#the au speedlimit is 25mph and im hitting 120mph on my wolysayle bullshit

[shivasdarknight]

#wolqotd For those who rp, write fanfic, or come up with headcanons for your babies, what are some of your favorite plots or aus you’ve come up with?  Feel free to share photos of them if you have that too! 

...So I haven't really talked about this one, but I do have one AU stewing in my head that's a cross of two I have talked about.  Timelines converge and when Surkie thinks she's dealing with an imposter, she instead runs into another version of herself...yet there's something off. (more under the cut, as always)

So, it’s 6.X.  Surkie’s still recovering from Endwalker and trying to scale back the amount of shit she does - partly because she’s still recovering, partly because she’s trying to figure out what exactly happened when her voidsent Diarmuid partly fused with her, but mostly to actually spend time with her family (three fiances, new girlfriend, and three kids - two of whom are infants) + work on the project to give Venat a chance at life on Etheirys.  She’s clearly extremely busy and word of something like an imposter would definitely throw a wrench in that.  It’s nothing new - her ex Misaki took advantage of “auri woman who tanks” to do the same thing - but it’s still troublesome and something she has to investigate.

She takes Gwendoline - oldest friend in Eorzea, also newly her girlfriend - and Melisande (ally and friend) to go investigate and what they find is a Surkukteni that looks harrowingly like her from a few years ago - as in Stormblood era.  Startling green eyes, hair bound by a braid, none of the same scars, yet all of that same anger from that time.  For as scarily accurate as this other Surkukteni is, something’s off that’s bugging the group.

For starters, this other Surkukteni doesn’t at all recognize Gwendoline or Melisande - which is issue number one: she knew them both during Stormblood.  She then balks at the idea of being with anyone of notable standing in Ishgard, but especially the Lord Speaker and Azure Dragoon - had this truly been her from back then, she’d’ve responded bitterly about Estinien, but not denied feelings towards Aymeric as it was a complicated matter.  But things turn from confusing to bad when this Surkukteni attacks the group with a wicked claymore she conjured from nothing, much like Surkukteni’s own conjured weapons tied to Bahamut that were corrupted by Nidhogg - yet unlike 6.X Surkukteni who figured out how to revert them, this one was still a Nidhogg form.  When the clash didn’t end in an immediate kill, the other Surkukteni transforms into some warped demonic creature that all too resembled Diabolos - but Surkukteni killed him back in Heavensward.  Despite being so painfully similar, all of this was wrong.

Because this Surkukteni isn’t the Warrior of Light.  This is Heretic Surkukteni who loudly declares her bitterness towards the actual death of Ysayle - of whom she was the right hand of.  This is a Surkukteni who fell off the map to avoid persecution for heresy, this is a Surkukteni who lost everything and had no support net.

This Surkukteni sees the WoL Surkukteni as a slap in the face to what she could’ve had but was denied by the death of her lover.

Drag out fight ensues which results in the Heretic losing even after trying to call upon her primal form - modeled after an old Coerthan god, Hel - and getting her ass beat by the significantly more experienced Warrior of Light who’d not fused with Diabolos, but the eldritch Diarmuid.  Of whom she cooperated with rather than subjugated.  The experience of the Warrior of Light wins out over the Heretic and they bring her in to figure out what is going on, and all it really does is just deeply upset her as she’s reminded of what she lost.  Lillith is the Warrior of Light in that timeline, and he wasn’t able to save Ysayle.  Gwendoline wasn’t a Warrior of Light; that spell had never been invented that kept her suspended after her fall.

This is a (mostly) canon compliant Surkukteni confronting the one who spit in Fate’s face and clawed her way towards something better.  It’s an older Surkukteni confronting her younger self and that anger and trauma from when she’d still believed Ysayle to be dead - but this one wasn’t being misled and held onto a tangible grief that’d never be resolved.  It’s about WoL!Surkukteni working through her lingering issues after years of repressed trauma and grief as the Warrior of Light; it’s about Heretic!Surkukteni attempting to move on and working towards a future that Ysayle would’ve wanted which leads to her eventually joining the Scions.  ...Attempting.  It’s still Surkukteni and she makes dumb decisions, and very likely would end up with Cylva and spend Endwalker in the same camp as Y’shtola in figuring out a way to get back to the First.  But at least it’d be a healthier approach than WoL!Surkukteni’s fling with Cylva.  ...Maybe.

Anyways, this is the difference I mean between the two (WoL vs Heretic):