwork now, and Vera is good about talking about her art, so she waves Athena back into the room they were just in and shows her the sketch of the orca. Trucy circles around the desk at the wall, and after a minute calls over, “Hey, Vera, who’s this?” She waves a large photograph of a woman, standing in the snow, her black hair tightly twisted on top of her head, her tired lined face wearing a knowing smile. Apollo would swear she’s familiar. When Apollo goes over to the desk, he sees a few pieces of scrap paper with hasty sketches trying to copy the woman’s face, pushed to the edge and onto the floor. 

“That’s Mr Larry’s mentor,” Vera says. “Ms Elise. She’s the one who began the Deauxnim name. I wanted to paint a portrait of her, as a gift for him, but I haven’t figured her face out yet. I—”

“Is that guests I hear?”

Vera snatches the photo from Trucy and shoves it and the loose papers in between the pages of a sketchbook. Larry leans up against the doorway. “Long time no see, Trucy!”

“Uncle Larry!” She charges him and nearly knocks him over. “Yeah, it’s been practically forever! Since like, since we saw Gourdy!”

“Who’s Gourdy?” Athena asks. 

“You’ll see,” Trucy says with a grin. Apollo sighs and resolves to find some sort of excuse to miss this event this upcoming December. Clay will be in space then, and Apollo is going to use that time to sleep in and not be heckled for it. 

“Apollo, hi,” Larry says, now that he’s gotten his wind back from taking a magician to the stomach. “And Athena, hey, nice to meet you, I’ve heard all about you.” He extends a hand for her to shake by resting his elbow on Trucy’s head. “That you’re the crazy kid who helped Nick out with his first case back.”

“Did you get to meet the orca?” Vera asks. “How do you defend an orca? I followed in the news as best I could, but I still don’t really understand.”

“Well! Let me tell you.” Athena, thrilled to have someone new to regale with her tales of penguins and orcas from the aquarium, immediately launches into it. Apollo still doesn’t know how much of her telling is exaggeration. When he and Trucy had questions about the investigations, Athena was always quick to be the one to answer, and Phoenix and Pearl left her to it. Was the penguin as finicky as she said, and so freely allowed to roam the aquarium when it would be very easy to consequently steal the penguin - probably. Apollo will believe anything, when it comes to their cases and clients. 

“I’m never gonna live this one down, am I?” Phoenix appears behind them, from the entryway, and Athena and Vera both jump. 

“What, you just barge in and don’t even knock?” Larry asks. “Rude! What kind of guest are you, Nick?” Phoenix grins, and that’s the weird thing that has struck Apollo the few other times he’s seen Phoenix and Larry together. That Phoenix almost reminds him of Clay, then, now, whenever it isn’t Larry reminding him of Clay. The way they gleefully give each other shit. The strength of that many years between them. 

“You defended an orca in court, Boss,” Athena says. “You are not going to live it down.”

“You co-counseled the defense of an orca!”

Larry takes them back to the sitting room - he and Phoenix bickering about whether or not his decor and entire vibe is pretentious - and pretentious is not the word coming to mind for Apollo. Now he feels the artist loft thing, mismatched furniture and clashing decor. A polished wooden table has a lace tablecloth and six all-slightly-different wicker chairs, while the couch makes him think of the Victorian era. A candelabra with lightbulbs sits on the end table. Landscapes and watercolor illustrations hang on the walls, and in between two of them hang a deformed analogue clock that looks like that famous melty-clocks painting. There are three pedestals around the room, like what a museum would keep vases on. Two of them do have vases, one empty and one filled with some wilted flowers, and the third has a small statue, about a foot tall, that again looks like another famous painting, the distorted face of the screaming man on the bridge. 

“When’d you get back into metalworking?” Phoenix asks, eyeing the statue and then the clock.

“Oh, nah, that’s just way old stuff I had boxed up and finally had some space for,” Larry says. “Clock’s ancient, you’d been talking to me about some course you were taking where Dalí kept coming up. Other one’s a vent piece - last metalwork I did after the Thinkers.”

“Don’t tell me it’s a clock too,” Phoenix says.

Larry, halfway into the next room - from what Apollo can see, it might be a kitchen - leans back out. “Dunno, why don’t you try it and find out?”

Phoenix watches him leave and then turns back to the statue. He casually hefts it in one hand, bouncing it a little to test the weight, and then he grabs the head and twists it to the side. A scream emerges from it. Not a very convincing one, with the canned sound of being recorded on a device with not great quality, and made by someone who is trying not to disturb the neighboring apartments - but the suddenness of the sound still makes Apollo jump, and Athena and Trucy both scream in tandem with it. 

With a heavy clonk, Phoenix sets it back in its place. He sighs, but with a smile visibly threatening to break through. “Real cute,” he says to Larry, who returns with a shiny, fancy metal tray of plastic containers of store-bought cookies. Why did Apollo think that the aesthetic clash would subside. “The Scream. Absolutely hilarious.”

“Hey man, it’s an accurate representation of my mental state at the time.” Larry sets the tray down on the table and gestures to them all to sit down. “I thought about giving it to you as a representation of how you probably felt too, and then I thought that might be—”

“Poor taste, yeah,” Phoenix interrupts.

“Yeah, so I had that in a box for a decade, and honestly probably gonna put it back because imagine like, an earthquake hits in the middle of the night and it falls over and just screams.”

“You could probably have it put in a gallery as a piece of performance art, or something,” Phoenix says. “Have it set just precariously enough, and cue screaming.”

“I don’t think I understand art,” Athena says, grabbing two cookies. “I mean, I get it, but also don’t at all.”

“That’s not about the art,” Phoenix says. “That’s just Larry.”

Larry slaps Phoenix’s hand as he reaches for a cookie. “You can’t be rude to me in my own house! My own house in which I have so graciously invited you!”

“I think Vera invited us, actually,” Trucy says. Larry rolls his eyes. 

“Yes, I wanted to tell you all,” Vera says, and the silent scuffle between Phoenix and Larry ceases immediately. Trucy sets the screaming statue back in its place with a guilty look, having been about to unleash it on the unexpected audience of everyone but Apollo who wasn’t looking in her direction. “I’m going to be published!”

“Woohoo!” Trucy throws her arms around Vera’s shoulders and hugs her from behind. “Look at you go!”

Vera’s cheeks start to turn pink, and then in the center there’s a growing bluish tint. “Nice work, kiddo,” Phoenix says. “When’s the book come out?” His eyes flicker toward Larry. Had they talked about this before, that Phoenix, specifically, knew there was a book? - Or maybe he just knows Larry’s career enough to expect, of course it’s a book. 

“Um.” Vera thinks for a moment. Trucy flings herself into the chair next to Vera that she had previously abandoned. “The beginning of November. Advance copies were just sent out and we got ours last week.”

“Can we see?” Apollo asks. “Or is that trade secrets?”

Vera drums her fingers on her cheek. “I suppose we could show you. If I know where we put it?”

“Somewhere beneath five sketchbooks, probably,” Larry says. “I’ll go take a look in a bit.”

“So you write children’s books, right?” Athena asks. “That’s what Mr Wright said. Write or illustrate? And-or?”

“Vera came up with this idea, I wrote it, and she did all the illustrations,” Larry explains. 

“I kept thinking about everything you said about names, that one time, Trucy,” Vera says quietly, and though all of them can hear her, and Athena especially looks interested as the only one of them who wasn’t here before, who is shut out of this particular shared history, but even she doesn’t say anything. “So,” Vera continues, a bit louder, “I’ll be a published illustrator under the name ‘Verity Deauxnim’.”

“That’s a good name!” Trucy says brightly. “Verity Deauxnim! A real solid sounding stage name! Or whatever it is for authors. Nom de plume? That always makes me picture just like, a really bushy mustache. Get mustache glasses for your author portraits!”

“You know—” Larry begins, and Phoenix groans and places his head on the table. “Hey! Nick! Why’s your daughter more supportive than you are? It’s not a bad idea!”

“It’s a silly idea,” Phoenix says. He lifts his head. “But I’m glad to hear you’ve got that figured out, Vera. It’s not gonna lead you wrong, picking up the Deauxnim name for yourself.”

“It’s already done so much work saving Uncle Larry from the worst surname known to the world,” Trucy says.

“Yeah, was a whole real tragedy that I wouldn’t be known as ‘Larry Butz, the guy who was on trial one time for murder and did nothing else good ever’. Except like, that time I was the Steel Samurai on stage, that was pretty cool, even if I’d thought I was signing up for tech crew.”

This is the man who accidentally became a witch, isn’t it? That tracks. “What’s the book about?” Apollo asks. 

Larry ends up answering first, Vera wide-eyed startled at being asked a question while she was trying to eat. “It’s an Ugly Duckling-type story, with the vaguest amount of actual animal research.”

“How vague is vague?” Phoenix asks.

“I’m a storyteller, Nick! I can’t be getting, like, neurotic about having all real true facts in there if it’s gonna get in the way of telling a good story, you know?”

“I feel like that’s how all of our witnesses treat their testimonies,” Apollo says. Athena shrieks with laughter and drops her cookie onto the table. Phoenix is silently and pointedly conveying something to Larry with just eyebrow movements and grimaces. Larry is pointedly ignoring it. 

“Fortunately,” he says, pointedly, so that his ignoring Phoenix has looped all the way back around to Phoenix obviously having his attention, “Deauxnim picture books are not witness testimonies! And if we want to fudge it when we’re talking about ducks, that is our right!”

“Then don’t leave us hanging,” Phoenix drawls. “I’ve learned more about orcas than I ever wanted to, so what’s this about ducks, besides the ugly one?”

“I can’t believe you didn’t want to know about orcas,” Athena says. “What’s not to love about orcas?”

“There’s a kind of duck that lays its eggs in the nests of other birds, like the cuckoo bird,” Vera says. “But the baby duck is nicer than the cuckoo babies because it doesn’t, um… throw the other eggs out of the nest once it hatches.”

“Ah,” Trucy says faintly.

“That would not make a great children’s story, I don’t think,” Apollo says. The secret extra-dark Ugly Duckling tale. Maybe even, if Apollo really thinks about it, that’d be the kind of shitty story that Datz would tell them. The interloper successfully makes it in to toss aside the ones who are supposed to be there; the usurper wins. That’s the kind of shitty story they lived.

“That’s why we didn’t do cuckoos,” Vera says. “That’s why it’s the duck that - that ends up put into a family where it wouldn’t naturally belong. The actual ducks in real life realize, because that’s part of, um, how they are, and they leave right away. But that’s not exactly what the story is. We stretch it a little. Like Mr Larry said.”

It should have hit him sooner, the reason that Vera had the idea for an Ugly Duckling story - the child of a different species dropped in a nest and left there to figure it all out for herself. It makes so much sense from that perspective. The swan that doesn’t know it’s a swan and thinks itself an odd duck is a just changeling.

“So then you got to draw a lot of fluffy cute ducks?” Athena asks. “I’d have gone with penguins, myself, but I see the appeal.”

“You said you got to meet a penguin at the aquarium, right?”

“Yes, but she hated me.” Athena still sounds like she’s about to start wailing when she talks about it.

When the familiar tune of a cartoon theme song starts up, Apollo figures it’s Trucy fiddling with something else. “Is that the Steel Samurai?” Vera asks. 

“Yeah.” Phoenix pulls his phone out of his pocket. “Ringtone. Friend of mine won’t let me change it. Ah, hello, what’s up?” He doesn’t look concerned when he answers, but he starts to frown, slowly, his eyebrows creasing together, and everyone else at the table glances at each other. Phoenix turns around in his chair so that his elbows rest on the back of it, a finger pressed against his free ear to shut them out even though no one is talking. “You don’t remember? That - no, yeah, I can - yeah. I can just meet you there.” His chair scrapes on the floor when he pushes himself out from the table. Athena winces. Phoenix doesn’t move for another moment after he pulls the phone away from his ear, a blank stare fixed on it. “Sorry,” he says, finally standing and pushing the chair back in to the table. “I’ve got to go. Friend’s having an - issue.”

“What’ve They done now?” Larry asks, with such particular emphasis that even though he doesn’t name them Fair Folk or fae, they all know. 

“Oh, for once it isn’t them,” Phoenix says, much lighter than Larry did, like they could be just any group of human friends. 

“Then tell Edgey I say hi.”

“I have human friends other than Edgeworth, you dick.”

“Name three.” Larry looks very smug. 

“Gumshoe, Franziska, and - Ema. Notice I’m not including you.”

“Is this what people mean when they say ‘male bonding’?” Athena asks. “Is that what this is?”

“Something like that,” Apollo says. He thinks of Clay, again, Clay needling him this morning that almost all of Apollo’s social life is now based around his job. (Apollo can’t leave the Agency. Apollo would have one friend left.)

“Yeah, I noticed when I had to find out from Edgey that you got your badge back and were off to court for an orca! You couldn’t even give me a call for that, huh?”

“I was busy with, you know, defending and being in court.” Phoenix claps a hand down on Vera’s shoulder. “Sorry I’ve gotta run out on you like this. But it’s good to see you again, glad you’re doing well. And I can’t wait for the book, too.”

“O-oh.” The poor girl sometimes looks so shocked whenever Phoenix talks to her so casually, so supportively. Like after she ruined his career she doesn’t understand how he can be so happy about hers. Even if he did set her up with it. “Thank you.”

“I guess I’ll go look around for our advance copy,” Larry says, watching Phoenix leave. “A sneak peak for everyone who’s staying here.” Phoenix flips him off over his shoulder, without turning around. “Not in front of the children!” Larry yells, standing himself. “And Nick, yo, next time I wanna hear about your stupid court stunts from you and not Edgey.” Larry turns, disappearing from the room the other way. “You kids hang out and talk about memes or whatever kids talk about.”

“Did you hear who Daddy was talking to?” Trucy asks Athena.

“I don’t listen in on phone calls unless it’s like, a case, usually,” Athena says, which is a statement with a lot of qualifiers there. Leaving her bases open while not technically lying, so no tells for Apollo or Trucy to call her on. 

“Ugh.” Trucy slumps and her head falls back against the chair. “What good are cool powers if you can’t help me pry into my dad’s private life with them?”

Vera coughs softly, a gentle nudge to the nosy gang to, ideally, stop being so damn nosy. Trucy stands up and goes to sound the screaming statue again, startling no one because she’s snickering the whole time too. “If this weren’t so heavy I’d use it in a magic show,” she says. “Watch as the beautiful, talented magician pulls the mysterious screaming statue out of her Magic Panties!”

“Really would prefer not to,” Apollo says.

“Coward,” Trucy says. 

“How is the magic show going, Trucy?” Vera asks. “Have you made any progress on finding a venue to perform in?”

Trucy catches them all up on her latest exploits in her attempts to become a professional stage magician. She’s convinced, utterly, that while the era of magicians on tv saw its heyday decades ago, she’s going to be the one to bring it back, and without “cheating” by using her real magic. “Like if I wanted to use real magic, I’d set up a shop on the streetcorner peddling suspicious plants as having come straight from the realm of the Fair Folk themselves, and then when angry repeat customers come back, I use Mr Hat to distract them and make off with their wallets!”

“Trucy, that’s how you get arrested on theft and drug dealing charges,” Apollo says. “I don’t want to have to deal with that.”

“Oh, yeah,” Trucy says. “I guess selling random plants would be suspicious. Someone at my school tried to sell kale pretending it was weed, once.”

“Sometimes I get sad that I missed out on all those stupid weird high school experiences that people get to have,” Athena says. “I mean, sure, I get weird court stories, and I don’t regret the path I’ve taken at all! But sometimes I just feel - I don’t know, something, about missing out on those regular growing-up experiences.”

Apollo opens his mouth to say that there’s really nothing Athena missed, because grade school and secondary school sucked, and everyone’s “funny high school stories” are just them repressing the rest of it that sucked, but Vera speaks first and says, “I do too, actually.”

“Oh?” Athena asks. She probably figured there was something more going on in Vera’s story when they mentioned that she’s a former client of Apollo’s, but being a nineteen-year-old professional is Athena’s normal. Though there’s higher odds of it in artistic fields than law, probably.

“I was homeschooled,” Vera says. “By my father. I… I didn’t really go out much.”

Athena nods sympathetically. She sits with her chin resting in her palm for a while, as Trucy spins a few more stories of what’s happened at school lately - repeatedly assuring Apollo that she and Jinxie stay far to the sidelines of it - looking at Vera. After a few minutes of this, Vera seems to notice, casting a quizzical glance at Athena. “Something about you reminds me of a friend I had when I was little, before I moved away,” Athena explains. “I can’t put my finger on it.”

“It wouldn’t have been me,” Vera says. “I didn’t have any friends when I was little.”

“Oh, that’s not what I meant,” Athena says. “I had only the one friend back then - I was a real shut-in, actually, myself. Her name’s Juniper. She was a real quiet, sensitive type, didn’t have any other friends like me, didn’t go out much at all. Not really an artist, other than a couple years ago she said that she’d taken up knitting, but there’s just - a certain je ne sais quoi.”

“Oh,” Vera says. She starts picking at her nails, which now appear to be whiter and pointier than they were before. Another slip, from wondering, perhaps, if the similarity Athena sees is just in personality, or something she doesn’t realize she’s picked up on. Do the inner voices of human and fae sound different? Is that something Athena can notice - something she even knows she notices?

“Found it!” Larry reenters the room, waving the book around a little too much for Apollo to get a good look at the cover yet. “It was on the unused sketchbook shelf.”

Vera nods in understanding. Athena doesn’t follow so easily. “You have a shelf full of unused sketchbooks? How many do you need at one time?”

“Different kinds of paper work better with different materials,” Vera explains. “So when there’s a sale, we stock up.”

“Part of being a writer is having a lot of cool notebooks that you never actually plan on using,” Larry says, which is coming close to almost offering an explanation, but a much worse one than Vera’s. He sits back down at the table with them. “So doing traditional art is also a lot like that, except I do eventually use the sketchbooks. Mostly.”

“Oh, so it’s like how Mr Wright never uses all the law books we have in the office, right?” Athena asks. 

Trucy takes the book from Larry and drags her chair around the table to squish herself in between Apollo and Athena, so they can all read from the same angle. Vera is chewing on her nails now, watching them with apprehension for any reaction, though they’ve barely even considered the cover yet. “That’s exactly what it’s like, I think,” Trucy says.

-

The lights in the office are off, though the door to the back room is open, and Phoenix always closes that one before he leaves. Though, he figures, if she’s gotten here before him, it’s not like she would actually have need to turn the lights on. That’s the thing about being blind - the dark isn’t any different than the way it usually is. 

He finds Thalassa sitting next to his desk, leaning up against the side with her knees pulled up to her chest and her head rested against them. Phoenix scuffs his feet noisily across the carpet and her head turns, just slightly, while keeping her face buried. She knows he’s there and doesn’t want to acknowledge him. He lowers himself to the floor across from her and rests his back against Apollo’s desk, and he waits in the dim light that Mia has only partially switched on. 

“I almost forgot.” Thalassa raises her head, and because Phoenix doesn’t have his magatama on his person - he left it in his desk, next to her soul - she looks perfect, statuesque and glamorous, not a wrinkle or hair out of place. Perfect enough that she’s wholly unnatural, armored as she is in glamour to become something cold and stony. “I almost forgot everything.” Her hands, clutched tightly in her lap, unfold from around her mitamah, deep blue like a twilight sky. “I left myself a memo that should I find myself slipping, I was to call you for help - but I thought it was just that, slipping somewhat, and the most I would forget was your office address or phone number, not why it even was that you were the one who could help me at all.”

“And it wasn’t,” Phoenix says. 

She nods. “It was everything. About you, about my children, about everything from when I came to this office after the trial. And then everything before I was shot. I was left again with that darkness, and Borginia, and the two trials here.” The duration between losing her life, and finding her soul. 

“Do you think, because of the length of time you’ve not been around it?” Phoenix asks. “Or perhaps distance - but you’ve stayed in LA this whole time, right?”

She regards him for several second; blind though he knows she is, her Sight remains, and with that she can pinpoint his own Sighted eyes. Just hovering ominously above a necklace-shaped noose. A bit weird, no doubt, and Phoenix doesn’t have to doubt because Godot told him it was weird in a stronger term than weird. (Speaking of weird, there’s something thematically to contemplate that magic gone wrong, the fae crossed, so often deprives humans of their eyes, even when they are left with Sight. Ema would tell him that two isn’t a large enough sample size to draw any actual conclusions, scientifically, but for his purposes, Phoenix is going to ahead anyway.)

“Not quite,” she admits. “I did return to Borginia for a short time. I wondered, as I did, if I could uncover some connection or reason as to why it was there I was sent following my death.” Her tone is so casual, so calm, that it’s uncomfortable. This huge blank in her past, why she was there at all, and she speaks of it like it’s no concern to her. “And more than that, there were some last affairs of Lamiroir’s to put in order - Lamiroir, the duo, Machi and I, I mean. He can never return to Borginia, and so there is nothing more there for me.”

“Shit, yeah, the smuggling charges, that’s…” Machi, fifteen years old, functionally exiled from his homeland, sitting in jail knowing he won’t even have a foundation to build off of when he gets out, because Borginia’s draconian cocoon-smuggling laws are a sword over his head for the rest of his days. “I hope they didn’t give you any trouble over it.”

“Thankfully, they seemed satisfied that I truly had no part in what Machi and Daryan did,” she answers. “Or - considering that the country has been in an uproar since last year, with a very long debate about what we owe the rest of the world when something so dangerous could also save lives - perhaps the customs officers were very tired of talking about cocoons.” She smiles faintly. “Perhaps Borginia will have its own legal reforms, as you are striving for here.”

Nothing like a high-profile celebrity case to catch the public’s eye, if the lawyer on defense doesn’t fuck it all up.

“So it could have been the distance that you traveled that caused this problem,” Phoenix says. “Or the combination of time and distance, or just time.” And with magic, nothing ever easy. “But either of those could be dealt with,” he adds. “You could drop by the office more to - to refresh your memory. Could say hi to the kids, too.”

He means - or, if she had asked, he would have said he meant - she could say hello as Lamiroir. The kids helped her out by defending Machi, and they still, quite regularly, listen to her music. (The only place where their musical tastes converge, really.) But she decides what he means without asking, and with a curl of her lip, hiking her shoulders up, she says, “I will not reenter my children’s lives while there is a chance that I will only cause them further grief.”

She reaches up and runs her hand up along the desk, finding its edge to hold on to and pull herself up to her feet. For a moment Phoenix fears that she will leave the conversation on that note and walk out, but she seats herself delicately on his desk, her hands primly folded in her lap and one leg crossed over the other at the knee. As classically poised as she ever is, and Phoenix is glad she’s decided to stick around. Maybe Mia would stop her, but Phoenix knows he wouldn’t have gotten on his feet in time. Why did his bones stop being able to take any kind of pressure as soon as he hit thirty? Why do humans live at all; merely to suffer back pain?

But he doesn’t really like carrying on this conversation with Thalassa looking down on him, either, and with a groan he drags himself upright and sinks into Athena’s chair. “Perhaps placing my soul back in the hollow it was carved out of will simply drop me down into the grave I so narrowly escaped all those years ago,” she continues bitterly. “Or perhaps one day my memory will have regressed to the point that I will only be Lamiroir the amnesiac even while I sit with my soul held in my hands.”

“But we don’t really even know that will happen,” Phoenix says. “I very much doubt that will happen.”

“Do you,” she says curtly. “Pray tell, how? Even I do not know - could there have been some other spell cast by Magnifi to keep me alive, or was my soul’s separation all that was necessary? Can you tell me that? Can your friends know unless they have bought the souls of some unlucky damned humans and then watched them die, as an experiment?”

