#the harmless series

[luxaofhesperides]

the beginning - danny

0.

The Lazarus Pit brings Danny back.

The child who went into them, however, is gone forever.

Danyal al Ghul is the soul who should reside in this body. Danyal has a life still to live and Danny died ages ago, old and surrounded by loved ones, ready to spend the rest of his forever in the Infinite Realms.

Something's gone terrible wrong, he thinks rather wryly, squinting through the cold green water that surrounds him. An ache echoes through his body and he brings a hand—small, a child's hand that shouldn't belong to him— to his stomach, where he can feel a large wound slowly pull itself together.

Did I get stabbed?

He means to continue the thought, but a sharp pain hits his head, making him curl up. He gasps and air bursts from his lungs, water rushing to fill in the empty space. Danny chokes, panicking, as memories slide into place, the lives of Danyal al Ghul and Danny Fenton fighting for dominance in his head. His lungs burn, throat working futilely to push water out, but there's nothing to be done.

Danny is a child again, and just like last time, he dies young.

1. So.

Assassins.

Danny honestly can't tell if this is a step up or a step down from mad scientist parents. On the one hand: he knows they loved him, as clumsy as it was, even though they loved their work more. On the other hand: assassin cult sounds like something out of a fairy tale, and while cool, is definitely not safe for kids.

And Danny, somehow, is a child again.

This really wasn't what he expected when he woke up on the sandy bottom of the pit. He's in ghost form, which is an unpleasant shock, but at least its familiar.

He is also, if his memory as Danyal serves him correctly, nine years old.

Kinda sucks that he died so young this time round. Didn't even make it to the double digits before he was taken out of the running.

He can't remember what it was like being so small in his last life. He can't imagine how anyone would look at a child and run them through with a sword. It's a cruel world he's woken up in. It's made worse by the fact that he's alone.

At least being down here without needing to breathe is giving him valuable time to think.

Danny has lived a full life already. He didn't really need or want another one, content to be a full ghost in the Infinite Realms. But going back isn't really an option, now that he's in a new body. The kid he could have been deserves to live fully, and the least Danny can do is live that life for them.

It'll be hard, but Danny's sure he can manage a decent life for himself.

Being presumed dead will make his escape from the assassins easier, though he'll miss getting the chance to meet his new mother; assassin as she is, Danyal knows her not by her blades but by her soft lullabies and jasmine-scented hair. The loss of her child must be hurting her deeply, but it's necessary. If Danny wants any semblance of a normal life, he has to leave her behind.

Besides, he's seen enough death. He doesn't want to ever be the cause of it.

So, he needs a plan for this new life.

Step one: get out of dodge.

The rest he'll figure out on the way.

2.

Turns out assassins weren't the most shocking thing in this new life.

No, that honor goes to superheroes.

Genuine, honest to God superheroes! With powers and everything!

To think that Danny once called himself a superhero. Ha! As if! He's nothing compared to the likes of Superman or the Flash or even Green Lantern. They're in another league. Literally. They're part of the Justice League, which has a whole slew of other heroes, and Danny is possibly their biggest fan.

Not like that's weird; most people in this world are huge fans of superheroes. Makes sense, since they're the ones who rely on their protection the most.

It does suck to know that his background belongs to that of a villain. Assassins aren't known for saving people, after all.

Part of him contemplates becoming a hero again, taking up the role of Phantom and joining the ranks of Superman. But he's had many years to come to terms with the loss of his teenage years and the bitterness that came with it. That experience, that life once lived, helps him decide each time that being a civilian is the gift this life owes him.

At thirteen, Danny lives in a foster home with six other kids. He's the oldest and has his hands full taking care of everyone else while their foster parents work three jobs between them to keep them all afloat.

When his younger siblings play superheroes, he gladly takes the role of the villain, swooping in with a blanket to kidnap away an innocent bystander that has to be rescued. He falls over dramatically at the end of each fight and praises his siblings' strength and teamwork, making them puff up with pride.

It's all fun and games so long as it only stays fun and games.