Pearl is the one researching how to set this right. Neither she, Maya, nor Iris knew when he first asked, but Phoenix isn’t the type to give up on someone, and Pearl has a vested interest in becoming as powerful as she possibly can to support Maya, so she won’t be giving up, either. As far as Phoenix knows, anyway, there have been no souls experimentally bartered about. And Pearl had agreed that if anyone was likely to know the nuances of these particular magics and how to help her, it would be them, that faraway hidden place that the Winter fae branched from thousands of years ago. She and Maya just - couldn’t divine where in the world that is, that one final Court they know nothing about, know no one who has ever been.

No one besides Thalassa.

“Fine,” he says. “Yes, we’re still trying to figure it out - yes, we don’t know that it won’t, but we don’t know that it will, either. And say, for argument’s sake” - because that’s what lawyers do, argue, and a smile twitches onto her lips - “that you were actually to die or have your memory wither away. That you think that may happen. Shouldn’t you meet your children now, tell them the truth, while you can? They deserve to know, at the very least, that they’re siblings.”

Her smile vanishes; her brows furrow. “Then if I am dead or in essence lost, you of course may tell them.”

Of course, she says, after she has not made that obvious. It would not have truly shocked him if she’s instead said that she would bury her childrens’ relationship with her. “And when they ask how I found out and how long I’ve known? Why I hid it for that long? Do you think they won’t hate me if they know that I knew you, and kept the chance for them to ever meet their mother from them? It’s not like I can lie to them about anything!” There’s nothing satisfying about making a point that shuts her up. Both sides of this argument are the the losing ones. “Do you think that either of them would simply not care about what happens to their mother?” 

Trucy is hurting, daily, ever since she learned the truth of her grandfather’s magic; she doesn’t hide it with a smile at home. She wants to be a stage magician because that’s the kind of magic that will only make people happy, will never hurt anyone. And Apollo’s never talked to Phoenix about it, but Trucy informs him that there were several foster homes in the picture, none ever stayed in the picture, and that Apollo always changes the subject (“Conspicuously,” she says, over dinner, no idea that she’s talking about her half-brother, “changes the subject. Polly’s really bad at lying.”) if she asks him about family.

“I do not know,” she says. “You are the one who knows them—”

“And I know they would care! That they’d want to know you!”

Thalassa goes quiet. She presses her fist against her mouth and closes her eyes, inhaling loudly and exhaling even louder. “This is precisely the trouble, that you are the one who knows them.” She lowers her hand, curls it tight around her other hand and her mitamah. “You, you reckless, stubborn, fool of a man! What may I expect from you next as you think you may - go about trying to set this right? To save me - do I wait for you to bargain away your own soul to your fae friends, so that they may better understand, because their help you ask of them has a price? Or do I let you search for the Summer Court and their reserves of knowledge - so that you may die there, as Jove did, seeking something from them that they will never offer you?”

“What was Jove looking for?” Phoenix asks. It’s a new piece of an older story, that at the end of last year (one of the few times they communicated between October and now) he’d asked for clarification on two points. First, if she knew where the Summer Court was, and when she shut him down she preempted his second and third questions, too: no, she would absolutely not tell him where the Summer Court is, and yes, Jove had died there. She hadn’t then said that he was looking for something. 

A sharp, searing pain bursts through his chest, launching his heart up into his throat where it pounds with the staccato rap of anxiety. It echoes in his head the same way, thumping at the forefront of his skull, not quite painful but nonetheless a weight all the way down behind his eyes, settling in with conflicted feelings; exhaustion wants them to close and burning wants them to leak. He wants to run, he wants to hide, there’s no fight in his instincts, only flight and freeze, and a powerful cold seeps down his skin, from across his shoulders down his arms. Shuddering, he crosses his arms together tightly, as though the gesture will form a physical barrier that will spare him from the ice in Thalassa’s eyes.

It’s her, he realizes, belatedly. It’s just glamour, just manipulated perception. Just, hell of a word to use when she’s decided that rather than project her stony detachment, beauty that refuses to show an emotion behind it, she’ll put the fear of god in him instead. Fear of her. “You’d rather I not ask that question,” he says. 

“Forgive me, I did not mean to be so emotional,” she says, and that would, genuinely, be comical. Her face had not changed at all, not a quiver at the corner of her mouth or between her brow. The only sign of her emotionality is what she made Phoenix feel. She squeezes her eyes shut, pressing her hands together in front of her mouth, taking a few silent seconds to recenter herself. The pressure in Phoenix’s chest loosens. She’d probably understand if he went to grab the magatama, stop her from doing this to him again. “But understand this, in everything of yourself that you risk for my sake, every time you dig for something new and dangerous - my children know you.” Implying that he’d have something else to want to research in the Summer Court, were she to say more. She’s not that good at deterring curiosity. “It would be much more painful to them if they were to lose you, than if I were to wither away.” 

Implied: the cynical weighing of lives to determine which one of them it’s better to save. Implied: we can’t both come through this in one piece. It’s the calculations that Rimes and Prosecutor Blackquill made and tried to toss on Phoenix: Sasha or the orca, you can’t save them both. 

And how, again, did that trial work out?

“Fortunately,” Phoenix says, “it’s far from guaranteed that those are our only two options. In fact, I’d say that it’s very unlikely.”

“You could have been a Gramarye,” Thalassa says. “Because there is one thing besides magic that the men of this name are skilled at, and that is pulling unearned confidence out of their asses.”

“Ah,” Phoenix says, with the vague sensation of being smacked in the face. “We could call it optimism. That might be nice.”

“Of course,” she says, not sarcastic but instead sounding pitying, and that might be worse. “I admire the faith that you hold, truly, I do.” Which is why she just called it overconfidence, no doubt. “But this way you stick your neck out for others means that it is your neck on the line.” She touches her fingertips to the base of her neck, her blue, blue eyes fixed on one of the few aspects of him that she can see. Funny, that; she doesn’t know what color his eyes are beneath the Sight or the way his hair refuses any and all attempts to flatten it or the shape of his face, but she knows the worst moments of his life, his greatest enemies, secrets that he never intends to share. On the other side, to balance their scales, he knew her before she remembered her. 

“I fear where it ends,” she says finally. “Because you and I are not lucky people, darling.”

Both so unlucky that it almost doubles around - that it’s frankly a miracle they’re alive. “Yeah,” he says. “But you don’t know me at all if you think I’m just going to give up on someone.”

[glorious-spoon]

A Golden Kiss

For a twitter prompt that asked for Clizzy and accidental marriage.

On AO3

She wakes in a bed of flowers to the sound of quiet snoring somewhere to her left. For a while, Izzy just drifts in that peaceful liminal space, her body warm and loose and suffused with a bone-deep contentment. The light is filtered in dimly, the soft smell of incense, bells in the distance. She’s naked, she realizes eventually, but that doesn’t seem like cause for concern. The flower petals are soft beneath her, and while there’s no blanket, the air is warm.

It doesn’t seem like cause for concern, that is, until she finally opens her eyes and gets a look at her softly snoring bedmate.

Clary isn’t actually naked, but the light blue boy shorts that are all she’s wearing don’t leave much to the imagination, either. Her hair is a loose tangle, half over her face and moving softly with her snores, and Izzy has the distracted, ridiculous thought that it’s going to take her an hour to get all the knots out now. Her bare shoulders are dusted with freckles, but the skin is paler lower down—

Izzy flops onto her back and puts both her hands over her face. Fuck. Oh, fuck.

Unfortunately, the motion must have jarred Clary awake. She makes a soft snuffling noise, wrinkles her nose (adorably), then opens her eyes. For a moment, her expression is soft and content. She blinks slowly at Izzy, a sleepy smile curling the corners of her mouth.

Then her eyes go suddenly wide. “Oh. Oh, my god.”

Izzy winces. “Good morning.”

“Oh my god,” Clary says again. She looks down at herself, then at Izzy, and then blushes a bright and painful-looking shade of red. “Did we—?”

“I don’t remember,” Izzy admits. She squeezes her eyes shut, partly to concentrate, mostly so she isn’t tempted to look at any part of Clary that she really shouldn’t be looking at right now. It’s all just a confused impression after the festivities got started. Laughter and a crackling fire, the sharp, honey-sweet taste of Seelie wine on her tongue, dancing with Clary, hand in hand and laughing wildly, the firelight turning Clary’s red hair into a ribbon of flame—

“I remember dancing with you?” Clary says cautiously.

“Me too.”

“And then…”

--holding Clary’s hand, a smiling Seelie woman she didn’t know looping a length of red silk around their wrists--oh fuck.

She lifts her wrist, and, sure enough, there’s still a length of ribbon wound around it.

Before she can even begin to process what that means, there’s a soft rap at the door frame. Clary yelps and dives deeper into the bed, hauling piles of flowers over herself, and the curtain moves aside to let in--oh, great. Meliorn. She really should have recognized this particular Seelie cottage, although he’s redecorated recently.

He’s wearing an expression that looks entirely too amused when he pauses just inside the door, although at least he keeps his eyes on Izzy’s face. She folds her arms and glares at him but doesn’t bother to try to cover herself. He’s seen it all anyway, and at this point scrambling would be more undignified than brazening it out. “Get out.”

“Oh, is that any way to greet an old friend?” He grins sharply. “Especially since you are in my bed. I just wanted to congratulate you on your nuptials, anyway.”

Under the pile of flowers, Clary makes an appalled-sounding noise. It makes something in Izzy’s chest clench a little, painfully, but that’s not the main concern right now. “I mean it, Meliorn. Unless you’re here to tell us where our clothes are, go away.”

“Still out at the dancing glade, I expect,” he says. “Or scattered down the path, anyway. You were both…” he trails off suggestively. “Extremely eager to celebrate. Don’t give me that look. Your brothers tried to dissuade you from going through with the ceremony, but you were very insistent.”

“I notice you didn’t say that you tried.”

Meliorn shrugs, graceful and unrepentant. “As I said, you were very insistent.”

“Get out,” she tells him again, and he laughs and tosses a pair of silky robes that he produced out of nowhere obvious in her lap.

“Call it a belated wedding gift,” he says, and takes himself out before she can throw something at him.

She waits until she’s sure he’s gone before flopping back against the bed with a sigh. “You can come out now.”

Clary peeks out from under the pile of flowers. A lily is caught in the red tangle of her hair, spilling pollen across her cheek, and she looks ridiculous and so beautiful that Izzy can barely bring herself to look at her.

“Here,” she says, holding out one of the robes. Clary takes it and pulls it on; it gapes loosely when she belts it, showing her delicate collarbones and a creamy expanse of skin beneath. She tugs at the flower in her hair and only manages to succeed in getting it more tangled. Izzy yanks her own robe on, something aching in her throat, and reaches out. “Just let me—”

She’s half-expecting Clary to duck away from her, but she doesn’t. She holds herself very still as Izzy tugs the flower carefully loose from her hair and sets it aside, smoothing the tangles out with her fingers. Her hazel eyes are wide; without their usual coating of mascara, her eyelashes appear nearly translucent. She barely seems to be breathing. It would be so easy just to lean in those extra few inches and kiss her.

Izzy clears her throat loudly and sits back instead. “There. Good as new. Although it’s going to take you forever to get the tangles out. You should have braided it last night.”

A slight smile tilts Clary’s mouth. “Pretty sure that was the last thing on my mind last night.”

“Yeah,” Izzy breathes. And then, “I am so sorry.”

“What for?”

“All--this.” She waves her hands vaguely at Meliorn’s lovely sunlit cottage, the wedding bed covered in drifts of flowers, the red ribbon still twined around both of their wrists.

“Nuptials, huh?” Clary says.

Izzy buries her face in her hands. “We never should have gotten into the Seelie wine.”

“That last bottle was probably a bad idea,” Clary agrees thoughtfully. She sounds--less upset than Izzy was expecting. Amused, almost. That’s good. That’s a good thing. Izzy has had way more than her fair share of ill-considered hookups with people she has to work with, and if Clary is willing to have a sense of humor about it, that’ll make things easier.

If it makes her heart feel like it’s trying to turn inside-out, well, that’s not exactly new. She’s pretty damn used to feeling like that around Clary. “Yeah.”

“Well,” Clary says eventually. “Maybe it’s not legally binding?”

Izzy groans into her hands, because that was something she hadn’t even thought about. Actually, now that she is thinking about it, she’s surprised that Alec hasn’t left her a stack of aggravated fire messages already. “Alec just finalized the alliance with the new Queen last week. It’s legally binding.”

“Huh,” Clary says. “Well. That complicates things.”

“Yeah.” She takes a shaky breath, then lets it out into the small dark space cupped between her palms. “I’m so sorry. I should have known better.”

There’s a soft sigh, and then Clary’s warm hands wrap around her wrists and tug them gently down. Izzy lifts her face to look at her, and she says, “I don’t think this one is all on you, Iz.”

“Yeah, but I’m the one who wants—” she snaps her mouth shut, about five seconds too late. Damn it. Damn it. “Never mind.”

“What?” Clary says softly. She sounds--stunned, actually. “Izzy, what did you say?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Izzy says desperately, “we can get it annulled, it’s not a big—”

Clary kisses her.

It’s quick and hard, misaimed, and she pulls back almost as soon as she does it, eyes huge. Izzy stares back at her, and the silence between them seems to stretch to a brittle point before she can finally make herself whisper, “Why did you do that?”

“Because I—” Clary stops, swallows visibly, then says, all in a rush, “because I’ve been wanting to for a while, and I must have last night but I don’t remember it, and if you want--you don’t have to, it’s a lot, and obviously we need to get this annulled, this is, like, marriage, we can’t do that, but if you wanted, we could—” she breaks off again, takes a shuddering breath, then says, “we could go out sometime? Like a date, I mean.”

Izzy breathes out a laugh that sounds more like a sob. “Yeah,” she manages. “I would love to go on a date with you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really,” Izzy says, and there’s a wild kind of joy rising up inside her. “You don’t think I’d marry just anyone, do you?”

“I mean, I don’t know,” Clary says, “you married me,” and Izzy has to reach out, to cup her cheeks between her palms and pull her back in for another kiss. A better kiss this time, slow and soft, Clary’s lips parting against hers, and there’s a lick of fire down her spine, a hint of sense-memory that she can’t quite grasp—

--pressing Clary down onto the bed, the smooth slide of her skin—

--and Clary shoves her onto her back suddenly, swings a leg over her hips, straddling her. Izzy laughs out loud, something fizzy and bright sparking through her. “I thought you wanted to take it slow.”

“I never said that,” Clary says, leaning down to kiss her again, and Izzy slides her hands into the loose silk of her hair as Clary pulls back and adds, “But we can if you want to.”

“I never said that,” Izzy says, and tugs her back down.

[hiddlesgirl]

SH 314: A Kiss From a Rose

This week’s episode was definitely an improvement on last week, although it is not quite as good as 311 and 312. The flow felt better, there were a few great scenes and we are seeing the real beginnings of some major plotlines appearing. However, there was one major issue I had which pertains to the Maia and Jordan scenes; and I will be discussing it. I loved protective Alec and Magnus is making my heart ache; the Clace date was adorable and Jonathan is creepy but that’s no surprise to anyone.

The fact that Jonathan had a Seelie glamoured as Clary is several levels of creepy, but I found it really interesting that his perception of her is virginal. We know that Clary is not a virgin; we know that she had sex with Jace in 313 but I’m almost 100% sure that she and Simon had sex while they were dating in 2A and she may have even lost her virginity before that; we can’t know for sure. But the fact that Jonathan sees her as pure and untouched is rather fascinating; he is clearly putting her on some sort of pedestal, seeing her as this pure angel who can save and redeem him.

I really did not like that Maia was trapped in the same storage room that Luke locked her in, in 209; we know how terrified she is of being trapped in small spaces and I kinda hate that they did that too her again. Surely there was another way out, I mean the back door was right there which leads into a dock full of storage containers which while not great they would have been a little bigger and wouldn’t have brought back those memories from 209.

My heart really goes out to Maia because her phobia is clearly very present and distressing for her; I think that portraying phobias this way is good because it shows the reality of it and also brings panic attacks into the conversations Shadowhunters is often so good at starting. I liked that Jordan stayed calm and helped her through her panic attack, keeping her calm in a situation that causes her great distress.

I thought that the Clace morning scene was very sweet, they don’t often have these moments just to be with each other and it’s great that they are getting that now. Clary is clearly concerned about Jonathan and their bond, the message on her arm has disturbed her and has once again reaffirmed that no matter how hard she tries to forget or ignore Jonathan, he isn’t going anywhere.

It’s a little strange to see Jace so insecure and vulnerable, but in a good way; he hardly ever really opens up, especially romantically. To see him be vulnerable with Clary shows how far he has come since season 1 and how much her loves her to let her in, to let her know how important she is.

Izzy is determined to get to the bottom of what is happening at the Gard, even more so after Greenlaw’s death; she knows that it must be important if the Clave are willing to kill their own to keep their secret. Since season 1 she has loudly advocated for the rights and against the bad treatment of Downworlders and I love seeing that side of her again. Also, I am loving that she has her own, very important, storyline which is extremely relevant; she has a strong moral compass and she is not going to let fear for her own well being get in the way of doing what’s right. I am very excited to see where this storyline goes.

In case you haven’t read my 311 review, my loose theory at the moment is that they are somehow trying to purify the demon blood in Downworlders as a way to get rid of them because they know they cannot just keep killing them without backlash from the younger generations. By purifying the demon blood they would presumably just become mundanes, therefore the Clave can eradicate Downworlders without committing mass murders. This theory started because a while ago I heard theories and rumours that Luke may be becoming a Shadowhunters again (I think this started because there was a picture of Isaiah on set with runes applied, the crew said it was just a bit of fun but who knows); paired with the footage of Luke from the Freeform trailer in one frame of which he has the same glowing veins and eyes.

We learn that Lorenzo has forbidden all warlocks in New York from helping Magnus (which is so freaking despicable); I did see a few tweets wondering why Magnus didn’t contact one of his warlock friends from another county to help him. My opinion is that he didn’t because that warlock would have to travel to New York to help him (NY warlocks are not allowed to help him in anyway which would presumably include creating him a portal to someone who would help him) and in doing so would be in Lorenzo’s territory, and therefore (presumably) have to abide by his rules. Even those who come from somewhere else have to respect and obey the local High Warlock; so Magnus cannot portal to help and help would have to abide by Lorenzo’s rules if they came to him.

I cannot stand Lorenzo, he is revelling in Magnus’ situation and the pain it’s causing him; and is loving being able to hold power over him by making sure that Magnus would have to come to him for help. I hate that Magnus feels so lost and desperate that he is willing to ask Lorenzo for help, but I also understand it; you can see how severely losing his magic has affected him, he feels stranded and hates not being able to help people. Unfortunately, we all know that this isn’t going to end well as Lorenzo warns; and I am terrified. The thing is that this isn’t Magnus’ true magic it is a supply of Lorenzo’s, so he is still mortal and has a magic that is not his own. His body is going to start rejecting it and is unable to sustain the power of it, especially because it is not the magic he was born with.

Even though I was a little annoyed that Maia’s happiest memory was of Jordan I can understand why, in that moment obviously her memories that involve him would be at the forefront plus it might not be just because it was Jordan, but to have someone to rely on who will come to help you when you call.

I really like that Jace took Clary ice skating because it was something she used to do with her mum, to help Clary relive those memories and create new ones. The tone of the scene was very sweet, tender and joyful; I love seeing them having fun with each other and being able to enjoy something mundane together. Also, Kat actually learned to ice skate for this scene and I am in even more awe of her because she looks very at ease; plus, Dom can actually ice skate and had to pretend he couldn’t, it can sometimes be difficult to pretend to not know how to do something because your body automatically wants to do it from muscle memory.

When Jonathan turned into Jace I was literally screaming ‘no’ at the TV because you know that it is not going to end well, especially knowing the very skewed way he sees love and that he has kissed Clary in the past while glamoured.

I absolutely loved the looks of confusion on both Alec and Underhill’s faces when Magnus’ comes in and is using magic to sort through the documents; I was thinking that this was when Magnus and Underhill were going to meet but unfortunately not. But it is coming next week (if they haven’t cut it), hopefully we will finally learn Underhill’s first name and I am so hoping it goes really well. I also love Magnus’ look to Alec to make sure he is watching and looks appropriately shocked.

I love that Harry is keeping consistency with Magnus’ tendency to just throw things on the floor when he doesn’t need them or something else catches his attention. He is clearly trying to avoid telling Alec the full truth about how he got magic and what the consequences of it are, he feels so happy to have it back and knows that Alec would worry if he knew the details so has decided to not tell him right now so they can both enjoy the moment.

Alec knows that something is wrong and wants to know why Lorenzo was willing to help Magnus; he doesn’t trust Lorenzo and wants to be able to support Magnus. He knows that Lorenzo wouldn’t do something for Magnus’ without asking for something in return and he is worried about what that might be. Plus, surely he recognises that it isn’t Magnus’ true magic from the colour and is already scared about what might happen to Magnus if the situation goes badly.

I like that Clary is being honest with Jace about what happened, she knows that nothing good comes from keeping secrets and that he would want to know, to help and be there for her. She is confused with Jace’s replies of Jonathan being crazy about her and kidnapping her out of love, she is definitely put off by this but she doesn’t click.

Jonathan definitely looks angry, annoyed, put out? I can’t quite describe the exact emotion but he definitely is not happy to hear the implication that Clary and Jace have had sex, I’m not sure if this is some form of jealousy or if it is just because it is shattering his pure visage of her. I liked the scene and Dom does a really great job of acting as Jonathan, but you feel a bit annoyed that Clary didn’t get more of a sense that something isn’t right because Jace’s whole demeanour is off and she is smarter than falling for the thinly veiled deceit.

I really did not like that Jordan kept trying to talk about what he did to Maia, by turning her and abandoning her, despite the fact that she tells him twice (in slightly different ways) to not talk about it right now. He just carries on and it’s not even about how she feels, it’s about his feelings and self pity “I’ll never forgive myself”, instead of making the conversation about Maia, acknowledging that he wronged her and all her feelings about that are valid, once again it is about his need for forgiveness. The whole scene feels so Jordan orientated, getting him his redemption before he might die and I hate that because Maia is the person who was wronged.

Then it gets worse when she says “I forgive you”, I hated that because she is saying that because she is scared he is dying and that is the only reason. It has only been a week since he talked to her about what was going on with him back then and suddenly she is ready to forgive him when not a few days before she couldn’t bear to be in the same city as him? Also, if she is going to forgive him then it needs to be for her, because she is ready to move on and let go of the anger and upset; not because he is hurt and she wants to make him feel better.

Maia then goes on to say that she was feeling a lot of emotions because of what happened but that it doesn’t matter now, all this implies that she is the one at fault for feeling angry that he did terrible things to her and almost perpetuates victim blaming. By saying that the negative emotions she was feeling doesn’t matter implies that those feelings are invalid and sends out a potentially harmful message; Maia has every right to feel those things because she was attacked by someone she loved and trusted. Just because he was going through something difficult and is sorry doesn’t change what he did or how it made her feel.

Another thing (sorry I know I’m ranting but I do not like Jordan as a character and I don’t like how this situation has been handled), despite his constant insistence that he is sorry he has not shown development or change in his behaviour. He still insists on being heard whether the other person (Maia) wants to engage in that conversation or not, putting himself and his feelings first; he has not sort any help for his clear anger control issues (evident with him losing control with the vampires) which you think he would have done after his loss of control causing this entire situation in the first place; and he is still abandoning people, he was ready to just up and leave Simon now the mark is gone, granted that was the reason he was there in the first place but surely (with the Praetors job being to make sure new Downworlders adjust to their new lives) he would stick around for a few more weeks for make sure Simon is dealing properly; he was just going to leave without giving Maia full closure on their past, letting her work out her issues while he kept a slight distance but being available should she want to talk; and he was going to leave the Praetor without saying anything to them as we know from their phone call to Luke they think he has gone awol, so obviously he hasn’t spoken to them about taking some time away from them.

I saw a poll on Twitter the other day where they asked what people’s options were on why Jordan attacked Maia, and the three answers were ‘Abusive’, ‘First time wolf out’ and ‘Don’t care’; but I think that the situation was too complicated to just peg it down to one or the other. Yes, Jordan was turning so his emotions were heightened which caused him to lash out or react badly to a situation. However, him turning did not make him stalk is ex-girlfriend; he made the decision to follow Maia and watch her while she was on a date with someone else knowing that it would make him jealous, then he decided to follow and confront her about it. So, him turning caused the heightened state which led to his loss of control and turning her, but it was his own decisions and actions in stalking her that led to that incident; if he had left her alone then it would not have happened.

Some may argue that many wolves attack people when they turn for the first time, Maia did too; and yes, that happens, but from what I understand it is usually a stranger that just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when someone is experiencing that first turn.

I still find it hard to believe that Clary doesn’t figure it out until Jonathan kisses her, his behaviour and speech is very different from Jace’s that she should have known something was wrong before then. Plus, it just made me cringe because for one incest, ew, but also we already suffered through one incest kiss between them, did we really need another one? I know that it’s because Jonathan doesn’t understand the lines between sibling, platonic and romantic love and how to show it, plus probably some effort of putting a claim on her; but it just freaks you out. The only solid reason why I think they did another incest kiss is because he was disguised as Jace, and that this is the start of a wedge developing in the romantic side of Clary and Jace’s relationship, this is the only story relevant reason I could think of as to why they would do that again.

Magnus is enjoying having his magic by creating a portal, lighting the torches and removing the lid of the sarcophagus; but Alec is worried about Magnus over doing it, telling him to take it easy. He has no idea what this new magic, or the overexertion of it, could do to Magnus. We learn that the Morningstar Sword was stolen about 20 years ago and that it has the power to call an army of demons from Hell. Well, that kinda solves the mystery of the demons flying around in the trailers, shit.

Magnus finally tells Alec that Lorenzo asked for his apartment in return for the magic, Alec is absolutely fuming and ready to attack Lorenzo. His distrust has been proven right and he is furious that Lorenzo has taken advantage of Magnus’ situation and has taken his home from him, especially at a time that Magnus has lost so many other things. Plus, it has become home for Alec too; it hold’s almost all of his memories of his relationship with Magnus and he hates that Lorenzo is taking that away from them both.

Magnus explains that he willing gave up his apartment for the magic and why; magic is more important to him than the apartment, which at the end of the day is just a thing. This scene makes me cry, listening to Magnus describe how without his magic he feels cut off from the world, disconnected and that he doesn’t matter; I think that it is very easy for a lot of people to identify with those feelings, I know that I really identified with feeling those things in my darkest times and it is so refreshing and validating to hear a character talk about it.

Magnus is making Alec understand how being without his magic has completely changed how he connects with the world and with others, in Season 1 he told Clary that he thought Dot dead because he couldn’t feel her magic anymore. So not only did he lose a part of himself but he also lost his connection to his friends, his people; there is no wonder he feels so separate and adrift. Magnus reassures Alec that having him and his magic is enough for him to happy; you can tell that Alec isn’t happy with the situation and its consequences but he smiles because he can see the difference in Magnus and appreciates why he has done this.

I love seeing Luke and Simon scenes, I love their relationship; my heart aches for them because you can see their devastation upon finding the massacre at the Jade Wolf, Luke’s especially because you can see he is swimming with guilt as well. We know that Luke is going to blame himself for this, thinking that if he was there or if was still Alpha then they would still be alive. Luckily, Simon hears Maia and helps her escape the storage room.

When Izzy and Jace come to help Clary escape, Clary is unable to draw the sedative rune on Jonathan, she looks confused and horrified in the moment and after that she was unable to make herself incapacitate him. Personally I think that this was for a couple of reasons; firstly, in that moment Jonathan does appear vulnerable in his expression and that causes Clary to just see her brother, in that second she doesn’t see the murderer she just sees her brother, her last remaining blood relative; secondly, I think that the rune and their connection is going stronger, and that is causing them to not want to cause harm to each other or in this case cause their capture. It would make sense that the rune would grow in strength over time and that is going to cause behaviour changes, possibly feeding Clary’s darker impulses.

Simon helps Maia get Jordan to the Praetor while Luke allows himself to be arrested; it hurts because you know that Luke let that happen because he felt guilty, responsible for their deaths and didn’t just want to leave them. I know that he is going to keep feeling guilty about this but I hope that Maia, Simon and Clary will help him deal with it.

My absolute favourite scene of the entire episode, Alec confronts Lorenzo! I love it, Alec calls out Lorenzo for taking advantage of Magnus and wanting to humiliate him; he knows that Lorenzo dislikes Magnus and would not let this opportunity to get back at him pass him by. He despises him for hurting Magnus, for taking advantage of someone in a clearly vulnerable position but also because Lorenzo is supposed to be a leader and is abusing his power to get what he wants. He doesn’t allow Lorenzo to mock him and reasserts his power as the Head of the Institute; making it known that Alec will not tolerate any back talk or disrespect from Lorenzo.

He is willing to make a deal with Lorenzo to get the apartment back, he knows how independent Magnus is and despite what he says Alec knows that losing his home is going to hurt him. He is willing to do whatever it takes to protect Magnus. I absolutely love Matt’s acting in this scene, the distain in his expression and the little twitch of his face when Lorenzo talks about putting Magnus in his place. Matt is so fantastic at conveying so much in small movements and facial expressions, and you can tell that in that moment Alec wanted to rip Lorenzo limb from limb.

I love that Alec makes his distain of Lorenzo as a person and a leader clear, he hates how Lorenzo conducts himself as High Warlock and doesn’t respect him as a leader at all; a good leader supports those under their care and doesn’t take advantage of them for their own gain and petty vendetta. He makes it clear that he is going to be keeping an extremely close eye on Lorenzo and is waiting for him to slip up, Alec is going to bide his time so that he can punish Lorenzo when the time is right and in a situation that no one can refute his decision. I was literally laughing, hollering and clapping throughout this entire scene; it reminded me of 210 when he told Aldertree to stay away from his family, I love seeing him in hyper-protective mode.

At this point I cannot see any redemption arc for Lorenzo because he takes credit for Magnus’ achievements (the purified ley lines from 302), enjoys causing suffering and revels in humiliating Magnus in any and all ways possible. He may have some past with Magnus that caused his hatred, but we don’t know what that is, maybe Magnus did something to him or maybe Lorenzo is just jealous of him; jealous of his power and how many people like him, he knows that Magnus has the support of a lot of warlocks and that clearly rubs him the wrong way. But no matter their history, Lorenzo has acted despicably; especially as High Warlock, his job if to lead and protect no matter his own grievances and he has shown that he is incapable of putting aside petty rivalries to do that.

And I’m crying again; Magnus looks so happy enjoying a cocktail in Hunter’s Moon, you can tell that he feels so much happier and like himself now. I love his interaction with the bartender and seeing him smile so broadly. Then I breakdown when his head starts ringing and nose starts bleeding after he opens the portal, we know that this is the beginning of something horrifying and we are not ready. His symptoms are only going to get worse with time and continued use of the magic, but he is not going to willingly give it up because he has experienced living without it and cannot go back to feeling like that.

I love seeing Izzy back in the lab, and she finds a USB drive inside of Greenlaw; I need to see what is on there! Plus she looks gorgeous in these scenes, especially with the lighting.

Clary is angry with herself for not being able to detain Jonathan, she knows that he needs to be caught and poses danger to them; she feels like she failed and doesn’t understand why. Throughout the whole scene it appears that she has difficulty even looking at Jace which is understandable but also hints that my theory of a wedge between them may be right. She tells Jace about the kiss, she needs to be honest and to be able to express her feelings about it; she feels violated, she was kissed by someone under false pretences and that person was her brother. You can see the distress she feels at being kissed without her consent, I am glad that they addressed her feelings about this.

I really liked Jace’s ‘swear on us’ line, it shows his strength of feeling for her and how much he believes in their relationship; he believes that they can survive anything, together. It is clear that what Jonathan has done is going to have a lasting effect because Clary turns away from Jace’s kiss; it is completely understandable because all she will be able to think about is Jonathan taking advantage of her. I hope that they can move past this but that remains to be seen.

Jonathan is very pleased with the fact that Clary was unable to capture him and is sure that they will soon be reunited; I wonder if he knows the real strength and effect of the twinning rune.

But what I did find very interesting, and looking back you can kinda see it in 313 too, is the continuous reappearance of fire with Clary and Jonathan. Plus, in that last scene it was fire that transitioned their scenes; I thought it was very clever and interesting. I wonder if it is because of the twinning rune, Jonathan’s demon blood or because of Jonathan’s experience being burned and burning himself.

Okay, I really liked this episode and it was definitely an improvement on last week. Yes, I did have issues with the Jordan and Maia scenes, but hopefully I have explained them in a way in which you can understand where my opinion comes from.

In 315, Magnus is now living at the Institute, he meets Underhill, they are dealing with Heidi and we might be seeing Raphael return!

[locitarose]

Ooooooo! Supernatural Rogue Canary in a Historical setting, please and thank you (if you're up for it!!)!!

I didn’t quite manage the historical aspect in the usual way - though it’s definitely implied how long ago this is set so I hope you like it anyway. I also played with mythology with this one. Translations will be at the bottom.

           The village of Thaymore was burning.

           Mick looked over the various firesthat were consuming the village and nodded to himself as he made his decision.

           It was time to get the hell out ofhere.

           Mick knew he could travel faster ifhe transformed but he wanted to stay under the radar while he traveled whichmeant he’d be going by foot and, usually, at night.

           Being a dragon meant he could seejust fine in the dark after all.

           He glanced back in the direction he’dcome and thought about the village he’d left behind a few weeks ago. For once,he hadn’t been the one to start the fire but there were a number of people whohad a grudge against some of the town leaders and also knew he was a dragon.

           Clearly they’d decided to takeadvantage of that. After all, who would look twice at one of the town’s belovedresidents when there was a dragon who could be blamed for it? Especially sincehe hadn’t gone out of his way to make friends.

           He shook his head and turned tocontinue only to stop at the sight of the man in front of him.

           Well, Mick realized with a tilt ofhis head, not a human man at least.

           “What, exactly,” he drawled, narrowinghis eyes and crossing his arms, “is a dragon doing up here?”

           “What makes you think I’m a dragon?”Mick asked.

           A sharp grin appeared on thestranger’s face. “I’m insightful.”

           Mick narrowed his eyes. “Who areyou?”

           “You can call me Cold,” he said.

           “Your name is Cold?” Mick asked,disbelief clear in his voice.

           “I never said that.” Cold’s armsdropped to his sides and he smirked. “I said it was what you can call me.”

           And suddenly it came to him. “You’re oneof the Fae. Unseelie, I’m guessing.” Unseelie were usually associated withwinter and with a name like Cold, not to mention his personality, Mick would putgold on Cold being one of the Unseelie.

           Cold’s smirk slid in to a sly smile.“Hmmm. Once upon a time maybe. I’m more Solitary now.”

           A Solitary Fae. That was just Mick’sluck. They were some of the most unpredictable and add in that he started outUnseelie…hell. Still, the Fae were not known for just giving informationaway. “Why tell me?”

           “To get an answer to my question ofcourse.”

           “You haven’t asked me a question,”Mick pointed out.

           Cold’s eyes narrowed again. “Igreeted you with a question, dragon.Answer it.”

           Mick huffed out an annoyed breath,smoke appearing with that exhalation. “I ran in to trouble a few weeks ago.Thaymore. A few people set a fire and set me up for it. I’m just looking for aplace away from humans so I can settle.” Mick would love to tell Cold what hecould do with his demand for answers but telling him was definitely the saferoption. One didn’t anger the Fae if they could avoid it and Cold was already unhappywith his presence here.

           “Is that so? Then why don’t you movealong and find somewhere else,” Cold told him. “This place is off limits.”

           “That so?”

           “It is.” Cold took a step towardshim. “I imagine you thought that cave further up would be perfect. There’s ariver nearby and plenty of trees. But anyone who could bring trouble with themisn’t allowed anywhere near here. So you can move along, dragon.”

           Mick shifted and looked passed Cold,taking in the trees beyond him. The sun had begun to rise and with it came aclearer view of the grove that shouldn’t even exist so far up this mountain andso near a cave.

           He was protecting something. Even asMick came to that realization, something moved within the trees.

           Leonard saw the realization in thedragon’s eyes even as he sensed movement behind him and fought the urge to swear.He’d been able to sense that the sun was coming up and he’d known that meantSara would be waking soon so he’d pushed too hard and too fast and now thedragon knew he was protecting something. Someone.

           He had been Unseelie. He mostly still was—he liked going aftertravelers and messing with humans and pranking them. He liked lying to them andwatching them try to puzzle out what was real and what wasn’t. Occasionally, heliked hurting them when he sensed they’d be dangerous to Sara and the grove.

           He’d come to care for Sara when he’dmet the hamadryad over two centuries ago. She wasn’t quite as shy as hersisters and she’d boldly ventured out of her tree to meet him. It had intriguedhim and a friendship had blossomed between the two, slowly shifting to morethan that in the last 75 years. They’d already begun courting each other, muchto the amusement of many, when a few mortals had set fire to the grove whereshe and her sisters lived nearly 30 years ago.

           It had taken most of his magic totransport Sara’s tree away from there without damaging it in any way and createthis grove for her. By the time he had his strength back, most of her sisterswere dead. A few had somehow survived but they hadn’t wanted to leave wherethey were to join Sara in the new grove that Leonard had created. And as muchas Sara loved her sisters, she’d chosen to stay here, in the grove of oak treesLeonard had nearly died creating for her.

           The Unseelie Court had been furiousat his interference because while hamadryads were considered fae, they werealso left alone because they tended to fall under the purview of the gods andgoddesses (Artemis especially) and when he’d threatened anyone who tried toharm Sara—then followed through on said threat when someone had been stupidenough to actually try—he���d been kicked out of the Court. A Solitary Faebecause while he loved being part of the Unholy Court, he loved Sara more. TheSeelie Court had found it touching and had given him aid a few times when he’dbeen in need and suddenly Leonard was one of the few Fae with contacts in bothCourts (because banished or not, Lisa still loved him and liked to sneak awayto visit whenever she could).

           Now a dragon had found them. Adragon with fire in his veins who had already showed signs of the fire thatcould destroy Sara if he lost his temper. Leonard wouldn’t have it.

           He should have thrown the damndragon down the mountain.

           Toned and freckled arms wrappedaround his waist from behind and he let out a breath, his hand going to Sara’swhen the dragon focused on her arms in surprise. Clearly she’d managed to sneakup behind him without letting the dragon see her.

           “Χρυσή μου,” he said,squeezing her hand. He turned his head to look at her over his shoulder andallowed his eyes to soften since the dragon couldn’t see it.

           She squeezed back. “Ζωή μου,”Sara said quietly. Her gaze ticked towards the dragon and back. “He needs aid?”

           Leonard fought to keep his stancerelaxed. Sara was bolder than any other hamadryad he’d ever met and she lovedsparring as much as she did singing and dancing but she also had one of thebiggest hearts he’d ever known. She’d hear his story and want to help.

           Rather than groan, he let out a lowsigh. “The dragon is looking for a place to settle,” he told her, turning backto glare at said dragon.

           Sara leaned further to the side sothat she could see around him and raised an eyebrow at the dragon. “Why?”

           The dragon looked from Leonard toSara. “Got framed for setting a village on fire a few weeks ago. I left beforethey could make a move against me. Figured I’d settle away from humans.” Henodded towards the cave. “Found out about the cave up there a few days ago andthought I’d settle there.”

           Sara considered him for a moment. “Areyou the type of dragon that goes around setting fire to things when you getangry?” she asked.

           Leonard looked down at her. “Pleasetell me you’re not considering this,” he said.

           “Humans are dangerous. How could wedeny him sanctuary?” she asked.

           “Easily.” Leonard looked back at thedragon. “We don’t like fire around here. You can leave now.” He looked back atSara. “See?”

           “Cold,” she said, using the namethat he gave strangers. “We can at least offer temporary shelter.” Sara lookedback at the dragon. “You never told me what type of dragon you are.”

           The dragon gave her the first genuinesmile Leonard had seen since he arrived and he fought back a curse at thestirring of interest the expression caused. Sara tightened her arms around himand he felt her shake slightly with silent laughter though she managed to keepher expression serious.

           His nymph knew him well, damn it.

           “I’m the type of dragon that issimply looking for a place to keep his hoard. I only set fire to those thatcome after me.” The dragon bowed his head at her. “I would not harm you or yourtree.”

           Leonard looked down at Sara andraised an eyebrow. The dragon had figured out what she was it seemed and thatmeant that Leonard would be keeping an eye on him. But he had created the grovefor Sara and if she allowed the dragon to stay, then Leonard wouldn’t object.

           “You may use the cave,” Sara saidafter a few moments. Leonard’s lips quirked as he resigned himself to onlyhearing his name from Sara’s lips when the dragon wasn’t around to hear it. Offhis look, she moved so that the dragon could only see her arms and kissedLeonard’s shoulder. “Trust me,” she whispered. “I have a feeling about thisone, ζωή μου.”

           At that, Leonard relaxed. He was theone that could sense when something was going to go badly but Sara had alwaysbeen able to sense when something would be to their advantage.

           “Very well,” he said loudly enoughfor the dragon to hear. He looked back at the dragon. “But know this. If I seeso much as a spark near her or any of the trees, I will rip your head off andkick it down the mountain.”

           The dragon’s smile widened at thethreat. “Understood.”

           “Leonard,” Mick growled, his eyeslighting up as he stared down the path. “Humans are nearing.”

           Leonard’s eyes snapped towards thepath that would lead the humans to the grove and narrowed. “Well then, let’sgo greet them, Mick.” It had been 150 years since Mick had shown up, lookingfor a place to settle down away from the danger that humans presented andLeonard had long ago lost any reservations about the dragon who had become hisand Sara’s third.

           Sara had, as usual when it came tothings like this, been right.

           Sara pressed up against Leonard’sback and reached out to pull Mick against them. “Don’t be too long, μάτια μου.I have plans for the two of you,” she told Mick with a smile that had himwishing humans couldn’t even see their mountain, let alone walk the path to thegrove.

           “Best not to keep her waiting, αστέριμου,” Leonard said, using the name for Mick he’d chosen because, assappy as it was admit out loud, Mick burned so brightly. It was rare that heactually used the term of endearment but when he did, it promised to be a verygood night for Mick and Sara both. Leonard’s eyes glittered at the prospect ofmischief and he turned towards Sara, pressing a kiss to her neck then hermouth, humming in satisfaction when her hands slid up his chest. “You sure youdon’t want to come with us, χρυσή μου?”

           Sara shook her head. “Not today.”She looked towards the golden trinkets that Mick had added to his hoardrecently. “I’m going to explore.”

           Leonard and Mick exchanged an amusedlook. They had no doubt that they’d come back to find her decked out in gold orjewels and nothing else. She liked their reactions whenever she did that.

           Mick pulled her close for a kiss ofhis own before he and Leonard stood and headed out of the cave, leaving behindtheir tree nymph.

           He smirked when Leonard merelytouched his arm and transported them to the middle of the path, blocking thehumans in a way similar to the way he’d simply appeared before Mick all thoseyears ago.

           “Well,” Leonard drawled, “you seemto be a little lost.”

           The man in the lead scowled. “We’renot lost. We’re following the path,” he said in a tone that clearly calledLeonard’s intelligence in to question.

           “You’re in my territory, mortal,”Leonard replied. “Which means you’re lost. Unless you meant to come here andthen I can only assume you’re stupid.”

           Mick laughed and offered a smilethat promised plenty of pain when the group turned to look at him.

           Coming to this mountain had been thebest decision he’d ever made. He glanced at Leonard and thought of Sara back inthe cave.

           It had led him to his greatesttreasure after all.

Translations (all are Greek terms of endearment and found through people who live(d) in Greece and a linguist so blame them if these are wrong) :

Χρυσή μου / χρυσή μου: the feminine version of “my golden one”

Ζωή μου / ζωή μου: my life

μάτια μου: my eyes

αστέρι μου: my star

[snarktheater]

Shadowhunters — Episode 2x19

Today on Shadowhunters: much angst, much death, much feels. Also Simon's not completely off in his own world for once! The show even manages to do its own thing and also hit a major plot point from the book without feeling like two different stories clashing horribly!

So…yeah, it's gonna be one of those posts. You know, those where I have less to complain about. They have to happen, you guys. I've always been open that I thought the show was overall better than the books. Not without flaws, but, you know. I'll appreciate what I've got.

Last time, Jonathan unmasked himself and failed to retrieve the Mirror. It's not the real Mirror, but he doesn't know that…yet. So instead he angsts on a rooftop. As you do.

Valentine, being the exemplary dad that we all know him to be, doesn't bother to hide his disappointment.

"You know, in all honesty, I would have figured Jace to be the only Shadowhunter capable of giving you a run for your money."

Hey, dude, maybe you should stop underestimating Clary, your daughter and the girl who keeps foiling your plans? Like, she literally has Jace's pure angel blood and she's your daughter. Shouldn't that put her above the boys? I don't even know if this is sexism on the character's part or the show's part. If the former, then it's certainly not framed as such, which is itself a problem.

Valentine also blames Sebastian for letting the Shadowhunters know where he lived, which…I don't really get. Even if he hadn't used Isabelle as his way in, could he really have infiltrated the Institute without them even checking on where he lived? You'd think they would do that much of a background check, at least.

Anyway, it means they have to leave the place, so when Clary, Jace and Isabelle come to investigate, they're already gone. Instead, they find the real Sebastian's corpse, give him the Shadowhunter salute ("Ave atque Vale - Hail and Farewell", which is also the episode's title)…and he turns into another possessing demon.

"Same kind that murdered my mom."

I mean…okay? Great? Does it make this scene more meaningful? No, not really, the kill the demon in literal seconds. Sebastian's corpse could have been just a corpse and we would have lost basically nothing. But hey, at least the girls get to be angry.

"We're gonna make them pay for what they did to you." "We're gonna make them pay for everything."

Great! Thanks! That was totally not a waste of my time!

So Valentine and Jonathan are on the loose. The gang reports this to Imogen first, including the fact that they have the Sword, and must still have the Cup if Valentine could control that demon and make it possess Sebastian's body. They also tell her that Valentine will probably stay in New York since he thinks they have the Mirror, and explain that the real Mirror is Lake Lyn.

And then…they do something extremely stupid. Jace requests that Gard soldiers be deployed at Lake Lyn. Because that's not going to set off any alarms whatsoever, right? If you're going to protect the Lake, shouldn't you at least do it covertly? No, instead Imogen literally says she'll ask the Consul about it and make it official. You can guess where this is going.