Superpowers are cool and all, but his came at the cost of his life, his health, his future. He knows, better than anyone, the price of being a hero. He knows that even Superman carries heavy losses on his shoulders, struggles under burdens no one can see.

He's lucky that the small town he ended up in—Luray, Virginia—has no heroes or villains. Too small a place to be on anyone's radar, apparently.

His classmates often complain about how they wish they could live in a big city where there's more to do, more to see, superheroes flying through the streets to protect them.

Danny is happy where he is. It's quiet, and small, and nothing like what he's used to, but it's safe.

That's all he really wants.

3.

Here's something that stays the same no matter what world he's in: Danny is a magnet for trouble.

If the trouble stopped at bullies, everything would have been fine. Danny could handle Dash, and he could handle Justin just as easily.

But the universe loves to escalate with Danny, specifically, which is why Danny had to reveal his powers when some villain-wannabe school shooter attacked his high school.

And to think he felt bad for Jackson when he didn't make it onto the track team.

Luray does not have a meta population. They're too small to have much of a population at all, and much of it is white which made him, half-Iranian, stand out even before he threw out a barrier of ice to protect his classmates a second before the gunfire began.

"Danny?!" his seatmate, Clarrissa, cries out in alarm.

"Everyone get out the window and run for it!" he orders, "I hold him back as much as I can!"

"You can't stay here!"

"Don't worry," Danny says, offering her a tight smile. "He couldn't kill me even if he tried. Now go!"

His classmates hadn't wasted any more time, sending him shocked looks as they escaped the classroom. A glimpse of his reflection in the window revealed glowing green eyes and blue mist wafting out of his mouth.

Looks like his time in Luray is up. He hopes his foster siblings won't be too mad at him for running away.

The gunfire stops, and Danny takes his chance to leap through his ice, intangible, and tackle Jackson, easily knocking the gun away from him.

"Monster!" Jackson spits at him, and Danny laughs.

"Bold of you to say that. I'm not to one trying to kill people."

He doesn't want to hear anything else that comes out of Jackson's mouth, so he knocks the guy out with a solid hit to a pressure point on his neck. Hopefully that'll keep him down long enough for the cops to get him.

Danny stands and means to leave, but something hits the back of his head hard and he's out before he realizes what's happened.

When he wakes up, he's strapped down to a table in what is undeniably a lab, and sighs.

At least he made it to sixteen before he went into another lab. Maybe in his next life he might even get all the way up to twenty before he's pulled back down here.

4. Though he has all his powers and a ghost form, that doesn't mean he is a ghost in this life.

No, he's fully a meta, which means meta-suppressing cuffs work on him.

It's not exactly a discovery he was hoping to have while locked up in a lab, but it's what he's got, so he has to roll with it. The cuffs are heavy on his wrists and around his throat, keeping him from escaping as a group of people in masks and lab coats bustle around, ignoring him.

His head is still foggy, though likely more from the drugs than the hit he took to his head.

He doesn't bothering talking to any of them; they don't see him as human, and Danny's dealt with enough of that in his past life.

Mad scientists love to talk though, so he still hears the gist of their plans: recreating the meta gene for normal people, making a profit from selling powers, getting rich and famous from their accomplishments. They had been using Jackson to get corpses for human testing, but they got Danny instead — someone they can harvest bio material for, a much better find than a couple dead kids.

If he had the energy to rage, Danny would have killed everyone in the room already. They planned to kill his classmates just for test subjects.

He doesn't want to be an assassin, but he'd gladly lean into those old lessons to make sure they never hurt anyone again.

But the cuffs and drugs do a good job of keeping him docile, barely able to think, as they transport him around to different locations and cut him open.

He's not sure how long it's been when they ease up on the drugs a bit. It still takes time for his body to work through everything, and he comes too with a throat that's dry and a stomach that hasn't had anything in it for quite some time.

The first thing Danny does when they start asking him questions is throw up on them.

If they wanted cooperation, they should have treated him better. This is fully on them.