But meanwhile, we have some other drama to deal with. See, Alec wants to summon the Downworld council (and yeah, now it's a council and not a cabinet, I feel like a memo was lost somewhere in the writers' room), but it turns out the Seelie Queen, with Magnus's help, made her own plans. She comes to the meeting in person instead of sending Meliorn, and also, before the meeting, she has Magnus convince Luke and Raphael to literally pledge allegiance to her.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I get that the Seelie Queen's offer is appealing, since she claims the Angel Raziel's power literally can't touch Downworlders if they come to the Seelie Court, and so that's what she offers in exchange for their allegiance. But we see Magnus talk to Luke and Raphael, and Luke in particular seems unhappy about it, since the Queen's made it clear she wanted to stop following the Accords…but then we cut to the council and they've all accepted the Queen's deal and she's now the sole voice for the entire Downworld?

It's like a scene where Magnus actually convinces Luke was cut from the episode. It's not the worst thing, he does explain to Clary he just put his pack's safety first, but…well, as I pointed out before, war isn't good for safety, you idiots. Valentine is one genocidal dude, sure, but the Clave is a literal institution. In the long run, the latter is far more dangerous than the former.

The Queen, you won't be surprised to hear, refuses Alec's offer to work side by side to capture Valentine, even when he agrees to have him executed as soon as he's caught. So the Downworlders go off to find Valentine on their own.

I should pause the review now to mention that, just because I said this episode was on the less flawed end of the spectrum, doesn't mean everyone in it doesn't act like a complete idiot. Aside from Luke being okay with war now for no reason (and Raphael too, but he barely gets a say in any of this except to say he's sad they're headed towards war because it's totally ruining his and Isabelle's chances to get back together), we have Magnus being a general douchebag to everyone else, including leaving Raphael at the Institute so the Queen can make a dramatic exit…even though it's the middle of the day and Raphael needed him to be able to leave the Institute at all.

"He's got bigger things on his mind right now. He's been through a lot lately. We all have."

But does he though? Does he really? Well, I guess being an instrumental player in starting a war between the Clave and the Downworld all because he got his heart broken does sort of count. But I'm not sure that's an excuse.

This is the point where Simon comes in, and as I mentioned, he's not off in his own useless subplot for once. I mean, he does get an awkward moment where he and Maia arguing over whether or not they're officially dating (guess which of them is the asshole who wants to insist that they're not), but then Clary barges in and cockblocks their flirting to ask him a favor.

See, at the meeting at the Institute, the Seelie Queen asked after Simon, and Clary decide that means she totally values his opinion or some shit. I'm not convinced, but Simon's not really doing anything anyway, so he might as well try to go talk to her and prevent war, right?

"If the Clave goes to war with the Downworld, everything that we know and love will be destroyed. And you, Simon Lewis, are the one person on the planet that even has a chance of getting the Seelie Queen to change her mind and worked with us."

Yeah, that seems reasonable enough. Spoiler alert, it completely fails. Well, the Queen does show up in adult form this time around, because…the show wanted to have Sarah Hyland on the cast.

"Different outfits for different occasions. You're wary of me, aren't you? Is it because of the little game I played with you and your friends in my court?"

Or is it because you already asked him to go to war against Shadowhunters? Gee, I wonder which it could be. Actually no, I know Simon, of course it was because of the love triangle bullshit.

But hey, Simon's not completely beyond redemption, and catches on to the Queen's game.

"You don't want things to end well, do you? You want war."

Yup.

She makes her offer to him again—to join her, which is implied to be in a sexual way, but the way, in exchange for his wildest dreams coming true—and Simon rejects her. Which she doesn't take kindly to.

"You've refused me twice now. No one in my very long life has ever dared do such a thing." "Well, considering you're kinda getting vampires, werewolves and warlocks to play nice…you might wanna get used to some rejection."

And he leaves, and that's the end of Simon's part in this episode. Just because I said he wasn't off in his own world doesn't mean he was useful. Don't ask for too much, you guys.

Meanwhile at Magnus's apartment, a bunch of warlocks have gathered, including Madzie, that little girl warlock from earlier this season. I have no idea why she's here other than "hey, look, a familiar face!" but she's also an excuse for the show to finally introduce Catarina Loss. Who isn't blue in this continuity, but she's still pretty fabulous.

"The common ground between the Downworld and Alicante is…shifting." "Then it's a good thing I wear comfortable shoes."

No, really, I like her. This is all we see of her, but I like her.

The warlocks, by the way, created a ward around New York City so that no Nephilim could leave or enter the city—or more specifically, anyone who would try would die. This is at the Seelie Queen's command, and by the way, they don't even warn the New York Institute about this—Luke has to tell them, much later in the episode, and only because he was trying to coordinate the hunt for Valentine in secret. So, yeah, Magnus was apparently completely okay potentially killing any Shadowhunter, not just in New York (which includes several people he cares about beyond Alec), but also anywhere else in the world who might try to come. You see what I mean about his character in this episode? There's only so much you can excuse with heartbreak, and this is at least fifty times too much. Because these things are totally quantifiable. I'm a scientist, trust me.

Anyway. Valentine actually had some Circle members capture a warlock, but he hits that ward when he tries to create a Portal for them to Idris. Because yeah, guess what? Valentine heard that they were moving forces to Lake Lyn and deduced what that means, because he's not an idiot.

Before Valentine can find a way around this ward, the werewolf pack catches them. Valentine, being the totally fearless badass that he claims to be…runs away with his son and leaves his Circle cronies to deal with the werewolves while they escape. But hey, hypocrisy is nothing new for this guy.

They then head to a cemetery to grab one of the cache of weapons that Shadowhunters have on all holy grounds worldwide. Jonathan even comments here that it's enough to exterminate the Downworld many times over, which…yeah, is pretty on point, actually. How many weapons do you need exactly?

Meanwhile, Clary has a Convenient Vision™ of a rune that will help them track Jonathan using her connection to him (by virtue of being related) and her and Jace's connection (by virtue of angel blood). I'm not even going to question it, because, magic, but let's be honest, it's 100% a reason for Jace to get shirtless and for them to go all…perfume commercial on us or something.

The scene just ends awkwardly, by the way. I don't even know why. They're both single, not siblings (anymore)…and I don't think Clary's still hung up over her breakup, so…why even bother?

Anyway. The rune works, they locate Jonathan…and then wait until sundown to get there, giving Jonathan and Valentine plenty of time to be alerted to it (because the process also creates a rune on Jonathan's arm, which seems like a big flaw in the process), grab a funeral party, and convert them all to Forsaken. Is this the first time we see Forsaken in the show? I think it might be. They're basically just "zombies, but under Valentine's control", so I'll be honest, I didn't particularly miss them.

Oh, also, Valentine leaves Jonathan, saying he knows how he can leave New York, but it's too dangerous for Jonathan to come with him. Jonathan is skeptical, but he does let him go after all.

So our four main characters show up at the graveyard, as I said, and immediately split up, with Clary and Jace both insisting to be on different teams. Isabelle asks Clary wha'ts going on and Clary deflects the question, while Jace and Alec get…this:

"I figured you'd talk when you're ready." "I knew there was a reason you were my parabatai."

I don't know if this is technically a positive exchange or not? Like, they acknowledge that it'd be healthy for Jace to talk about his feelings, just…not mid-combat, which is fine. But at the same time…they don't talk about Jace's feelings (not now, nor later), which is less fine. You make up your mind.

After this absolutely hilarious moment, the Forsaken show up, and we get a whole bunch of fighting. I'll just skim over the important details: Alec and Jace get separated, Jace gets caught from behind by Jonathan and is dragged away in literal chains (that Jonathan just…happened to have?), Clary and Isabelle kick ass, Alec finds them and tells them what happened, and Clary sends Isabelle after Jonathan, since her electrum whip can hurt him, while she and Alec stay behind to hold back the rest of the Forsaken.

There, that wasn't so bad, wasn't it? And so, yes, as you might remember all the way from City of Glass, we are—admittedly under somewhat different circumstances—back to pretty much the same scene as in the books.

Jace goads Jonathan into removing the chain and fighting one on one, and Sebastian takes the bait even though he's aware it's a bait, because he's that confident of his own superiority. And he's not entirely wrong, since he does manage to stab Jace and have him at his mercy…but then he starts monologuing long enough for Isabelle to show up and disarm him.

She manages to outshine her book counterpart, for a very simple reason: she just has a more personal stake. Yes, in both versions Jonathan attacked Max (and killed him in the book), but this version literally used Isabelle herself at her lowest point, and she is furious about it. So…while I'm still not sure the addiction subplot was a good idea in the first place, at least it was used to make this moment that much more triumphant for Isabelle, since she holds her own against him long enough for Jace to stab Jonathan in the back, going through the spine and heart (they literally have a moment where they explain that, I guess to establish how fatal the wound is?), and toss him off the bridge they were fighting on. Because leaving corpses to float away in a river never backfires.

"Hail and farewell."

Yeah, I don't think so, Isabelle.

Well, okay, Jonathan's dead for now. I mean, I saw the season 3 trailer, I know that Lilith will spend at least some time trying to bring him back. I guess that's good enough to wrap up the episode.

By which I mean, three things happen after this in the episode. One, Clary and Jace at the infirmary, with Jace shirtless yet again (of course), and Clary realizing he could have died.

"My mom, and Dot…I can't lose you too. […] I'm tired of being afraid."

Cue kissing, which basically rendered the earlier awkwardness utterly pointless. I mean, come on, there was less than fifteen minutes of screen time between those two scenes, and literally not a moment of that time was spent on their relationship. You're just wasting my time. But hey, at least now they're back together and we might…like, move on or something.

Then there's Maia, who's gone missing. And by missing, I mean we immediately find out she was kidnapped by the Seelie Queen. Because she's subtle like that.

And speaking of the Seelie Queen, she's too busy to talk to Maia. And by "busy" I mean Valentine's escape route out of New York was actually through the Seelie Court. Considering the Queen was organizing the most successful part of the man hunt, you'd think she wouldn't give him access to it?

"What could you have that I could possibly want?"

Well I hope you didn't actually want to know, because Valentine whispers it into her hear so we're not privy to it, before they walk off together, having struck a deal, I guess. And hey, at least the show took my advice on not giving the audience all the information. Now we're just one step ahead of the characters instead of five. It's something.

And that's the end of the episode. As I mentioned, its biggest sin is making the characters act like various shades of idiots, from the harmless awkwardness between Clary and Jace to the actually morally bankrupt Magnus. On the flipside, the Seelie Court's involvement being made explicit is a good setup for, you know, the City of Heavenly Fire plot (and The Dark Artifices, should they decide to go that far with the show), so that's an improvement.

So this episode is more of a mixed bag than usual, which is itself as positive a note as I can give Shadowhunters most of the time.

Next time is the season finale, so I'd better get some angel summoning going. And after that…well, as I mentioned I've seen trailers for season 3, so while I haven't been spoiled the episodes that are already out, I know roughly where we're headed. But that's a story for another time.

[likelovelikesuicide]

Shadowhunters - Hiatus week rant

Shadowhunters is on hiatus this week because ‘merica... so I give you another rant  because I prefer to dwell on this show week after week over dealing with real life...

I would like to start by saying that my opinions, as presented, are in no way a reflection on the writers, actors, or anyone else affiliated with the show. I am here solely for the characters, the stories and while I understand that real people control what happens behind the scenes, I know that no single person is to blame for any of the issues I’m pointing out here and also, I reject reality. Life has a fucked up plot on it’s own, so whatever...

1. Let’s begin with the elephant in the room, the scene that caused the most issue since s2 began - Magnus and Alec in 2.07 - Let me begin by saying that I actually like and enjoy the “first time” scene in the context of their relationship and I think the consent issue was a misunderstanding on the part of the audience. In this scene, Alec goes to his boyfriend, hopeful and intent on moving forward within their relationship by spending a night together (& doing some lovin’) … Magnus, rightfully given his past, expresses his concerns with moving too fast because he has serious feelings for Alec and he doesn't just want sex from this. Alec, being the straight forward guy that he is, tells Magnus that he has nothing to worry about because he, Alec, wants this too. This meaning them, being together. He's not saying he wants sex. He's saying he wants to be with Magnus. - this. Us. -  The scene fits their story and so much of the dialogue is context within their overall arc. _  However, the issue with the scene is in how it was framed in the episode. Earlier on we see Magnus and Alec stop a kiss because Jace is making noise with a girl somewhere in their home. Then we see an extended scene of Jace with the girl, being naked, intimate, and frankly vulgar on screen. Especially when Alec enters the room and the random topless girl comes onto him in his boyfriend’s home where Jace is a guest. It made Jace look cheap and disrespectful, and it sets the mood for a “first time" scene that was sent off screen without so much as a raised shirt. From the writer's perspective, I think they wanted to show a contrast of lust vs. love but it didn't work at all and from the LGBT perspective, what was shown made it look like they’re trying to keep us behind closed doors. And fuck that. ---This was also demonstrated in 2.13 when Alec and Magnus’ make-up kiss is panned off screen to show Maia lick Jace’s abs for no reason whatsoever and it needs to stop. Either stop showing it or show it for everyone. They aren't filming Malec in the same way they film the other couples. And they know it.  Cut the crap.

there’s more but I’ll but it under a read more to safe your dash 

2. Timeline. Tone. Episode themes. These things are needed to maintain a story, and right now they are truly all over the place - I mean, has it been a month since S2 started? Six months? A week? A year? We don't know. (season 1 was a month fight me on this) The impossible timelines make watching the episodes jarring in a way that is not entertaining, it’s uncomfortable. (Ref. Glee s4/s5. All of LOST, teen wolf, etc.) Overall this is an issue of pacing in scenes between the various pairings...Raphael and Izzy got a 5 minute scene of them cooking and sharing blood that could have been done in a forth of that time, plus several scenes that actually should be talked about regarding the consent issue…  Magnus and Alec got the build up… ish… now they get a minute here, a kiss there. Their time together is implied, referenced... their love established through time spent together off screen - Izzy and Sebastian got full scenes of them just talking for the sake of talking and cementing his creep factor… Clary and Simon have multiple, full scenes in a single episodes to display their feelings, support each other and be together publicly as well as separate scenes and stories going on throughout their doomed relationship.… Jace and Simon spent an entire episode messing with each other in a bar for shits and giggles… Maia and Jace banter,  Maia and Simon flirt, Izzy and Simon do mean things together while being really nice about it, Raphael and Simon bicker and try to hurt each other like school children on a playdate… Luke and Simon share war stories…  (Honestly what I’m getting from this is everyone wants time with Simon, including the writers… which I get… poor Simon...and okay you got my point, there is no balance. I’ll stop now)

3. Alright look, I didn’t read the books and I’m never going to, but I think in some ways the show is written around the idea that you have read the books - thus you know who random people are (Jace’s seelie bitch, Lydia, Imogene, Ragnor, Catirina, etc.) But like, they don’t follow the books, at all. I mean I started the first book and before I returned it to the library because god, no - I read far enough to know that Dot is like, an old lady or something. And the books start when Clary is 16...  My point being, they use the story, the world, the ideas without following the books and that’s fine, except like, I don’t know nor do I care who the Herondale’s are so why give Jace this big reunion with grandma (crazy bitch) Imogene scene when there was NO context for it. Also, if I had read the books, as in the case of Harry Potter or Twilight (ya i read it, i loved it. Fight me, New Moon is a great book) I would want to see the books on screen as they were in print because that’s all anyone ever wants when they find out a series they read and liked is being made into a movie or tv show. They want the book, the characters, the scenes, the world translated to screen as they imagined it…. So I get it. sorry book stan’s. Also, is Aldertree always a total douche?

4. So… The show started with Clary and she is presented as a strong female protagonist - physically she is equal to the most elite in her race without proper training, she has special abilities specific to her, but she is headstrong to a fault. She is flighty and rarely listens to advice or reason, therefore she is easily led into traps that harm not only her, but the people around her (didn’t Magnus call Jocelyn out for something like this) … I won’t deny that Clary cares for other people...  however, she is an 18 (?) year old and pretty much everyone is blinded by their emotions at that age, her faults are relatable. What I need for Clary is her to remember who she was. She grew up a mundane, she lost her mother... Twice. She wanted to be an artist, she was happy and looking forward to her future. When the show started she was a girl with a plan for her life and okay, maybe art school won’t work… but why can’t she make a name for herself in the institute? In Idris? Why is her story so focused on the men around her? Simon? Jace? Sebastian? This series of love triangles don't interest me at all… How about Clary testifying against her father, Valentine, at a Clave trail and burying his ass? How about Clary supporting Izzy as she rebuilds her strength and realizing first that something's up with this Sebastian dude? How about Clary getting back into her art and learning to control her new skill through her mundane ability?  How about Clary understanding that Alec has earned and deserves to be Head of the Institute and refusing to undercut his authority because she respects him?

5. How about Jace doing the same… because Alec is his parabati and that still means something… actually how about Jace takes a nap for an episode cause I don't see another way he's going to keep himself out of trouble and/or keep it in his pants.  

6. The continued implications of incest have been unnecessary from the start... I get that it's a theme in the books and that's on the original writer... but in the show it doesn't follow that no one thought to run a DNA test on Clary and Jace in s1? Really? No One? Izzy? … and in a warrior/soldier society like the Shadowhunters, regular blood tests would be mandatory anyway… (which also would have eliminated the whole yin fen issue for Izzy, just saying) But now, of course we have Sebastian, and I know enough about the story to know that he is the real Jonathan Morgenstern and I hope Clary figures that out on the show before any actual implied incest occurs because that shit will cause the show the be cancelled and condemned. Straight up.

7. Okay, going back to 2a for a moment, can we talk about the whole thing where Valentine captured an Angel?? Like a real Angel? Like a straight up ANGEL? Shouldn’t that be a big deal? Or at least A moment of concern for the Clave? Doesn’t anyone else want to know HOW HE CAPTURED AN ANGEL??? - sure the mortal cup is out there (*cough* Sebastian has it *Cough*) But if no one has so much as seen an Angel in living memory, isn’t it kind of like a hugely dangerous wtf thing that Valentine can capture one??? (I’m sorry this story was so swept under the rug and like, I actually want to KNOW)

8. I think we can all agree that the lighting department is run by vampires and maybe Simon should take over that job on the Malec scenes in particular because LET THERE BE LIGHT PEOPLE

9. Editing seems to be an issue overall - with pacing or scenes cutting abruptly off and I’m sorry but there was a moment in 2.13 where I could have sworn I was watching Criminal Minds and look Shadowhunters air’s on an american family channel at 7pm on Mondays (without parental warnings)… let's leave the gore and raunchy hook ups to the 10pm shows, please. There are children present… also, small additions or subtractions make a world of difference - imagine for a moment that instead of Alec entering Magnus’ loft in 2.13 after the fight and saying “you were right, you never have to prove yourself to me… I love you” - Alec had instead said something like “you were right, you should never have to prove yourself to my bosses. I’m sorry. I love you.” and given back the envelope with the hair in it??? How much more meaningful would that have been. Especially given that Alec was now Head of the Institute - it would show he trusts his boyfriend. It would set up his alliance with the downworld, thus introducing the plot for the next episode… it would have shown Alec’s respect for his partner over what the Clave expects of those they call downworlders… sorry I’m done.

10. What is the overall plot to season 2??? Is it all focused around the war with Valentine? Season 1 was obviously meant to follow Clary as she searched for her mother and shit went down around her… however, season 2 has branched out from that, allowing several other key characters more focus and next week we will hit the final stretch. 6 weeks to build up to another inevitable cliff hanger because they already have a third season and this is when you do that shit. But what will it be? As I said, I didn't read the books, so I only have vague references to the possibilities... but I hope we'll all be able to enjoy the remainder of the summer season before counting down the days till season 3. 

[theonetruenorth]

Starman

So this is something I wanted to write for the better part of the last year but never really found the right words. Now, with the anniversary just a couple days ago, I finally feel like I can post it. It’s short, but somewhat personal. It’s not really a tribute because I don’t think I could ever do this brilliant man justice, but it’s... something.

Beware, sad Magnus ahead.

(CLICK ‘KEEP READING’ FOR THE REST OF THE FIC.)

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

Alec didn’t think much of the music he heard as soon as he entered Magnus’ apartment.

It wasn’t unusual for the warlock to listen to something while he worked. Sometimes it was classical music, or operas, or even traditional songs from cultures long forgotten. Sometimes it was rock or metal, blasting from the magically enhanced speakers so loudly that the windows shook in their frames. Sometimes it was modern pop, things that Alec had heard playing from mundane phones or performed on the streets or in subway stations. There didn’t seem to be any distinguishable pattern to it, as far as Alec could tell. Magnus just listened to whatever music fit his mood at the time.

Alec hung his bow and quiver up in the closet along with his leather jacket, and the song ended and another began. He stopped for a moment, listening to the lyrics about a man waiting in the stars, which didn’t make much sense to Alec. Even so, he was pretty sure he had heard this song somewhere before.

He moved to the living room, where he expected to find his boyfriend. He did not, however, expect to see Magnus sitting on the floor, staring vacantly into space and clutching a handful of wet tissues.

“Magnus?” Alec was momentarily startled. “What happened?”

The warlock turned his head to look at him. Alec’s breath caught at the sight of his bloodshot eyes, smudged makeup and visible tear tracks on his cheeks.

“Alexander…” Magnus croaked out, his voice small and filled with anguish. As soon as the words left his mouth his face twisted with grief and fresh tears spilled from his eyes.

Alec was by his side in a flash, tumbling down to his knees and gathering Magnus close, letting him hide his face in the crook of his neck and sob his heart out. Alec had no clue what was going on, but it was pretty obvious that something bad had happened. He was whispering to Magnus - all reassuring nonsense and gentle shushing sounds - hoping to calm him down. Magnus had a death grip on Alec shirt, both fists clenched in the fabric and keeping Alec close, holding on for dear life.

Eventually the sobs slowed into great, heaving breaths and then quiet hiccups, before dying out completely. It was only then that Magnus moved away, his fingers unclenching with difficulty. The warlock pressed the already damp tissues to his eyes, wiping off the fresh tears, not minding the makeup that was already ruined beyond all hope.

“What happened?” Alec asked again, softly, as he stroked his fingers over the nape of Magnus’ neck.

“I--” Magnus’ breath hitched once before he inhaled deeply and collected himself. “I’ve just learned that one of my friends passed away today.”

Alec was suddenly reminded of the state that Magnus was when Ragnor Fell died and how much Magnus mourned for him, once things quieted down and he actually had time to process his death.

“I’m so sorry,” Alec said, shuffling a little closer to press a kiss to Magnus’ temple. “Were they a warlock as well?”

“No,” Magnus sighed, the tissue still pressed into his eyes. It was smudged with kohl and eyeshadow and Alec spotted the tissue box on the coffee table next to them. He managed to reach it without letting go of Magnus and offered it to his boyfriend.

“No,” Magnus repeated once he banished the wet tissues with a flick of his fingers and used the new, dry ones to wipe at his eyes, “there was some Seelie ancestry somewhere in his bloodline, which is why he had the Sight, but he was a mundane. Though he was probably the least ordinary mundane that I have ever met.”

Magnus’ voice was still unsteady but for the moment his eyes were dry. He reached for the stack of old vinyl records he had on the floor next to him and thumbed delicately over one of the covers.

“Is that him singing?” Alec asked, putting the clues together.

“I met him in London while he was on tour, in 1972,” Magnus whispered, his eyes still locked on the colorful cover. “He saw me performing magic even though I had a glamour up. He was intrigued. And I wanted to get closer to him, since I adored his music. We became inseparable for a bit, and I spent the rest of the tour travelling with him.” Magnus sighed. “The seventies were… a different time. I spent it on parties, getting drunk and living dangerously. He was very much the same, and we got along splendidly.”

“Sounds like you knew him a very long time.”

“I did. After some time I had enough of the crazy life and returned to New York. And then the Circle happened. He continued on with his career, got married, had children, made his music, made movies...but we stayed in contact, through phone calls and emails mostly.”

Magnus’ face crumpled once more.

“He didn’t tell me that he had cancer.” Magnus turned his teary eyes to look at Alec and he was visibly holding back from falling apart again. “He knew what I could do. I could have helped him. Why didn’t he say anything?” He inhaled shakily. “We hadn't really talked in a long while, but he knew about my immortality. He knew that for me years often blend into a blur and I have trouble staying in touch, sometimes...”

“Magnus…”

“I could have helped him,” Magnus dabbed at his eyes again, “I could have done something.”

“Magnus,” Alec said gently, “as far as I know even warlock magic can’t cure cancer…”

“I still could have helped,” Magnus said, a little angrily as he glared at Alec. “I could have given him more time. Made him more comfortable.”

“Or maybe you would have worn yourself thin trying to come up with a solution to an impossible problem,” Alec countered. “And you would have blamed yourself for not doing more, for not being better. If he really knew you that well, he would have known that you wouldn’t rest until you had fixed everything, even though there was nothing you could've done.”

Magnus pursed his lips into a thin, unhappy line and looked away.

Alec gathered his boyfriend close once more when Magnus shuddered. “And maybe he didn’t want you to slowly suffer through losing another friend. It sounds like he lived an eventful, rich life and you were a part of it. Maybe...he felt that it was his time to go.”

And it was as good explanation as any. Alec knew that older warlocks tended to lose their connection to the mortal world, once they reached certain age. Warlocks younger than Magnus were already lost to it, to the apathy that gradually overtook them. They couldn’t find any joy in life itself. They stopped feeling sadness or loss. They continued to exist but they weren’t alive, not really.

The fact that Magnus could still feel grief was astounding. Alec knew that it was getting harder and harder as the centuries went by, but this amazing, ageless man still had compassion and love and trust and he still had space in his heart for grief.

Alec loved him, so very, very much.

But he couldn't help but think about what was going to happen to Magnus once Alec himself passed away. He did not want Magnus’ heart to turn to stone. But that was a conversation for another time, when Magnus wasn’t so upset and vulnerable.

“You don’t even have any idea who I am talking about, do you?” Magnus whispered with a quiet huff of amusement, and Alec was happy to hear even that tiny hint of humor back in his voice.

“Not really, no,” Alec admitted, not really bothered by his lack of pop culture knowledge. “Will you tell me about him?”

Magnus sniffed, dabbing at the corners of his eyes one more time to make sure they were dry. He scooted on the floor until they were pressed together again, Magnus’ head on Alec’s chest and Alec’s arm around Magnus’ shoulders.

“Yes,” Magnus said as he closed his eyes and listened to the beat of Alec’s heart for a moment. It was reassuringly strong and steady. “Let me tell you about David.”

[brooktiniwrite]

Chapter Eight Coming Of Age (Part 1)

When she awoke, Bryn had never felt more unaware of her surroundings.

In her disoriented state, she was only conscious of the feelings against her. The first was brush, chafing against her back. The second was the sun beating against her skin, and the third were hands; Hands gripped at her ankle, pulling her after heavy footsteps.

Then she was gone again.

The second time she awoke, she wanted to speak, but her brain couldn’t process the words. Not when it took all of her effort to understand the booming voice that drug her helplessly across the desert floor.

“Bryn!” It said. “Wake up!”

The hands that released her foot slammed against her face.

“Wake up! I can’t carry you any longer.” Fingers squeezed into her cheeks as they shook her. The motion was violent. The feelings were no longer at her skin but in her stomach, making its way up. And out. The water poured out of her and she wondered if it was endless.

“Good girl.” Said the voice. A hand circled her back roughly. “Let it out.”

Bryn attempted to open her heavy eyelids and when she did, she saw blue, midnight blue and then ebony black.

“Jamie?” She croaked.

Then it all shut down, all but the sounds.

“Dammit Bryn!” She heard as the last of the water escaped her gut. “Don’t you pass out again. I’m too weak. I can’t carry you.”

The next time that she awoke, it was to the hum of electricity. Her sight returned sparsely, skewed by the florescent light above her. She lay tucked into wool sheets.

Breathing in the scent of those dry blankets, Bryn let her heavy eyes fall shut again. She attempted to roll onto her stomach, completely enthralled with the comfort she found inside of those itchy wool covers, but the sheets clung to her back painfully, pulling at her raw skin. The sting was just enough to remind her of how she’d gotten here. She remembered choking, drowning. 

She screamed.

She attempted to raise herself from the bed, but scrambled back into the covers after realizing that she was naked. Bryn surveyed the unfamiliar room. There were no windows, only old wooden walls. A few knotted holes in the wood let the natural light in from outside.

In search of a door, Bryn glanced quickly to the opposite side of the room. Instead, she found herself staring into the dark eyes of a girl. The sight of her took Bryn back, leaping against the old metal bed frame. The girl was slender, her willowy frame leaned over an old rocking chair. Her skin was cocoa colored and her dark, straight hair was braided tightly to fall at her waist.

“Where am I?” Bryn gasped.

“You’re on reservation land.”

“Warm Springs?”

The girl nodded and Bryn’s guts twisted. Warm Springs was the Reservation that bordered Lake Billy Chinook. 

 Every local knew to stay weary of the Rez. Other than just passing through, Bryn had only stopped in once. The place Bryn bravely ventured was a Quick-e mart called Rainfall Market. The broken down store had barred windows and a colorful sign with “Snow cones .99 cents” plastered on the side. She’d passed by it often; Many times when she was young. She used ask her dad to stop and buy the candy-coated ice, but his answer was always the same; Not in this part of town Brinny. The people here are rough around the edges.

Bryn kept one eye wearily on the girl, who was at the bed now, brushing her fingers along the sheets before she sat down. The old metal frame creaked as she rested her dainty figure at Bryn’s feet.

“We found you with Jamison, about three miles into the reservation.”

“We? Who is we?”

“Me,” She blinked. “And the leaders of the Reservation. Jamison and the others have already made arrangements with us to have you here.”

Bryn tried to sort everything out in her mind. She remembered Jamison mentioning that they knew someone, that they wouldn’t have to go to the Fae Realm for Bryn’s Ceremony. Bryn frowned. This was their plan? This rickety house and this fragile looking girl?

“I’m sorry.” Bryn waved her hands in front of herself. “But what are you?”

“What am I?”The girl crinkled her forehead in question.

“Yeah. What are you? You know, like vampire, werewolf,” Bryn paused. “Angel?”

“Oh!” The girl giggled softly. “I’m no Angel. I’m Conduit and Fae, like you.”

“Ugh.” Bryn rubbed the backs of her hands against her eyes. “This is nuts.”

“Maybe I should have started with introducing myself.” She had her arm extended, and a smile spread gently across her face. “I’m Baya.”

“Bryn.” Bryn said without offering a hand.

The girl dropped her hand, disappointed, and lifted herself from the bed. For a moment, it was silent in the room, and Bryn blamed herself for the awkwardness, it wouldn’t have done any harm to shake her hand. As if to increase Bryn’s guilt, Baya retrieved a pile of neatly folded clothes from the weathered rocking chair in the corner and placed them delicately on the bed next to her.

“It’s your Coming of Age attire.” Baya folded her hands together shyly. “As part Fae, I agreed to perform the ceremony for Jamison.”

For Jamison? Bryn quirked a brow. “You mean for me.”

“Yes.” Baya laughed. “For you as well.”

Bryn couldn’t help but look at the girl in confusion. When Baya caught Bryn’s expression, her face went blank.

“Oh,” She mumbled nervously. “He hasn't told you.”

“Told me what?” Bryn asked angrily.

Baya sighed. “He’s gonna kill me for this.”

“What?” Bryn pressed. “What is it?”

“You receiving your element is just as important to him as it is you.”

If Bryn looked confused before, she couldn’t imagine what she looked like now as her face contorted into an even more precarious position.

“Bryn, he is your guardian. Hasn’t he told you-“

“Guardian,” Bryn interrupted impatiently. “That’s what those... those things called him last night.”

“The water Fae?” Baya inquiried. She leaned forward, seemingly interested in these creatures.

“Bunch a’ racist assholes if you ask me.” Bryn spat, irritated that this girl could be so fascinated by a creature so crude, so ruthless to Jamison for merely existing.

Baya hummed.

“They weren't too enthused with Jamison I’m guessing?”

“Yeah.” Bryn said quickly. It was strange, but she couldn't help confiding in her. “What was that about? Why so bitter with Jamison?”

“It's just their way.” Baya shook her head, not excusing such behavior, only giving reason. “Water Fae are still partial to the Seelie Court. With Jamison being Unseelie- well there was bound to be conflict.”

Bryn’s face revealed her state of puzzlement. She could feel her brows furrow as she wondered on Jamison. He couldn’t be Unseelie. That would mean he was Fae, and Jamison wasn’t Fae. He was a shape shifter.

As if Bryn had said her very thoughts aloud, Baya answered.

“Shapeshifters, Werewolves, they are Unseelie. Before The Great Divide, all Fae were Seelie, just with different powers. Some could shift, others could control elements, but somewhere along the lines, Shapeshifters created their own court.”

“And then became Werewolves?” Bryn ensued, remembering the harsh words the water Fae used against Jamison. Ponja made it sound as though Jamison was the last of his kind, that the rest had fallen victim to some sort of degeneration.

“Something like that.” Baya agreed. “The shifters, -the Unseelie, I guess, is what they called themselves then- fled the Fae realm, and The Seelie Court hasn't allowed them back in. With out the absinthe, the use of their world, the Shapeshifters became susceptible to the moon, and disease. Almost all of them are werewolves now, save Jamison’s family and a few others.”

Bryn paused, for a moment she felt thankful to be around someone who wasn't trying to hide everything from her. Something like this, this conversation, would have been like pulling teeth to get out of any one of her family members. Bryn decided to press on with other questions before Baya changed her pace.

“And now he’s my guardian? That has something to do with him reading my mind, doesn't it?”

“I wouldn't call it mind reading just yet, but yes. Guardians have that kind of a connection with their Fae before they are bonded.” Baya said. “I can’t believe he hasn’t explained any of this.”

“Jamison’s good at not mentioning things.” Bryn said bitterly. “So why don't you explain?”

“Um- Well.” The girl broke eye contact to fiddle her thumbs together. Bryn prayed she wasn't changing her mind, deciding to be secretive like everyone else. To her delight, Baya continued. “One Shifting Fae is born an Elemental Fae’s guardian every century.”

“And Jamison is the Guardian of this century.” Bryn pinched her fingers to the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut. What more could be added to this complicated mix of magical, prophesied, otherworldly bullshit?

“In many centuries, actually.” Baya added exuberantly. “-Since the Shape Shifter's have died off. Bryn, If- if you allow Jamison to bond with you, he will be the most powerful Shifter of his time.”

Bryn clenched her teeth. This was what Jamison wanted, to bond with her -what ever that meant made her feel uneasy- and be some sort of Super-Shifting-Hero? No, Bryn scoffed. This girl was out of her mind. It was no secret that Jamison couldn’t shift. Not even when he was nearly drowned by those water demons could he shift like Ryder had.

“Are you sure we are talking about the same Jamison here?” Bryn asked. “He can’t shift. It Literally rips him apart. I’ve seen it.”

“Not until you receive your affinity.” Baya confirmed. “If you don’t Come of Age, Jamison’s purpose, his abilities, are nulled. Just like yours.”

Bryn’s head spun. She pressed her palms to her temples, as if to hold herself still.

“Baya- Right?” Bryn stumbled for the other girl’s name, and Baya nodded. “Baya, you’re going to need to slow down. I-I just found out yesterday that I’m a part of the this World, or that it even existed. This- This is a lot to take in.”

Baya frowned.

“If it makes you feel any better, bonding rituals are very common.” She urged. She seemed to be rambling, talking quickly with no foreseeable cessation. “Most of the warriors have a bonded counterpart now a-days, it’s just that normally, the bond only forms a mental connection- and recently the Elemental Fae have been limited to bonding with werewolves. You and Jamison though, you will share abilities. I mean, Imagine: a splice with the ability to shift-”

Baya went on and Bryn tuned out. Her voice was only a muffle in the distance of Bryn’s thoughts.  Bryn was still fretting over the fact that Jamison’s eagerness to get her here was self-absorbed.

“What I said upset you.” Baya stated abruptly. “Didn't it? You think he’s using you, so he can Shift.”

“I do not.” Bryn lied, astonished at how correct Baya’s accusation was.

“He cares, you know? He’s got a tough exterior, but- but on the inside he’s very tender hearted.” Baya’s voice hitched. She liked him. Bryn could tell by the way she said his name, by the way she blushed. “He went through a lot of pain to save you from that lake. He nearly killed himself from changing into a Water Fae.”

Killed himself, Bryn choked. When she reached deep into her memory, it screamed at her. I’m too weak for this now. I can’t carry you.

“He’s ok?” She sputtered the words. “He’s ok, right?”

“He is better now.” Baya hesitated. “But he isn't good. A full body shift like that- It could have ruined him.”

The guilt of forcing him to do such a thing rose in Bryn’s throat. Images of his hand crumbling from the stone fist he’d managed to shift into flashed through her mind. She cringed as she remembered he thick pieces of rock and blood that tore from his bone. 

“I just- I-” Bryn stalled, an epiphany interrupting her guilty ramblings. “If  I go through with this ‘Coming of Age’ ritual, Jamison won’t have to go through that-that pain when he changes, right?”

“No, he won’t, not after he gets the hang of it.”

“I’ll do it then.” Bryn rose hastily, fisting the clothes beside her. “I’ve been wanting to do it, I would have done it anyway.”

Baya left the bed quickly, digging through a dusty bedside dresser as Bryn hurriedly stepped into the garment. It was an ethereal off-white dress that hung above her knees in the front and dipped to skim at her calves in the back. An iron chain pinched at the smallest part of her waist and the neckline was deep, plunging all the way to the chain.

Baya dug out two thick metal cuffs from the drawer and thrust them toward Bryn.

“These are iron bracelet cuffs. You will need them for the ceremony.”

Bryn replied by quickly slipping the thick metal over each hand and around her wrists.

“The ritual will render you… unconscious. The iron will bring you back.” Baya said sternly.

Anxiety stirred in the pit of Bryn’s stomach. Unconscious. Iron. She tried to remember the Folklore she’d learned from her father when she was young, begging him for just one more fairy tale at bedtime. A wooden stake to kill a vampire, silver for a werewolf, and Iron to weaken a faery. She touched the cool metal as a test. Nothing happened.

“Alright.” Bryn nodded. “Where is Jamison?”

“Out the door and across the pews there is another door.” Baya jerked her head toward the exit. “That's where you'll find him.”

“Pews?” Bryn questioned sharply. “Is this some kind of a church?”

“Warm Springs Community.” Baya replied with only half of her attention as she smoothed out the pale bedsheets.

Bryn frowned, confused. She gazed around the room, taking in the rocking chair, the weathered rug at her feet and the rickety metal bed.

“What’s a bedroom doing in a church?”

“You’d be surprised the kind of visitors the reservation keeps.” Baya said, now fluffing a pillow “There are rooms like this spread about the town. I think the church has three. Anyway, if you’d like to see him, you can now. We can start the ritual afterward.”

Bryn nodded. She opened the door with a creak and poked her head out the old cedar door to gaze upon the nave of the church. Baya was still preoccupied with her primping, so Bryn stepped through the doorway. She had never been in an empty church before. She would have assumed the vacant room of worship to be eerie, but something about the stillness was comforting.

It was nothing grand, not like the kind of Church you might see with vaulted ceilings and arched hallways. This church was small. It was old. The walls were wooden and slightly dusty, The windows beside the pews were outdated, they looked as though one might have trouble opening them. The wooden floorboards were warn from the patron church goers, but it was warm, inviting. 

Sun slipped through stained glass windows, illuminating the dust particles that lingered above honey colored church pews. A podium adorn with an intricately designed cross stood affront the pews, and across the room was a matching aged cedar door.

Bryn paced speedily to the opposite side of the church, her hair feet padding against the wooden floors. She was so eager that she forgot to knock before throwing the door open with a loud bang. Her eyes quickly adjusted to Jamison, tucked tightly into wool sheets. His shoulders pinched upward as he winced at the sound. His skin was pale, purple residing under the swollen parts of his body. Parts of his skin were split, the blood dried into thick scabs. A gash strung down his forearm and across his hand, a deep crevice curled under his chin and crept across his neck.

“Jamie.” She flushed. “You’re awake.”

[eveniceburns]

SL 3 {@turningeternal and @winterblood_ }

                         Christian:

It hadn’t gone unnoticed that each day I healed, grew stronger, mended my body back together, that Winter grew weaker, her movements more deliberate, body impossibly thinner than before. She had given her last surge of energy to help weld my bones and muscles back together, fuse my broken wing back to its original shape. And now she likely felt my eyes on her whenever she was near, noticed the fake smile I plastered on for both her benefit and my relatives. My parents still weren’t used to their seven-foot-plus son with the black crow’s wings and otherworldly timbre. It took effort to walk like a human, talk and laugh like a mortal, speak and sing like the Scotsman I once was. But no matter what gathering of my family was taking place, my focus always drifted to the woman with snowflakes in her eyes and long ribbons of moonlit hair. They adored her as if she’d never left my uncles’ side all those years ago.

When Winter and I were alone, however, I could let my guard down. The Unseelie could come forth, the human slip away. Even the Sidhbha-jai didn’t affect her, although it would the other women on MacKeltar land so that I had to keep muted. But there was no need for fake laughter and smiles when we sat near the fireplace in my makeshift room, exchanged soft words and stories. 

Yet I worried for her so. Finally, I spoke with Dageus, and it didn’t surprise me that his concern mirrored mine. He had been there when the Nine decided to take action, and he had brought Winter here thereafter for her protection. So we gathered the druids, and I went to my chambers to gather the snaw fae. I knocked on the door before entering.

“Lass, are you well?”

                         Winter:

Breathing was harder, moving a difficulty her mind could barely comprehend. It was if quicksand grabbed at her limbs and flowed through her veins, weighing her down and trying to pull her to the ground. To bury her. She fought the weakness, the loss of strength and life in silence choosing to sit in the noise of this Scottish home with this family that laughed loud, spoke louder, and near shattered the windows with the sound of their singing. It was joy and life though there was an underlying tension that felt as if it could break at any moment. She watched as the MacKeltars orbited each other, not really saying what they wanted and averting their gaze from the imposing Prince in their midst. He tried, smothered his power and personality, curled his body inwards and clutched his wings back. He tried to disappear in the crowd, to be unnoticed but she saw him. Saw the awkwardness and uncertainty that she thought he had overcome. It twisted grief and something sharper, like panic, in her chest. A feeling that only eased when they were alone, firelight flickering across their features, voices soft but echoing with innate power. 

She was the safe haven for this boys, her lap a place for Dageus’s beast to rest its head, her ears for Cian and his troublesome brogue, and her ability to survive before a Prince and all of his glory. And when she left their sides to retire to the Prince’s space she collapsed into the chair by the window and let the icy, winter air wrap around her, stroke her hair and her cheeks. She was tired. Weak. The longer the Silvers were cut from her the less she was herself. There was no doubt that she’d be wasting away, turned to nothingness if this continued. Not even sure you could call it death as part of her would always survive within the Silvers. 

The back of her head rolled against the chair’s silken upholstery so her gaze could find Christians, a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “Are you?” She pushed from the chair, icy air following her as she stepped into the Prince’s shadow and let her dimmed but still color filled eyes stay with his. “Should we go to where your family gathers?” They moved like elephants these men, never quiet in their own home, never subtle.  

                        Christian:

Of course she knew, just like she knew my heritage and the innate powers within my form without ever having to ask. She saw the Scotsman, the druid, the horseman and the Unseelie Prince. I stepped closer, offering my arm to shoulder some of her weight.

"I am well, Snaw Fae. Let's go join the others."

As we headed down the stairs, it was with restraint and respect that I held back from carrying her form. I knew she wouldn't want the others to see how slow she moved now, how the light in her eyes sometimes faded. Before we reached the landing, I let out a blast of cold air, hoping my ice would aid her in our descent. The window opposite us frosted over, crystals crawling up the glass at if to decorate the frame. She seemed to draw comfort in my chill before, when I was angry and broken. I hoped now it might alleviate some of her suffering. 

We entered the sitting room, my uncles and father all rising when they saw Winter. I stayed upright behind her when the others sat. Like a beast guarding his prey, I loomed over her form, wings lifted but not spread, body hovering over her head. The Unseelie realm facing off with the earthly druids. The line had finally been drawn, my Scottish past, my druid family on one side. My future, Death, the Fourth Prince and his court on the other. 

"It is time we undid what's been done."

                        Winter:

Her hand rested on his arm, fingers tightening when her legs wobbled or her steps faltered. She could feel his want to help, had no doubt he’d sweep her off her feet as he had so long ago in the mansion if only she’d allow it. Amusement warred with pride as they reached the landing, for a moment she considered giving permission but then his power crept across her skin, ice trailing down her spine and leaving her skin glowing softly. Her eyes were bright with relief as a strength now filled her legs, allowing her to move down the steps with ease. 

This weakness made her stomach churn, she was connected to the courts, the Silvers. She was the King’s creation, made royalty for both the Seelie and Unseelie and left to oversee the mounds of the courts and the relics of power. And now she was tired, wasting away. Struggling down the stairs and clinging to the power of an Unseelie Prince to keep her feet. It both exhausted her and sparked anger within her breast. It was that anger and the loam of the Prince at her shoulder that kept her shoulders back, spine straight as she sat before the Druids. She would have her Silvers back. 

“I will hear your plan.”

                        Christian:

The discussion began. Dageus made it clear reopening the Silvers was not as simple as reversing the means used to close them. It would take more magic and stronger spells. Plus it would likely be disrupted by Ryodan and his band of fools. They would know the moment we tampered with their careful work.

"We will need to access very specific paths to reconnect the Silvers to our world," Dageus explained. 

"I can reach any or all if necessary". Being an Unseelie Prince meant limitless access, although it came at a cost. But I'd deal with the consequences later.

"That doesn't solve all our problems," my father interjected. "There's still the disease to extract and destroy."

"Can you describe further the dark monster who infected you?" I looked down at Winter. She knew better than all of us what had tried to cross over.

                        Winter:

Her gaze flicked up to Christian when he mentioned his access, a wrinkle forming between her brows for a moment before smoothing out. The others need not worry for whatever the Prince was planning, she would handle him when the Silvers re-opened. Would have the power to do so without exhausting herself. For the moment she focused on trying to describe the darkness that crept through her home and burrowed under the skin. 

“It is a living thing. I felt as if it was haunting the Mansion and myself more than infecting us. I am not sure how it came to be, how it arrived. I had not felt an unknown presence before it came for me. And then it spread quickly, it did not like my cold and it burned when it touched me.” 

She wasn’t sure what else to say about this thing, she remembered darkness and nightmares. Feeling drained. “I think it needs a host with great life to give. It sucked the land dry but the Mansion was still breathing. Though, changed.” She tilted her head back to up at Christian, he had seen the Mansion, felt some of its sickness and she lifted her brows in question. Not sure if she had explained enough of this thing. 

                        Christian:

The room stayed silent for a moment as we all tried to figure out what this thing was and how we could stop it. It seemed sentient, but only enough to pick a target to infect and reach for it.

"What if we sequestered it somewhere in the other worlds?" I looked at Dageus. "I could look through the King's library in the mansion. Read his notes. Maybe there are instructions on how to reseal the Unseelie Prison."

The dark, icy prison had been reopened when the walls came down between fae and earthly worlds. Creatures of all shapes, sizes, and powers had crawled through, monsters created by the King that had been locked away for a millennia. And if we could trap the disease there, maybe I could toss the Crimson Hag in there as well. I looked at my father, then down at Winter.

                        Winter:

Her eyes narrowed at the Prince, the white ring of color surrounding her pupils expanding and swirling until her eyes were a blizzard of anger. Rage adding a sharpness to her features and a brilliance to her moonlight skin. He would use this for his own purposes, she saw the wheels of a Prince's mind work. Saw a flicker of thought in his eyes. She knew why he fought for the Silvers to be opened and it was not her, it was that damned Hag and his rage towards being her captive. A ruby lip curled to bare a sharp canine. “You’ll remove that wickedness from my home Prince.” There was no room for argument in her soft but deadly voice, her words holding power in this room. 

The Druids held their breath, their eyes a weight on her that she ignored. There was a need to argue, a feeling that thickened the air but they would not speak. Not in this moment when her control was taut. When she was ready to snap. And she had counters to their arguments that she offered in a quiet, commanding voice. “This sickness came from within, most likely from that prison. It would escape again and spread until everything within my Silvers was sucked dried and it had nowhere to go but out. How long do you think your humans would survive? How long would your earth survive?”

                        Christian:

The sharp teeth revealed by the snaw fae, paired with those wicked iced eyes challenged the Unseelie Prince, drew him to the surface. My uncles and father went still, as if to hide from the predators closing in. My wings lifted, spreading out across the room. They filled half the space up, and for a moment, I was reminded of the King’s chambers in the White Mansion. One-half light, a soft snow, delicate for his Concubine.  The other half dark, infinite, an abyss that stretched to accommodate his size and presence.

Winter’s eyes were sharp daggers, her voice carefully controlled. She wanted the disease gone from the Silvers completely. I wanted to use it to my own devices. I had great plans for the mansion and for the once-indestructible Unseelie Prison. My own timbre dropped, the Scotsman gone, the Fourth Horseman alive.

“I will entomb the disease myself. I have both druid knowledge and Unseelie memories from the King. I am the perfect candidate to seal it away for good. Then your Silvers will be safe again, Snaw Fae.”

If she thought Death cared about the mortals left on this side of the Silvers, she was wrong. But my uncles stood close, and I chose not to reveal such detachment. We both could get what we wanted, if she would just yield to the Prince that stood over her.

                        Winter:

The Prince dared to challenge her, posturing with this pitch black wings curved out like weapons. He had lost the humanity in his eyes and it angered her further. The druids fell to the back of her mind, their presence lost as her focus turned fully to the predator before her. Her body uncurled from the chair, slow and graceful like a large cat readying to attack. With her motion the windows shook, icy air rattling the glass panes until it could slip into the room to swirl around her. The wind brought ice and snow that pushed at him, forcing him a step back, out of her space. She would not be crowded by this boy, naught but a bairn in her world. Would not be cowed. Her anger burned across her skin, veins a frozen blue amongst the winter skin, eyes flickering between darkness and winter white. 

“You have ego and arrogance that shadows your opinion. Selfishness to drive your decisions.” She stepped towards him, bare feet leaving frost on the floor that spread outwards, creaking along the stone floors and walls. “You look to do what is best for your plans. Rage and vengeance towards the King’s Hag. It has made you draft.” Her voice rose slightly but still she did not shout. She preferred rage in silence and softness. 

“The King himself sealed that prison and look what has been done. And you, a child in this world believe you can outwit and power the very being that created what you have become?” Her laugh was ice, sharp and cutting. Mocking. “I would expect more from you, Druid.” The last was an insult to him, his loss of mind fore the Princes were not about thought but arrogance and sex. Driven by animal wants instead of intelligence. 

                        Christian:

There are few creatures in all the worlds that could challenge an Unseelie Prince and survive it. One was a Seelie Prince. Ryodan's men wouldn't survive it, but they would come back to life with whatever ancient magic blessed them. The Unseelie King was all powerful. 

Then there was Winter. The tiny fae goddess rose from the chair in front of me, fire and ice. Her presence was so tangible it forced me back, wingtips scraping at the walls as I moved. The room turned to ice, my skin freezing and cracking with each subtle movement. My lungs ached trying to warm the oxygen, eyes watering as I focused on the snaw fae. My teeth clenched at her accusations, lips peeling back in a hiss. If she thought to tear me down, she would have to do better than that. She had history, no doubt. She was made by the King. But I was royalty. My voice dropped so low the floor vibrated.

"If you think to usurp me, fae, you---"

A sharp sound caught my attention. It was Dageus, and his body was waving, as if he stood in front of a funhouse mirror.

Christ. He was about to change. Become the beast Ryodan had made him. Suddenly Winter's challenge to my authority was forgotten, concern for the safety of everyone in the room taking precedence. Holy shit, my other uncles and my father were nearly frozen alive. Their bodies were shaking, eyes wide with fear.

"Let's all just take a breath," I backed away, retreating into the corner as best I could with my wings. 

                        Winter:

In her anger she forgot them, such a rare occurrence for her but this Unseelie halfling cracked through her focus and calm exterior. In her weakness she lost her control over her anger. If he had been truly lost to the Unseelie they would have perished, frozen because of her emotion. Long fingers reached for a tendril of silver hair to curl it around her hand as she took a step back, head tilting towards the humans, and Dageus, but her eyes remained on the Prince. She watched humanity return to his eyes, saw the Unseelie leak away and concern replace it. She did not have it, she could feel the beats of the humans’ hearts, the blood that moved in their veins. It was Dageus that drew her attention, the angry light leaving her gaze and body as she turned her back on the Unseelie to step towards the beast. She whispered, nonsense and soothing as the cold withdrew, as the ice retreated to her. Her pale skin absorbing frigid frost and air. “A fire, Christian.” It was a polite command but it was still an order, she may have accepted his truce but her anger still simmered beneath the surface. It showed in the snow white of her eyes and the clench of her jaw. 

Still, she pushed it aside to touch a hand to Dageus’s chest, feeling the heavy, too fast thud of his heart. “You taught me how to focus once, can you remember so long ago? You puffed up like a rooster with this pride of having the knowledge to share with me.” His heart steadied beneath her hand and he responded with a disbelieving, grumble of a laugh. She moved to the others next, touching cool fingers to the pulses at their throats, drawing the chill from their bodies and swallowing it herself. Gaining strength after expelling so much power when she was weak. Those bright, icy eyes didn’t stray towards the Prince, her back still towards him as she checked what damage she could have caused, apologizing with her touch and with whispered words.

                        Christian:

It was too easy to let the King’s dormancy within us take over, to splay our feathers wide and go nose-to-nose in challenge. We were monsters trying to make civil decisions, it was not in our nature to compromise, to give and take. That was the thing about power. The more you used it, the closer it drew to the surface even when you didn’t need it. It became your shadow, always within reach, always right behind you. In this moment my shadowselves had merged, and we had nearly killed my family by just simply being in the room with them.

I moved at Winter’s soft command, tending to the large fireplace across from me. The embers began to glow softly, orange heat that took the edge off the blizzard we’d created in this barren corner of the castle. I did not look as she consoled Dageus, drawing him back into himself, retrieving the chill that threatened my uncles and father with a gentle nature.

“If we must draw the sickness out of the Silvers, how do we assure it doesn’t creep back in once the doorways are open?” I said as the tension in the room began to fade, heartbeats finding their normal pace, breaths coming easier.

Carefully, I rose and turned, concentrating hard on remaining /Christian/ and not letting Death’s glare slip free from my eyes. I looked only at Dageus, not at my family. I was ashamed for my outburst, human emotions like guilt and regret choking the Unseelie now buried deep in my chest. As much as I hated how it felt, I had to /feel/. It was the only way to ensure my humanity remained.

                        Winter:

“Trap it.” The cold settled under her skin, it followed as she walked back to her chair to curl her legs under her and sit facing the MacKeltars. It was with slow, even breaths that she banked her fury and was able to turn her gaze to the Prince. Finding him focused on his uncle, tension in his shoulders and his wings, tension from control and emotion. Human emotion. It made her want to reach and touch, to soothe him as she did his uncle but she curled her fingers against the arm of the chair and forced it down where she held the rest of her emotions. Dormant and cold. 

“The King trapped part of himself and his darkness in that book, why not trap this sickness in another of the artifacts? Kept and protected.” The tips of her fingers ran over the veins of worn leather on the arm of the chair. She was there for the binding of the Sinsar Dubh, it could be done. They just needed an artifact. “We can bind the sickness, making it near impossible for it to spread. You’re Druids, the duty to protect the boundary and the lands placed on you centuries ago. Can you not guard an object bound with power?” She shifted her gaze, now calm and blue once more, to each of them. She would not beg for this but she would not back down. There was a way to stop this thing and allow her home. There were cracks in the magic the Nine used and druids that crossed time and survived worse than this before her. They were all she had. 

                       Christian:

I blinked, both Dageus and my eyes darting down to Winter as she sat before us. I had never thought to catch the illness in a charm. She was right, the King had split himself and his knowledge into a number of relics, some living and some inanimate. We could do the same with this creature. Transferring it out of the Silvers though would probably require a living host of some kind. Moving through worlds could weaken the magic that caged it. Especially a living disease that could adapt and mutate. 

"Do we have a relic here?" I asked my uncles.

"We will find one," was their United response. We needed something grounded here in Scotland, something that couldn't be picked up, pocketed and carried out. Or brought back into the Silvers again.

"We need a living host," I looked down at Winter. "Something that can handle any kind of sickness and any resistance it might have to being moved."

                        Winter:

A grimace crossed her features as a thought of who could be that host flickered across her mind. Another human turned into someone he was never meant to be. “And if we had a host how long would it take you to find an object?”

Her eyes lifted to meet Christians before her gaze slipped away, she had the answer to their host but she felt… guilt. To reach out a being that was lost, lonely, that became something that kept him separated from all he loved. And now to ask something of him, to play on his need to help and connect. “Do you think this sickness could harm a host?” She doubted her own thoughts, she carried this sickness and it weakened her. Would kill her now without her other half but want about an Unseelie. Her gaze slipped to Christian again, this time considering. Her brothers were Hearty creatures and it seemed these designed Princes were the same. 

"You felt it, do you believe one of your kind could survive? For a short time."

                       Christian:

One of my kind. She meant a Prince. There were four from the light court, and four from the dark court. I wasn’t on good terms with any, Seelie or Unseelie, save for one. 

“Sean…”

Sean O’Bannion had unknowingly taken on the role of Pestilence, and his battle with the Unseelie within his flesh was still raging. I had moments of pure clarity, and could control--for the most part, the Sidhbha-jai and the unyielding power that ran through my veins. I didn’t kill everything I touched--sexually or otherwise--anymore. 

But Sean was still lost to his changing essence. Disease spread wherever he went, which meant he had isolated himself in one of the castles far off from the MacKeltars. It was still Druid land, but barren of all life. I’d spent some time with him, trying to help him find purpose again, to learn how to live as this new, limitless being. He rarely spoke, rarely slept or ate, rarely did much of anything. Even as his love, Kat, a Sidhe-seer, raised his child many miles away.

“He could hold the disease, but he hasn’t moved from the tower I left him in for months. I am not sure we could convince him. And he cannae be near the clan, the Sidhbha-jai is too strong.”

“Then we go to him,” Dageus said. “Do the spell there.”

I looked down at Winter, her marble skin familiar to the Unseelie Prince, my uncle’s voice summoning the Scotsman.

“It might be the best place to keep a relic we don’t wish to be touched by anyone. Disease guarding disease.”

                        Winter:

Her lips curled into a small smile as the Prince voiced her thoughts, knowing whom she meant without needing to actually say. Yes, Sean O’Bannion. One more human infected by the dark power of the Unseelie. This one far worse than the one before her, lost to the madness that was Unseelie. A madness she held, that Christian now carried. 

“Sean. He has been known to do the wrong things for the right reason. His heart is large, we can hope that carried into what he is now. As you have kept your humanity and love for your family.” The emotion for his family is what anchored the Prince, kept him from losing who he had been. She could only hope Sean’s need to help others, his large heart, would anchor him to the present and allow him to help them in their quest. 

“If he can gain control for a day, or even a few hours, he can carry this sickness from my home and transfer it to your relic of choice. Then you will bind it. Protect it from falling into the hands of darkness.” Her fingers tapped at the arm of the chair, exhaling out a slow, icy breath. The Silvers would need to heal after this sickness was taken. After Sean walked through her lands. Unless he could control it enough to only draw the darkness away from the land. 

“What relic will you use? The King used home items. Things of value to himself and his consort, they became relics after he gave them power not before. But they were sidhe items.” A wrinkle formed on her pale brow as she considered the druids, this was not her area. It was theirs. “I have items. Here on this plane, should you think it is necessary to have a Sidhe item.”

                       Christian:

I could only hope this would give him a purpose. He thought all he could do was destroy, but this would help others, help the very Silvers he came from. Maybe this would be the focus he needed to find himself again under the madness that had taken over.

“Let me go to him first,” I stepped off the wall and into the middle of the room. “It will take some convincing. What do we have near the castle that could be used as an anchor?”

I looked from uncle to uncle, meeting my father’s eyes. Och, how they were sad. So sad, as they saw what I’d become. Another piece of humanity took hold. I thought of my mother, how she’d ask about me and what he’d have to divulge. Another rock settled into place.

“There are some stone circles, ancient druid ruins,” Cain suggested. “Once we entomb the disease, the circle will be unbreakable, the bind holding fast forever. No living thing could tamper with such magic.”

The other men mumbled in agreement. We had our relic. Now we needed transport.

“I’ll go to him now. The rest of you follow. Dageus, will you escort Winter to the edges of the druid lands? We'll come to you when he's ready."

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Witches, Chapter 13: no seriously we are finally at the end of this Tenma Taro thing we finally are seeing the last of it.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

-

Isabella’s trial ends with her acquittal, and no indictment of another culprit. How could they? In the light of day, it’s that much harder to argue that the photos Athena has of scarred-up trees are evidence of a monster and not, say, a bear. (Apparently bears are pretty common out in the Vale and further north around Kurain Village. Who knew? Not Apollo, but Sebastian does, and he uses that fact.) They can argue it, and they do, and they succeed, but it’s a hell of an uphill slog with no real closure.

What could they do, anyway, to the real thief? Tenma Taro is trapped in a hollow iron statue inside a cavern warded with charms, and in a fae-induced coma. They can’t exactly bring it into court. And that’s even if a judge would let them. Maybe this one - a woman of indeterminate age, older than them and that’s all Apollo can guess, the way he couldn’t really at first place how old Iris was supposed to be, who looks like she was carved out of granite, stony and stern - would accept it. Maybe she wouldn’t. She gives no real indication either way through the trial, listening to all of their arguments with an impassive expression, and she asks sharp, cutting questions that throw both sides off-balance. If the judge who Apollo is used to generally trails behind the defense and prosecution, then this one is in line with them but a step to the side, considering a different angle. 

When court is dismissed, Isabella thanks them profusely in the lobby, cries some more, and hugs Athena. She's been terrified since they told her yes, they could personally confirm her suspicion was correct and Tenma Taro truly was the culprit, but with the most difficult parts behind them Apollo assures her she won't have to worry about the yokai running about the valley any longer. She stares at him wide-eyed, clutching at the wooden bead necklace she wears - surely another sort of lucky warding charm - and she tells him she believes him.

What does she think he is, he wonders, touching his eye. 

"I actually feel pretty good about what we've done these past two days," Athena says, flinging herself backwards into the lobby couch, slumping halfway off it like she's melting down to the floor.

"'Actually'?" Apollo echoes. 

"Well," she says, "considering what we made of it the first go-around, but we pulled it together okay. With help, and some bruises." She plucks at her tights and the material snaps back against her leg. "Ow."

"Maybe don't do that, then," Apollo says, vividly sure that some or another time he has had a conversation just like this with Trucy. Less and less coworkers and more the annoying younger sisters he's never had - was he this annoying to Nahyuta? He knows he wasn't, so this doesn't even make sense as karmic justice.

"Eh, it kinda hurts even when I don't do that," Athena says, sticking her legs out straight in front of her and bouncing her heels off the floor. "It's just the tightness of it, but what else am I gonna wear?"

"Slacks?" Apollo asks.

Athena snorts. "You know how hard it was to find a facsimile of a jacket, and skirts, in this color?" she asks, gesturing at her cropped jacket, which Apollo wasn't ever going to comment on to say that she looks like a high school student trying to shirk the dress code when Prosecutor Gavin still comes to court looking like that. "How am I getting slacks?"

"Mr Wright and I manage," Apollo says. "Try shopping in mens?"

"And just hem it, hm." Athena taps at her earring, sending it swinging back and forth. He hasn't ever yet seen her wearing an earring in the other ear, just that crescent, and he wonders whether the other hole closed itself up, she lost the matching piece, or it's a clip-on. "And there'd be pockets to start with, too! Magnifico!"

"You have pockets already," Apollo says. "I've seen you stash food in them."

"I sewed them in," she explains. "One of my - my best friend when I was young, before I moved away, her grandmother taught her how to sew practically from birth, and I picked it up from her, how to modify stuff. Haven't learned to make my own clothes, otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation. Just—" She reaches into her skirt pocket and pulls out a granola bar.

"Clever," Apollo says. "All I've learned from my best friend is tracking salt all across the apartment floor when you step in your own salt circle" - or really it's just a line across the threshold - "and a lot about constellations." And astrology, but that wasn't learned so much from Clay as it was learned to annoy Clay. Okay, maybe that's why these annoying younger sisters are happening as comeuppance, even though Clay is four months younger than Apollo (by the guesstimated birthday Datz picked out) and is generally much worse to Apollo on a regular basis. "Yours is more practical."

"Is the salt circles because he's trying to summon a demon or keep the demons away?" Athena asks. 

"The latter."

"Could we theoretically just have gotten a salt lick and tossed it at Tenma Taro?" Athena asks. She grins to herself, and Apollo rolls his eyes at the image. Like that would work. "Or a bowl of Eldoons? But I guess there's probably someone out there somewhere you can impress with space facts." Like Ema, the few times she and Clay have crossed paths, but Apollo watches the smile fall off Athena's face. He glances around the lobby, surprised to find that it's empty still, that no one has entered, that there's no apparent catalyst to why Widget's blue has darkened. "Someone who thinks it's neat and not - deathly cold and empty and lonely."

"The ol' existential dread hits hard when you think about infinity, huh?" And yet looking up is still less terrifying than even considering what it would be to look across to the Twilight Realm, glean what the world of the fae is like. He asked Klavier; he's sure he can say that it's just as cold, and just as lonely.

"Oh yeah," she says. "Something like that. I'd rather take the ocean; it's still a cold abyss you might die in but you get anglerfish and giant squid with it." Widget lights back up to neutral blue and a second later flashes past it to cheery green. "And penguins! Does outer space have penguins? Check and mate!" 

"I am not going to argue to the existence of space penguins, no," Apollo says. He doesn't know of any penguin constellations; off the top of his head, there's a swan, and an eagle, and one summer Nahyuta charted a warbaa'd that Apollo no longer remembers how to find.

"Man, what kind of a lawyer are you if you can't even do that?" 

Kay announces her arrival with the nonsense she's made herself known for. She proved herself a detective as competent as any other on the stand today, self-assured as she always is but with seriousness she didn't even muster in their life-or-death struggle against Tenma Taro. When called on a contradiction, she swings back with ferocity, without waiting for the prosecution to square it away himself. She forced Apollo to stay on his toes, kept the case moving, up until Sebastian had to make an explanation that didn’t quite mesh with what Kay had argued, and there Apollo drove the wedge to split open the case. They sit almost on the same wavelength and work well together, miles better than Fulbright and Blackquill or Ema and Klavier, but Kay can lunge forward impulsively and Sebastian hesitate to overthink; Apollo remembers being forced to object to one of Athena's conclusions and sympathizes with the way they fall out of sync.

But the trial is over, the verdict passed, and Kay is Kay, off-hours, Detective Faraday no longer.  "Yeah, yeah, we handed that one to you," she says with a sharp grin that suggests she might not be speaking seriously, if the red flash of light that frames her lips doesn't give Apollo that hint. "Next time, we'll kick your ass." Competitiveness lingers, though. "Next time, when we're all not partying it up with the actual monster behind the thing and getting con-cu-ussed!" Her voice pitches into a sing-song at the end as she points at herself with both thumbs. "No biggie, really. You got a job to do so you do it, y'know? Like I investigated a crime scene while concussed and amnesiac, once."

"You what?" Widget yelps, and Athena is too shocked to try and stifle it. Apollo lets that stand as the only response. Sometimes it’s hard to wrap his head around Kay, especially because he knows she’s not lying.

“It wasn’t even your job then,” Sebastian says. Apollo isn’t surprised by his arrival, only that he wasn’t immediately beside Kay when she came bounding in. “It wasn’t even her job then.” He directs his statement directly at Apollo and Athena now. “She was just tagging along with Prosecutor Edgeworth.”

“And I was born to investigate, my dudes,” Kay replies, tipping herself backwards onto the couch, next to Athena. “Though maybe not any more today. I’ve got a headache.”

“You’d better be planning on going home and taking a nap after this.” 

Apollo jumps; Kay flinches, sitting up forward, and so does Athena, who loses the last of her tenuous balance and slides to the floor. Apparently none of them had been warned that Phoenix would be in attendance. 

The surprise now passed, Kay sinks back into the couch. “Yeah yeah, sure thing, Dad.”

Phoenix sighs and presses a hand across his eyes. “I’d tell you someone should talk to you about your lack of professionalism, but I don’t think anyone we know could give that speech without being a hypocrite.”

Apollo thinks himself plenty professional, but the trouble is no one - not Trucy or Klavier or Kay - responds in kind. 

Kay gives Phoenix a thumbs-up. “I didn’t know you were planning to come, Boss,” Athena says. 

“It was more a whim than a plan, really.” Phoenix gives them a small smile. “Had to make sure you were all keeping up the good work in the courtroom, too.” Kay shoots him another thumbs up. Sebastian fidgets like he doesn’t know if he should take Phoenix seriously, if he really did doubt how the trial would go. Apollo wishes he had some advice about understanding Phoenix to offer. After nearly a year, he does not. 

“If it isn’t Phoenix Wright, the man of the hour.”

Apollo knows that voice only because he spent the last several hours hearing her speak: the judge, still with her gavel in hand, tapping it against her palm. Her black hair sits immaculately braided into a crown atop her head, and her layered white cloak flutters delicately for several seconds after she stops moving. “Hello, Judge Courtney,” Phoenix says. Of course he knows her by name too; doesn’t he know everyone in the legal world? “Long time, no see.”

“Indeed it has been,” Courtney agrees. “I expect to see you soon again behind the bench, yes? Having made your latest turnabout last year.”

“Is there anyone who hasn’t been told that I’m retaking the Bar?” Phoenix asks, turning his eyes and hands pleadingly ceilingward. 

“Oh yeah, that’s really soon, isn’t it?” Athena asks. “Next week? You should probably be panicking more.”

“If that’s your official analytical psychology-based advice…” Phoenix shrugs again. Athena frowns, apparently considering whether she wants that to be her actual stance on the matter. “Anyway, Courtney, can I assume that you were put on this trial for a reason?”

“You may assume whatever you like,” she replies. “Though I do wish to speak to you about this entire matter, if you have the time.”

“I do have to run pretty soon,” Phoenix says, “but if you’re heading out too, then yeah, sure.” He turns toward the door, stops, and adds, “Why do I have this horrible feeling of dread already?”

“That’s your problem, not mine,” Courtney says. Her next words are directed at Apollo and Athena. “Mr Justice, Ms Cykes, I’ve heard promising things of you both. Forgive me for brushing you off in this moment, and for not introducing myself properly. You may call me Justine Courtney.”

A part of Apollo that considers itself both weary and savvy thinks that he should have expected it. 

Outside of a trial he’s surely allowed to address a judge by name. He knows this. “It’s very nice to meet you, Your Honor,” he says. Nailed it, but has anyone ever had problems born of being too respectful of the fae?

(Actually, probably. He’ll ask Clay if he’s ever heard of that one.)

“Oh!” Athena jumps like someone just hit her in the ribs. “Nice to meet you!” She flashes a nervous smile, having now remembered basic manners. 

Courtney smiles. It’s almost imperceptible; Apollo wouldn’t consider the expression on her face a smile if he hadn’t just watched the corners of her mouth twitch upwards a minuscule amount. “Sebastian has told you of me, I see.”

“Huh?” Athena asks, her fearful grin still frozen in place. “Why would you think that?”

“Those expressions of terror on both your faces tell me you surely know something of me.” There, more obviously a smile. “I assure you, unless you commit a crime, you have nothing to fear from me.”

Athena’s shoulders sag with relief. “Oh,” Apollo says. “Um. Thanks.”

“Good day to you all.”

She has barely left with Phoenix when Athena rushes over to the lobby doors, putting her ear up to the crack between them. “What?” she asks Apollo’s glare. “They might have something interesting to say! This isn’t a crime!”

“Just horribly impolite,” Apollo says. And fae society is founded on a thin veneer of politeness, with terrible consequences for its breaking. He might have thrown some eighty percent of his self-preservation instincts to the wind with Tenma Taro, but Athena is extra ridiculous. 

A minute passes. Athena’s forehead creases, her eyes narrowing. “Well?” Kay asks. 

“They’re just talking about their kids,” Athena says, and her disappointment couldn’t be more obvious if both she and Widget screamed it. 

-

“And what’s John up to, then? Shit, how old is he now, even? Nineteen?”

“Twenty-one, actually.”

“Where’s the time even go?” Trucy turned sixteen early in the spring and since then he’s had the nagging feeling that the world is ending. Isn’t she still the baby in his locket? Sometimes he thinks about how that little girl in pink, her round face and the eyes too big for it, is the last memory Zak had of her; he never got to see her grow up. (Never bothered to.) And here’s Phoenix, the one who gets to, dreading it. Funny thing, fatherhood. 

“I have no idea,” Courtney replies. And they say it’s only in the Twilight Realm that time works differently. “He’s taking a bit of a hiatus, you could say, from acting, considering what he wishes to do next. He’s concerned if he doesn’t do something he’ll be typecast for life in kaiju movies as the one human who the monster finds fondness for.” With a chuckle and a shake of her head, she adds, “Though I suppose there is some art imitation of life in that.”

“I wasn’t gonna be the one to say that,” Phoenix says. Think it, certainly, but say it? No. “Though you’re up to maybe half a dozen humans now?”

She raises her eyebrows but smiles and accepts the joke for what it is - a joke, and not Phoenix counting up her family, acquaintances, and coworkers and deciding which she presumably likes enough to spare when she smashes up Los Tokyo, which Phoenix would swear is a city name he once heard in one of those movies when he and Trucy went. “Something close to that, perhaps.” She smacks her gavel into the center of her palm and her long nails, even now reminiscent of the claws Phoenix could see if he looked at her through different eyes, curl around it. “Now. Mr Wright.”

He’ll probably never get used to hearing his name from her lips; she’s like Mia in this regard, a creature of the Court so determined to perform humanity that she overcomes their cultural hangup on names - somewhat. Mia still tripped, and Courtney has her own particular patterns. It makes her sound like an extremely polite person, he’s come to notice: it’s Mr or Ms and a surname to everyone, first-name basis reserved only for John and Sebastian. 

“Why was I not informed of everything that was planned to deal with the monster Tenma Taro until after the fact?”

“Sebastian didn’t tell you?” Phoenix asks.

Courtney levels a cold stare at him. “Do not shift the blame. He did not, because, as he explained to me this morning, he was aware that I had dinner plans with John last night and thus he didn’t want to bother me. You, however, Mr Wright, have no such knowledge of my schedule but do have my contact information, and therefore, had no reason to not have kept me abreast of the entire situation.”

“That I think Sebastian is a competent kid who’s more than capable of handling this? Is that not a reason?”

Her expression darkens into a scowl, her fingers tightening a little more around her gavel. “If you think him so, then, pray tell, why you also called upon one of your... ‘friends’ to deal with the beast?”

Something got lost in the telling, but it’s a relief if this is all she wants to chew him out for. “No, I didn’t call on anyone, beyond, y’know, the kids - it was a decision they made, no input from me.” Trucy had said that she was glad for Iris’ help, though, and also that Iris was terrifying, and Edgeworth gripped the steering wheel hard enough that his knuckles went white.

Courtney’s brow does not relax. “And that does not concern you? You may be content to place your child into the hands of one of Them, but do not expect me to be so nonchalant about mine.”

“I’d argue that Sebastian isn’t your child, but you have that look that says you would argue that on a technicality.”

“I in fact could,” she replies. “But you know as well as I that you are arguing on a technicality yourself, rather than address my concern.”

Phoenix glances back up the stairs. He doesn’t know how far Athena’s hearing ranges, but he does know that she’s damnably curious, and when it’s that easy to eavesdrop, he wouldn’t put it past her. “I’d need to fully grasp your concern to make an actual rebuttal. I mean, I understand in some capacity - they’re the royalty.” If he remembers the timeline, which he’s not sure he does, Courtney would have left the Court before Morgan’s incarceration. She would have known it as the nightmare it was under Elise’s absence and Morgan’s ambitions, and he can’t fault her for being wary of the next generation of women to rule over that den of vipers. 

“No,” she says. “That is not why. Mystics or no, I do not trust any of my kind who claim to love humans but then return to those frigid halls.”

How many stolen children had she known - disregarded, perhaps, back then - before John came into her care? She without a doubt knows what would have become of him had she raised him in the Twilight Realm. Thalassa and Klavier have gifts not worth the scars. Even a kindly fae guardian couldn’t protect a human child there. 

“I’d tend to disagree there, because they’re the Mystics,” Phoenix says. The courthouse doors swing closed behind them and they step into the bright sunlight and the noise. It’s easier to talk out on the street, their voices drowned out by the rest of the bustle. This is Los Angeles, crowded and noisy and the background radiation of Kurain, the fallout that drifted here, makes the city so damn weird that this conversation can’t be breaking the top ten of most bizarre conversations happening within this hour. “If they were just anyone, like you, I’d say yeah, leaving is best. But they’re at the top of the food chain - don’t they owe it to try and change things from up there?”

Had Elise and her fondness for humanity kept the throne, what then? Where would the Court be, anything or nothing changed? Or if Maya and Pearl left now, if Iris had kept to her self-exile, what would become of it? At the end of their bloodline, who would take their place as Mystics, on the throne, as Queen? How much worse can it get? (Better not to ask. Don’t tempt fate.)

“Would you tell Edgeworth to abandon the title of chief prosecutor because half the office is corrupt?” Phoenix adds. “That’s exactly why we need him there.”

On the sidewalk, Courtney stops to face him. “And I find that a very imperfect analogy,” she says.

“It’s an analogy - if it were perfect, it would be—”

She holds a finger up to her lips. Sometimes Phoenix would swear it’s more than just intimidation in that motion and that she puts magic behind it to make him or anyone trip over his tongue when she has a point she wants to make. “We need a justice system; we need prosecutors. We need to reform, to shine light on the shadows, for all our sakes. We do not need the Winter Court.”

“So you’re an advocate of fae anarchy?” Now there’s a sentence he didn’t expect to say. While he, and even Maya and Iris and Pearl, use it also to mean fae society as a whole, “the Winter Court” should, pedantically, refer only to their governance. He doesn’t know which Courtney means: that the fae hierarchy is unnecessary, or that they are.

“I am an advocate of us intermingling with humanity enough that we fade away entirely.”

The latter, then. “You might get that wish,” Phoenix says. He’s heard from Maya that they kill each other faster than they have children, and then those children that do happen get swapped for human ones, and every decision is one of impulse, a whim in the moment, no forethought, no concern for the repercussions, the inevitable societal collapse. And Maya has never sounded grieved by this. It’s a simple fact. Their dynasty will end with a whimper: that is their prophecy, and a self-inflicted one.

“I look forward to it. In the meantime, though, I must as of your ‘friends’ - do they think change is needed in the Court? Do they understand what it is that is so wrong there, or do they humor you and our morality as one would humor a child or a favorite pet?”

“If it’s getting a cat that makes you get rid of the toxic waste in your backyard, that’s still a good thing, right?” he asks irritably. If it ends at the same damn place— “You aren’t something different from them either, you know.”

“Of course I know.” She straightens her back, drawing herself up even straighter, and her cloak rustles, its movements continuing independently of her body, belying the two pairs of wings that under glamour pretend to be a garment. So far as he knows she can’t support herself to fly with those wings. They’re an aesthetic, part of her self-styled position as an avenging archangel of the Goddess of Law. “But that means I know how they are, as I once was. A question for you, Mr Wright, that I mean in the kindest way possible.” Part of him doubts that. “Do you believe, truly, that you have made enough of an impact on them that when you are gone, they will continue to respect the morality that you currently ask them to live by?”

“I—”

Iris would. Pearl - might. But he hasn’t seen Maya in years because he was afraid that even with him present, here, alive, she would go against his wishes and enact bloody vengeance on Kristoph. She offered it as a gift for free, like a cat would turn up a dead mouse on the doorstep. He can answer half the question, that he’s made an impact. She loves him. That isn’t what Courtney wants to know.

“We’re a bit off-track from your main concern, aren’t we?” A feeble redirect, but she doesn’t look smug so much as sad that she’s tripped him up here. “You wouldn’t trust them yourself, fine, but the question of what happens when I’m gone doesn’t have that much in common with you currently being angry that Sebastian was around them, now, when I’m still in the proximity.”

“I am what they are, of the fae. Sebastian is a witch - is my witch, you might say. In the Court, we hardwire ourselves into a particular way of thinking, whether we mean it or not. To survive, you learn that all others are threats, now or soon to be in the future, and if you cannot get at the threat itself right away, you wage a proxy war and strike against their resources, their tools, and their humans - who you would consider within the first two categories.”

Implication: obvious. Sort of. Part of it. “Why would they see you as a threat, though? You exiled yourself. You’ve said yourself you’re never going back.”

“It’s an instinct. Even I struggle with it.” Courtney steps closer to him, allow the sidewalk traffic to flow around them. Maybe they should start walking again, get out of the courthouse vicinity before the kids catch up. “Seeing another of my kind, or a changed child - my first impulse is to lash out. I find it incredibly unfortunate, not to mention distracting. I presided over a case the other day that Prosecutor Gavin was in charge of, and I believe we both found that profoundly uncomfortable, no matter how we reasonably know that we are very removed from that life.”

Profoundly uncomfortable is a decent way to describe how Phoenix feels at this thought, too. “Oh,” he says. “I see.”

“Yes. You understand, then, my concern that Sebastian will come to harm? You friends may protect your daughter and your proteges, because they are yours. But Sebastian…”

Those two are Edgeworth’s, not mine. He said it himself, shifted responsibility for their lives, because he’s already failing to convince himself that Athena and Apollo aren’t his responsibility, aren’t his kids. Didn’t he tell Iris they were, or at least implied it?

(And then Iris implied that Kay was right, that she and Sebastian were Phoenix’s too, by saying that Kay had decided for him. Of all that happened last night, that’s an inconsequential piece, and he remembers it vividly.)

(Which, actually, even if Iris hadn’t agreed, there’s still another question raised.)

“Yeah,” Phoenix agrees. “But, they know Edgeworth. My friends, I mean. They know he’s my friend. And they know who his - his people are, Kay, Sebastian, whoever else. That he wouldn’t be happy if anything happened to them, and I wouldn’t either.”

“Believe me, I do like to hear that,” Courtney says with a tiny smile. “But that is a chain too long for me to fully place my trust in. Understand where my concern comes from, and tell me in advance whenever you need the assistance of Sebastian the witch as much or more as Sebastian the prosecutor. Can we agree to that?”

“Absolutely,” Phoenix says. He could’ve agreed to it without the passive-aggressive shaming but - well, she probably thought she needed to do that to properly make her point. To make him understand, she would have thought it best to make him doubt first. How could she trust his fae when he isn’t certain that he himself does? Courtney’s won every hand this round. Probably time to step away from the table.

She smiles. “Good. Best of luck to you; I hope the Bar goes well.”

“Oh,” he says. “Uh, thanks.”

And then he winces, and she raises her eyebrows. The whole damn conversation, he was reminded, he was extra aware, of what she is, and then he slipped anyway. One of the first bits of advice Mia gave him, to never say thank you to Them. It’s an admission of owing a debt, however slight, and thank you does not fulfill a debt. “I hope you haven’t lost your touch,” Courtney adds, and it means double now. “I’ve wanted to someday see you in court, given how highly the chief prosecutor has spoken of you all these years.”

Implication: she can’t believe that the man Edgeworth so highly respects is the man standing before her. (Or maybe she does, and the one here who doesn’t believe such is Phoenix.)

“Well,” Phoenix says, “if you aren’t the judge on my first case back” - presumptuous to say he’ll be back, but confidence is a key point, though he’s pretty damn confident that Courtney wouldn’t be the judge, because he thinks he probably sealed some sort of accidental exclusivity pact with the one judge a long time ago - “you can come watch. I’ll let you know when. Or Edgeworth will.” Edgeworth might make a damn party out of it if Phoenix isn’t careful.

“I will look forward to it.” Courtney nods at him, one last acknowledgement. “Until next time.” She spins on her heel and weaves her way through the people on the sidewalk, a most mundane exit. Phoenix turns his eyes from her back, stares up at the courthouse behind them. Always something new to ponder, always another issue.

But dragging Sebastian out anywhere isn’t in future plans, so most of what he needs to concern himself with vis-à-vis Courtney is to extend to Trucy her offer that, if Trucy is interested in performing on the big screen and not the stage, Courtney will smack John into being in a good enough mood to accept any inquiries Trucy might have. 

Small mercies, that among everything else, Phoenix’s teenager has never been a moody teenager. He’s not sure how he would handle that.

-

Trucy arrives at the office after school, beaming once they tell her of their victory, and promising them that they are becoming the go-to law firm for the people of Nine-Tails Vale and Tenma Town. How is one supposed to feel when told that he might be the lawyer on retainer for a haunted valley? Word-of-mouth advertising is just about all the Wright Anything Agency has, and Apollo decides he’s going to skip thinking about this unless it becomes a problem again.

In a way that’s becoming a habit, the girls tear out of the office when the clock strikes five like their horses are going to turn into rodents again. “I’m too busy on weekends,” Trucy says, and she is, often, as a real magician trying to reintroduce stage magic to a city culturally wary of both, “but I’ve gotta show Athena all the coolest places around town as soon as possible!” 

“Didn’t you grow up here?” Apollo asks her, and Athena shrugs, and she and Trucy clamber into her car and honk and wave at him and are gone from the lot before Apollo has even unlocked his bike from the rack. 

Takes some getting used to, still, the new routine. Trucy going home with Athena even though Athena’s found somewhere to live that isn’t the Wright family couch. Since Christmas, Apollo and Trucy would bike part of the way home together - she had gotten hers as a present from “Uncle Miles - er, Mr Edgeworth, he’s awkward about me calling him that in front of people that he works with, I think it’s like a professionalism thing?” - but now—

Well, he can’t resent Trucy if she’d rather hang out with another girl her own age, and Athena’s a nice kid herself, and he doesn’t know where this thought is headed. Athena had offered to give him a lift, too, but accepting a ride from his coworker five years his junior, for more than heading to a crime scene, definitely feels undignified. What little dignity he has left.

Trucy never bothers to lock up her bike when she leaves it here, saying that Mia would make sure it wasn’t stolen. And it hasn’t ever been, yet - the only thing ever stolen from this office, far as Apollo knows, were Trucy’s magic panties; maybe Mia shares Apollo’s disdain for those things. But Apollo would rather trust something solid, and he still meticulously locks up his bike, and he still locks the office door behind him when he’s the last to leave.

About ready to go, sliding his lock into his backpack, someone behind him speaks. “Little dragon.”

Apollo whirls around, reflexively raising the lock in his hand like a weapon, letting his bicycle clatter to the ground. Iris flinches away, her hands coming up to protect her face, as though she couldn’t flatten him without touching him if she really wanted. Would she look more or less frightening if it was in the light of day that he saw her charcoal skin and red eyes? Kristoph under the clinical lights of the courtroom simply was.

“Why are you here?” Apollo asks, slowly lowering the lock, because it’s steel, not iron, and is not going to be of use. Hell, even iron doesn’t feel like enough, right now, not when he almost asked what do you want, a question that could surely be extorted into wrenching something away from him. What do you want, inches from, what can I give you, and the fae, tangling the lines.

“I have a piece of advice to offer,” Iris says. 

Apollo leans down to lift his bike from the ground, not breaking eye contact with her. Not enough eye contact is probably an offense. Too much is also probably an offense. The winning move is to not play and it’s far too late for that. “Am I allowed to refuse it?” he asks, and then he wants to stick his entire foot in his mouth, because advice doesn’t imply something binding, and he could disregard it without telling her that. Because this definitely is an offense, and Iris’ dark eyes narrow. He’d swear they flashed in the light, not red, but a white shine. He curls his hand around the handlebars and squeezes until he can feel the iron ring digging into his finger. 

“Yes, but I don’t believe you are so selfish, are you?” She scrutinizes him with a hard stare, wide eyes and a slack, blank face. 

“Er,” Apollo says. If he wants to ignore advice from dubious sources and gets ruined for it then that’s his problem, no one else’s. “Selfish?”

“Perhaps ‘advice’ is not the way to term it,” Iris says. She leans on the bike rack and her nails when they hit it make the soft tink of metal on metal. “An assurance, perhaps? And not only for you.”

“O...kay?” Do the fae enjoy being cryptic, or is it not on purpose and simply an impulse hardwired, a manner of speaking they think nothing of? Or is it for the sake of dramatics - it would explain a lot about Klavier if needless dramatics are a key cultural aspect of living among the fae. “For who, then?” If it was for anyone else - Trucy or Kay or Sebastian - she could have just said it last night, when they were all together. Why just ambush Apollo?

“Your friend,” she answers. That means nothing despite Apollo’s very limited number of friends. “The changed child, the lost boy. He is far from mad, I assure you - he is not twisted only in his own head, and he is not the only one who have ever seen through a looking glass a life that could have been.”

“Oh,” Apollo says. He hadn’t lent much credence to Klavier’s thought that his visions were just a psychological coping mechanism, honestly, but if Iris has insight then he won’t pass up the chance to learn more. “So, who else, then, has had that happen? If you can say,” he adds hastily. Maybe she can’t, or won’t, the way Klavier clams up.

“Little dragon,” she says, and Apollo doesn’t know if she’s teasing him or scolding him with that tone; it’s something almost in between, and a strange uncomfortable familiarity. “You have an eye for the Truth and a brick for a brain.”

“Eh?” Definitely not the best objection he could make to refute that. Even yelling “Objection!” might have been better. 

“Dense,” she says. “It’s me.”

“It’s - ah.” Right. Should he have guessed that? She knows about Klavier without - surely she hasn’t met him? She knows about something he only ever told Apollo. If she knows that, she might know anything, and she could be talking about anyone. “Why - why’s that happen, then? To you and Prosecutor Gavin but not - not—”

Not me, when I could very easily have lived several lives unfathomably different from each other? 

(Not that he wants to see it. Not that he envies Klavier at all. He doesn’t know if his heart would hold together at a glimpse of a life beside his brother.)

“I cannot say with total certainty, but he and I share something,” Iris says. “A complex, unfortunate entanglement with the name and life of another. His twin stole his life and name, while I borrowed both from mine.”

He feels like an echo in this conversation, adding nothing, just standing here in bewilderment asking for constant clarification. “His twin?” Apollo repeats. That’s - one way of putting it. Technically they are the same age, or supposed to be.

Iris nods solemnly, lowering her eyes, her lids heavy and hiding them entirely. “It is not quite the same. My sister was as fae as I am - we were born together, she the last red rays of a setting sun, and I the shadow of the horizon when the light sank away.” She pushes herself up off the bike rack, no longer leaning in toward Apollo but withdrawing into herself. “And I was indeed her shadow. We were not the daughters our mother wanted - my sister was powerful but not malleable, and I was weak and loved her more than I ever would our mother. She cast us aside and my sister set her sights on power among humans, not within the Court. I followed, because I was sure I would not live without her.”

My sister was, she said. Was. And that’s enough to know before Iris continues, lifting her chin and shaking her hair back out of her eyes. “But she is dead and I am still here, because her cruelest deeds caught up to her and I, all she had for a heart, could not shield her. All she knew was how to shed more blood, and she meant to, and instead I asked her, would she please not dirty her hands further, would she let me try to fix this my way; she allowed me to, and for the better part of a year our places were switched. Our name was Dahlia Hawthorne.” She tilts her head, studying Apollo intensely again, like she’s checking to see if the name means something to him. He isn’t sure that it doesn’t. 

“And I failed,” Iris continues, “and she acted her own way as she had wished to from the start - and then she failed, was judged and sentenced and taken from me and then from the world of the living, and I was left behind an echo. For years after that, I saw - not quite like your friend, not the one simple life that would have been, but many. A diamond, and its every facet a different alternative. A different possible life for Dahlia.” 

She lifts up a hand, her palm facing the sky, her fingers curled just slightly around a beveled gem that appears in her hand. Its clear body sparkles in the sunlight and Apollo sees flashes of movement inside of it, colors and shapes and people. “In one lifetime,” Iris says, and the gem, the diamond, floats in the air a few inches above her hand, “I never was her at all. I stepped aside and let my twin do what she would and never cared about the darkness we damned the legal system to languish in.” She twists her wrist and the diamond turns with it. “In another, I was Dahlia and after I did what I meant to I stayed, and then my sister killed him anyway because she could not bear for me to love anyone but her.”

“So your sister was a monster too,” Apollo blurts. He hopes she realizes the “too” refers to Kristoph, not to Iris. 

“Oh yes,” Iris says. “She was a demon; she was selfish and cruel and manipulative and she would have been an archetypal fae queen had she decided to fight for the throne. From the day we were born until the day she was executed, she cared about no one but herself. And from the day we were born, I have loved her, and until I die I will love her still. She is my sister and she is me and I was her - it’s a knotted mess, is it not, when there is someone else who is and isn’t you, and a name that is and isn’t yours.”

Apollo nods mutely. Did your sister care about you? he doesn’t ask, because while Iris has been open so far about her life story, and it’s a valid question given the way she talks about herself and her sister being one person, there’s got to be a line somewhere and he doesn’t want to meander across it. 

“I never did see a life where I did what I meant to and escaped without incurring an unpayable debt, nor did my sister ever choose a way to hide damning evidence that was not pawning it off on a naive boy who has since willed his heart to turn to stone because he loves so strongly that time and again it breaks.” Iris snaps her palm closed into a fist and the diamond vanishes, but her eyes hold a far-away look softer than the sharp movement. “It’s hard to believe in destiny when I’ve seen so many disparate possibilities, but I suppose it must exist in some form, and he always destined or damned to cross paths with the faes of Kurain.”

She isn’t talking about Phoenix, is she? “Do you still have visions?” Apollo asks instead. “Or how did you stop them?”

“For myself,” she says, and that sounds like a veiled warning that this isn’t going to help Klavier, that this is all subjective guesswork, and the fae’s prying eyes don’t have much help, “I needed a certain amount of closure. To see again the man I had most wronged, to tell him the truth, and that to see in spite of myself and my twin, he had survived and found people who loved him better than I ever could.”

He can’t not ask. The question is going to eat him otherwise. “So, erm, is this Mr Wright you’re referring to?” 

Iris stares at him with lifeless eyes. Apollo rubs the back of his head and decides that the best way to play is this is to make a plea deal by naming his co-conspirators. “And we were wondering, uh, me and Trucy and - and Athena, and Detective Faraday and Prosecutor Debeste - we were wondering, are you in love with Mr Wright?”

“No,” she says curtly.

“Oh.” He’d still sort of believe that single word, sharp and clipped as it was, to be a lie if she wasn’t fae. (And if he couldn’t see when humans are lying, sometimes. Most of the time. Whenever Blackquill isn’t involved.)

“Why did you think so?” she asks, studying him, her head tilting back and forth. Apollo regrets everything that brought him here, his bad choices and his friends who are bad choices themselves. “A moon rabbit heard something she thought was that?”

That has to mean Athena, “rabbit” an epithet commenting on her ears, though why “moon rabbit” in particular? (Apollo knows that some Asian cultures call it a rabbit in the moon, not because it was a Khura’inese story too - it’s not - and definitely not because he and Clay spent all of middle school and half of high school intensely into Sailor Moon - they definitely, totally didn’t.) What’s that got to do with Athena? Trucy a firebird, Apollo a dragon - what does Iris think she knows about Athena?

“No,” Apollo says. “It was just a kinda vibe that all of us felt?” He expends too much effort stopping his voice from cracking into a fearful squeak. “Can we forget that I asked that and just move on?”

“No,” Iris answers. Apollo’s heart sinks. “If I agreed, little dragon, that would be a deal, and a debt you owe to me.”

Shit. He’s done it again, said something wrong to her again, and he’s lucky that she’s - kind? Has a steep debt or her own and sympathizes? Or is she hoarding his missteps even while she points them out, waiting until there’s something she can get from him? 

“Didn’t your father teach you to better watch your words?”

Apollo tries very, very hard to pretend it’s just random that she said father over mother or parents - tries to pretend past the sticky dryness in his throat that she’s not fae, not of a habit of knowing things she has no way to know and not of a disposition to select every word with intricate care. And he tries to pretend that the most he learned from his father wasn’t the shapes of magatamas and mitamahs, an edict to hold his soul close, but that the people he loves are going to let him down sooner or later, or later. 

(Kristoph and Phoenix just reemphasized that one.)

“Entirely different question,” Apollo says. Better to move on. “Why did you tell me all this and not Prosecutor Gavin when he’s the one who actually…”

Actually is living with it and isn’t just Apollo, on the sidelines, the one who knows so many secrets, about Klavier, about Trucy and the Gramaryes, and now about Iris. (One of the fae, and he knows something so - so - about her.)

“And just how much do you suppose a man who was so stolen and changed wants to hear, unsolicited, anything from a royal creature of the Court that did this to him?”

Royalty, monsters, and Iris’ twin, the monster, who would have been the classic image of a queen. What’s their relation to Mia? How many are part of this royal family, and does Phoenix know all of them?

“Ah,” Apollo says. “Right. But I don’t really think he’s going to be much more receptive to me coming up to him and telling him what I’ve heard from one of the fae who impossibly knows things about him that she’s got know way of knowing!”

“Everyone you meet who’s magic brushes something off on you,” Iris explains. “Distinct traces, and one can learn a lot about someone else if she knows how to read it. And I am very familiar with your friend’s particular problem to recognize it.”

(If she sees all this about Klavier, could she tell Apollo what Dhurke is? And Nahyuta? If he wants information from her, what payment would she demand in return? Does he even want to know this?)

“It’s still creepy,” Apollo says. “And I’m not—” Not what? Equipped to handle any of this bugfuckery? Responsible for Klavier in any way? He’d like to be able to help him, sure, but this is - how much would it actually help?

Iris waits for him to finish the thought. 

“We’re barely friends,” Apollo adds, because she really looks like she’s going to stand there silently until he can stumble though some more words. “What am I supposed to do? Say ‘hey, I have it on good authority from one of the Fair Folk that you haven’t lost your mind, no she couldn’t tell you how to stop it, said some vague thing about getting closure’—”

“Come to think of it,” Iris muses, and dread coils up again in Apollo’s chest, “another factor in my visons ceasing may have been that at the same time of my gaining closure, or immediately after, I spent several years locked up in the iron hell that is prison, as an accomplice to covering up an act of voluntary manslaughter.”

“I - I’m sorry, you what?” 

With a tight, pursed-lip smile, Iris shakes her head. “That one is not a story that needs telling now.”

So her experiences are even less applicable to Klavier’s situation, then. Fantastic. “Why are you even telling me anything?” he asks. “I know you said it’s reassurance, for peace of mind, but, why?”

Why does she care?

“I believe that last night I assured Feenie that I would look after his children, yes? That I would not let them come to harm?” She sweeps her hair away from her face, back over her shoulder. “I am doing so.”

“I’m not - Prosecutor Gavin definitely isn’t - I don’t think that’s what Mr Wright meant.”

Her black eyes fix on him, stare straight through him. He’s pretty sure he knows what she’s saying. Do you think I don’t know that? 

But he’d rather think that she’s misunderstanding than consider the prospect that one of the fae has taken a kind of maternal interest in them. She’s still fae. Their families don’t function well, do they? She’s got to be expecting something in return, see something useful in them.

And Apollo’s not going to be anyone’s human weapon. 

“At any rate,” she says, finally ending that chilling silence that can’t have been more than ten seconds but also felt like it lasted about a thousand years, “you have more information now. Use it if you see the opportunity, as you judge fit and deem best. You know him better than I do.”

That can’t be hard, and doesn’t mean much. Apollo still doesn’t know how he’s supposed to say anything. It would be nice to give Klavier some reassurance that he isn’t cracked in the head more than any man who makes those deliberate aesthetic choices has to be, but this would probably just make him more paranoid. It’s making Apollo more paranoid, to begin to know the scope of what the fae can know, like he wasn’t freaked the hell out and has been ever since Iris called him a dragon. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

“I regret that I know no better way to help than to put this on you,” she says. “That I ask you to be so responsible for someone else’s pain.” At least she acknowledges it. “You have enough troubles of your own to be concerned with.”

Coming from one of the fae, that is the single most ominous statement Apollo has ever heard. He decides like so much else, he’s going to ignore it. “It’s fine,” he says. Not the trouble part, but Klavier. It’s sort of like Phoenix asking him every so often - less frequently as the months pass and October is further away - if he’s heard from Prosecutor Gavin lately, how he’s doing. It’s the same concept, just with more mad fae magic. 

Iris scrutinizes him again. He doubts her eyes could be any more piercing when they’re glowing red. “It’s a difficult thing, to care so much for someone who has the same face as someone who so hurt you,” she says. “And a harder thing to see in a mirror.” Again, she sweeps her hair back out of her face, and the glossy red that hides in it the black catches the light. “I suppose I probably will see you again sooner or later, little dragon. Best of luck to you in the meantime - and if there could be any words that he might accept from a faery monster such as myself, I hope one day he will hurt less than I do.”

She’s fae. If she says it, it has to be the truth, in some way or another, but this one seems plain. 

Iris scuffs at the sidewalk with her sandal. “I wonder,” she says, “if one of my cousins purposely cracked this so circular.”

And without glancing at Apollo again, she vanishes instantly. None of the pomp of leaving the manor, no flowers left behind. Nothing but a gust of cold air. 

-

Apollo has been home for half an hour when he realizes something else he did wrong. Like a note that would have been left in the margins of one of his clunky middle school essays, reminding him to watch his tenses. What he should have asked Iris was, have you at any point been in love with Mr Wright? 

[eveniceburns]

  SL 1 {@turningeternal and @winterblood_ }

                         Christian:

I knew my way through the Silvers so well now that it was like returning to the home my parents raised me in. The streets were familiar, the homes unchanged. You could find your way with your eyes closed.

That familiarity was now a weakness, as I'm nearly at the White Mansion before I realized something was wrong. My mind was busy planning, plotting the demise of the Crimson Hag. I hadn't forgotten the delirium-inducing torment she delivered to me as her captive, the endless slicing of her knitting needles as she flayed my insides and sewed them into her gown again and again. 

She now had a Seelie Prince to torture, a fine distraction that I would use to capture her. With the help of my Druid uncles, we would bring the hag here, to the mansion, where the Unseelie King worked endlessly to recreate the Song of Making. We would cage her here, where I could build on the King's experiments. 

But the Mansion was sick. Dark ink was spreading like wildfire, charring the walls and ceilings. The pristine white was soiled, mud slung across bright marble and glass. My wings exploded behind me, a blizzard erupting across my skin. 

“What are you,” I demanded as my storm blew the doors in, landing in the foyer. It stunk like moss and burnt clay, a torrid humidity that caused condensation to form over my face and arms.

                         Winter:

Irritation itched under her skin and curled in her chest to rest heavy and distracting, she found herself fighting back the darkness. Constantly putting her hands on these walls and walking barefoot through the halls to bring back the glory and light of the Mansion. She was growing tired, scared once more that this haunting would take her. It taunted her with its creak of pipes in her rooms, the stain of her blood that would not be removed from the marble. She did not sleep. She did not leave. She wandered these halls leaving behind a glisten of ice and veins of light that spread slowly, barely keeping the shadows at bay. Today they reached for her, pulled at her silvery hair and cut at her skin until her jaw hurt from the grind of her teeth. Her head aching from the tension. She was crouched with her knees to her chest and her long, shimmering hair a curtain over her face, a bright train of light and beauty on the blackened floors. It was here she stayed when the Mansion shuddered, vibrating under her feet as a storm of wind and snow blew through the foyer to meet her in the library. That voice, she jerked up, the most ungraceful she had been in centuries and moved to the door of her space to stare. The Druid. The cursed. Her gaze stayed on him, shuttered of the curiosity and emotion she felt at seeing him again. In this place. She hesitated in speaking, watched him instead, knowing she was a beacon of light in this haunted place, unable to hide. 

                       Christian:

What disease had infected the Unseelie King’s most precious place? It was a living parasite, slowly covering the flawless expanses of marble hallways with black moss. Long tendrils reached for the ceilings and around corners, throbbing with a pulse that set my teeth on edge. A faceless monster, a cancer of darkness that was slowly crumbling the White Mansion. I crept along its edges, boots silent on the once-pristine floors. This was a new creature, something that either escaped the Unseelie Prison or traveled through the silvers to lay waste. But why?

My head jerked around unnaturally. There. Against the abyss of darkness, a tiny snaw-flake shone like a star in the night sky. She held onto the doorway of the south library, a dove perched on the edge of a dead forest. Little ice crystals formed where her hand touched the frame. Her eyes were wild and big, hair untamed as it blew around. The blizzard behind me calmed, as if it knew if it blew too hard the icicle in front of me might snap. But my wings stayed erect, scraping at the sickly walls as I charged towards the bonnie Winter fae. 

She was his victim, the mansion’s demise just a symptom. A way to trap her here, a labyrinth of hallways she could escape to, only to be captured once again around the next corner. This would take more than raw Unseelie power to eradicate. I needed to draw of my Druid heritage. But first.

“Are you hurt.”

                        Winter:

She laughed at his question, musical and dark as a hand lifted to touch the pale length of her throat. The sound was swallowed by the darkness, making it shudder and creep closer but her eyes burned white and frost swirled out along the wall to nudge it back, away from her. It was always trying to touch. With a quiet hum her once more blue gaze, still rimmed in darkness from this illness that possessed them, turned back to him and a delicate brow lifted. She knew this being, had watched him as he changed. Watched him as he was trapped. He had more of his facilities that she thought he would and he was… powerful. She flicked her gaze to those wings then back to his face. 

“And if I was? What would you do about it, druid?” 

She stepped back into her library, where the house still held onto the warmth and comfort it had created for her. Her bare feet skated over the icy ground, gliding to her favorite chair by the fireplace. Here she was safe, here it only creaked and threatened but did not enter. 

                       Christian:

I lingered in the doorway as the snaw-fae slid back into the library, her laugh getting sucked up by the mansion before it could reach my ears. For some reason, the black disease couldn’t encroach past the entrance either. Perhaps the stacks of books held some magic unknown to us both. Perhaps she drew strength from the ancient texts. I wasn’t even sure of this… Winter’s origin.

“I would aid you, lass.”

She did not trust me. With good reason, I realized, as my inky feathers slid through the door behind me and once again reached to touch the walls. Humans were foolish to think we were anything other than monsters. But the element of danger enticed them, and we used it to our advantage. Fae knew exactly what we were capable of, and it was a dog-eat-dog world now that the worlds of faery and earth had mixed. 

But I was an Unseelie Prince. And even with her suspicions, she had to know I alone had the power to eradicate this sickly disease from the White Mansion. After all, I was the final horseman, and nothing was more irrefutable and certain than Death.

I watched her closely, with interest, as she took residence near the fireplace.

“Unless you do not wish for such.”

                        Winter:

She opened her mouth to reply, something full of wit and snark at the tip of her tongue but instead she exhaled a breath and rolled her head against the soft fabric of the chair. Her eyes were tired as they turned back to him, she was so very tired of this fight. Of these nightmares. Of its shadowy fingers scratching at her skin and staining her home with blood and fear. Perhaps this Prince, this druid, could help and perhaps he was worth more than her brothers. Perhaps the humanity still lingered somewhere under that Prince veneer. 

Curling her long legs into the chair she watched him, fingers reaching down to stroke over the wood of the library floors. Her preference, the Mansion’s gift, she touched the wood like she would a loving pet. Gave it a pat before motioning at the door and the man. Being. Prince. Death. She could feel the mansion hesitate before the door to space widened for him and his wings, dark enough she would think they would blend into the nightmare that infected her home but they carried a beauty to them. A light and shine that made them stand out, catch her attention. Lovely. The fireplace sputtered, tossing embers in jealousy and making a soft smile curl the edges of her mouth. She quietly shushed and reached to pet again, praising as her home made room for this visitor. 

“What help do you offer? Going to heal me? My home? Then what do you want? What is your price, Prince?” 

                       Christian:

The Winter fae took residence in a chair by the fire, stroking the floors as if they were a pet. The mansion seemed to know her, even the fireplace responded to her as if in conversation. She called it her “home.” Facts started to line into place now. Utter exhaustion colored her features though, turning a soft snow white into a fading star from the impending dawn. How long had she been fighting this creature? Too long. My fists and wings curled in anger, at the demise of the magnificent White Mansion and this bonnie creature that was part of it. My connection to the King was stronger than ever as I pushed further into the library, trusting the door would continue to keep the disease from spreading within.

I stood over the large armchair she had curled herself into, dark features lit by the soft flames beside us. She appeared even smaller as I stood at full height, body consuming all the empty space around us.

“I have no price, lass. This mansion holds great value and meaning to me. And if you are part of it, then you do as well.”

If she would allow me to, I could carry her out and away from this diseased place. Then I could heal the mansion from the outside with Druid magic.

“How do you keep the darkness from reaching you, is it your ice that holds it at bay?”

                        Winter:

She couldn’t help laughing again this time the sound echoing warmly in the room, music bouncing off the walls as her head shook slowly back and forth. 

“You don’t know who I am.” 

It was a statement, something amused and curious. Granted, this form was not the one taken in front of others, it was a face for home and hiding. Almost her true face. With a soft sigh, she tipped her head back against the arm of the chair and stretched her legs out to hang off the other arm. She was relaxed, not cowed by his size or his darkness. If anything she felt relaxed, protected. A sensation that was strengthened by her connection to the mansion. 

“I am part of this Mansion, of these realms. I am they and they are me.” 

Her lips curled in a facade of a smile, the dark ring of surrounding her iris inching towards her pupil before she blinked, white flaring and ice cracking along the walls and floor. She was touched by this darkness, it mixed with her blood, poisoned her body just as it poisoned the White Mansion. 

“If you are certain you can irradicate this darkness I give you free rein to do so.”

                       Christian:

All the dots connected finally when she explained her connection to the mansion and the silvers. She was a manifestation of their power and purity. This dark disease was a leprosy attempting to infect her body and its otherworldly extensions. Indeed, the beauty of Winter spread, ice covering the floors and walls. Her chill was magnificent, and it reminded me of the blizzard I used to blow down the entrance of the mansion just moments prior.

She was essential to everything I needed. 

“I can save the mansion and your realm, Winter lass. Your ice and mine can hold off the dark beast while I carry you forth. Then my Druid magic will destroy it from the outside.”

I could withstand her coldest winter, and she could absorb mine. I crouched down to her height, elongated arms and wide, open hands at the ready to lift her free.

“May I?”

                        Winter:

Fear slipped into her gaze before she could shutter her expression, the darkness had fought each time she tried to leave again. It punished her for wandering away, trapped her in a place she had always felt free. She swallowed hard before reaching out to rest a cool, pale hand on his forearm she let her fingers brush over the warmth of his skin, tracing veins up to the crease of his elbow and then up to his bicep to hold tight and dig in her fingers. 

The pipes rattled when she slipped her body forward to follow her hand and the walls seemed to creak, Mansion swaying with the force of the shadows moving towards this room. She shuddered at the wound, skin around her mouth and eyes tightening with tension but she made this decision. She curled her arms around his shoulders, legs draped over his arm and her face tucking against his collarbone.

“Quickly please.”

Her breathing had quickened and her body was taut with tension, fear, as well as anticipation. She was so very tired of this illness, of this possession. She dared to hope this corrupted druid would be a savior to her and her home. 

                       Christian:

The White Mansion wailed as she climbed over into my arms as if it knew what was about to happen. As if it was as tired from fighting as Winter was. I drew her close to my body, her slight form chilly and smooth, very much alive but somehow frozen.

“Your ice cannae hurt me, lass, Use it, all of it, whatever you have left.”

I turned, wings drawing around us as we stepped out of the library onto the infected floors of the mansion. The fireplace roared behind us in the library, mourning the loss of its caretaker. The dark beast reached for us immediately, clawing at my feathers as I shielded the Winter fae from its tendrils. Power surged from within, wild arctic winds attacking the sickness, hail and sleet swirling around us as we headed back towards the entrance to the mansion. Inside the cocoon of my wings, it was warm, calm. A spring afternoon on the grassy hills of Scotland. Outside a war was raging, polar and sub-zero, merciless winds battling the mossy tentacles of the blackened disease.

I didn’t need to see where we were going. I knew my way around the White Mansion as well as the King and his Concubine. Each step of my boots was sure and steady, even as my wings were flayed and torn. Soon we would be free of this place and into the Silvers.

                        Winter:

There were tears freezing down her cheeks, leaving lives of silver and blue on her pale skin. Her teeth cut at her inner cheek and her fingers cut into the muscle of his shoulders, heart thudding in her ears. She lost her glamour the longer she rested in his arms, skin a moonlit pale that shimmered like starlight, her hair a frosty white that was threaded through with sparkles of silver ice. Eyes normally a bright, robin’s egg blue now a mixture of winter sky grey, snow-white, and brilliant blue. She had no strength until his steps brought them closer to the doors, to her silvers, she could feel them past the barrier of shadows and evil. Felt it reaching for her, soothing her. She flexed her hands against his shoulders and exhaled out an icy breath, pulling power from her beloved silvers to press cold power outwards, a shield of sorts the pushed back the darkness and gave them reprieve to reach the threshold. 

Another shudder ran through her body, tingling from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. And she could breathe. Clear, fresh air as soon as they were away from the darkness and onto the dried, vine invested grounds that stretched out in front of the Mansion. The silvers shimmered and the air swirled around them like a puppy, jumping to reach its master. She was free and oh so tired. Ready to sleep as she had not for weeks, months, years, however long. But she could feel the soul of the Silvers radiating with happiness and its own relief. Could hear the Mansion keening out for her to return while also expressing relief that she was safe. 

A hand dropped from his shoulder to cover her face, blocking the tears that froze on her cheeks. She didn’t want this Prince to see her weakness but she was overwhelmed by the pulls from all sides.

“The Mansion, Druid, don’t leave it like that. Don’t leave it suffering”

                       Christian:

I wondered if the snaw-fae had passed out from exhaustion as I neared the front doorway to the mansion. But suddenly, nails dug into my shoulder, a shudder from the tiny female in my arms, and an explosion of frigid power so strong that the blast froze me on the spot. I surged forward, wings breaking the ice only to freeze again immediately after. It took a few attempts to get us outside, but as soon as we reached the grounds, the air warmed once more and I could move freely.

The Silvers welcomed us without friction, slipping through realms as easily as water through my fingers. I knew where to take her. One after another, we moved through worlds, until we stepped out into my earthly home. I carried her into my room and lay her on the bed. She was hiding from me, glamor falling away like petals from a dying rose. I stepped back, wings shaking off the snow that had collected during our escape.

“You are safe here, I’ve warded each room individually and independently.”

I turn towards my dresser and dig around in the top drawer, pulling out a chain with a silver charm hanging at the bottom. I tuck it into my pocket and turn back towards Winter.

“I will go and save the White Mansion, lass. That I promise you.”

                        Winter:

Her body curled into the softness of the bed and her hand moved away from her eyes, peeling away the lines of icy tears and letting them melt into the sheets. She missed the caress of the silvers but could not deny the relief from the severed connection from that thing, it had haunted her through the realms. Reached for her through the silvers but here she did not feel its call. Felt nothing but calm and the blessed pull of sleep. 

“But am I trapped here?”

The words were whispered, her eyelids heavy enough that just a peek of color painted color on the curve of her cheeks. She wanted the sleep though she was in an unknown place with a man she knew by watching not by interacting but something, perhaps his protectiveness of her home, made her trust he would return. That the Mansion would be freed of its possession. Could she leave though? Would he be gone long enough for her to rest and then slip away to the one she did know in this realm and did trust?

                       Christian:

Seeing her tiny form on my oversized bed gave me pause. Being nearly seven feet tall meant conventional mattresses were three sizes too small. I had to fashion one myself by hand to fit both my oversized figure and my six-plus-meter wingspan. She was an angel among shadows, curled up against my sheets, eyes heavy and bright hair feathered around her dewy face.

Her question wasn’t one of physicality, of locks and doors, no. It was one of morale. The Unseelie Prince’s answer would have most definitely been /Yes./ You are my possession and not to leave this place---this room--my bed.

But the Druid, the Scotsman, /Christian/. His answer was:

“No, lass. You are not trapped here. No one can get in, but you can get out. Via the Silvers or the front door. If you wish to see Scotland, use the Silver on the first floor. If you wish to escape to Dublin, the Silver at the rear door of the kitchen.”

Now that I wasn’t lost in a foolish semblance of control over everything, I could feel the ache of the mansion through the Silvers. I had been an eejit, too lost in the human world, while the fae one called to me. I wouldn’t miss these symptoms again.

“I won’t return until the mansion is whole again,” I backed towards the Silver that had delivered us, wings closing in to climb through it. “Rest, bonnie Winter.”