It makes for a convincing argument for food and water and a bathroom break, at least, so he gets what he demands and takes care of his human body under the cold gazes of three scientists.

"You guys suck," he says conversationally. "Keeping test subjects alive is like basic knowledge. No wonder y'all suck at your jobs."

"Your comments aren't needed," one of the scientists says primly. "Get up. We need to study how using your powers affects your body."

They hook a bunch of different things onto him, then lock him in a glass cage and use the cuff around his throat to send jolts of electricity through him when he doesn't do anything. He throws a chunk of ice at them, watching as it breaks apart into small pieces when it hits the glass. The scientists scribble in their notepads, and when they look at him again, he flips them off.

He gets shocked again, but it's worth it.

The process repeats for another few hours, then he's pulled out of the cage, gets an IV stuck in his arm, and drops off into drugged oblivion before he has time to start throwing hands.

5.

It must have been months. Danny's not sure; it's hard to keep track of time when locked in isolation.

He knows he's fed at least once a day. He's been getting a tray of bland food at random times, but he's counted over 50 trays sliding through the little slot on the bottom of his cell door.

Turns out insulting scientists and their procedures is a bad idea, especially when he has the language to really bruise their egos.

So.

Isolation sucks.

But at least they don't drug him anymore!

The cuffs do their job of keeping him in place, and if he didn't have memories of another life to keep him company, he definitely would have lost his mind long ago.

There's other people in here, other metas. He's heard them screaming and begging for mercy. He's heard them go chillingly quiet. He wonders why there are so many superheroes in this world when not a single one has come to save them.

Surely at least one would notice metas disappearing and would investigate?

But no.

No one ever comes to save them.

So Danny needs to figure out a way past the cuffs, and then he can be Phantom again long enough to free the other metas and make every scientist involve pay for their crimes.

He just needs to wait.

He just needs—

6.

When Danny wakes up, the alarms are ringing. It makes his head pound, throbbing with each piercing sound.

He stumbles up, using the wall to keep his balance, and freezes when he sees that the door to his cell is open.

…Huh.

The hallway is bathed in red light when he steps out. No one's around. He wanders around the facility, searching for answers and only finds more questions.

There are other cells, also empty. Certain rooms have blood splattered across the walls and the floor, but no bodies. Labs are destroyed, broken glass on the floor. But every room is empty.

He wanders until he finds what must be a security room. There's a strange device dangling off a keychain on a rack, and Danny eyes it curiously. He runs his fingers around the cuff on his throat, feels the little depression where the collar comes together, and takes the rounded device. If it doesn't work, then it doesn't work.

But if it does work…

The cuff pops open easily, as if it hasn't been his greatest foe these past few months.

All at once, his strength returns to him. He has forgotten what it was like to breathe easily, to feel his powers come to his call so easily, to be reassured that he can take care of himself.

It's almost like coming back to life.

He transforms, settling back into his ghost form with relief, and flies through the facility in search of any other metas that may need help. He finds no one, but he does catch a glimpse of the outside.

The sky is so blue it almost hurts to look at. Part of the facility has been blown apart; rubble surrounds the place and the surrounding forest has been flattened. It looks as though a fight has moved through the area.

Maybe a superhero did come to save them? Rude of them to leave only Danny, though.

He continues his search, poking his head into different rooms and hallways. He finds a staircase going down and follows it into the basement. More labs greet him, and the glow of computers and strange vials of liquid leave him unsettled.

There's a green glow coming around the corner than reminds him of the Lazarus Pit he flew out of, once upon a time many years ago, and that's what draws him forward.

Tucked away in that familiar glow is a small body, floating in a tube of liquid. There's an oxygen mask attached to her face, but that doesn't stop Danny from recognizing her.

"Ellie?"

7.

Just like in one life, Danny is cloned. The difference is that this time, there's no reason for it, no insane godfather trying to recreate a version of him that will choose him.

No, this time it's from a group of scientists who should have known better, who decided to mess around with his genes, and brought his once little sister now daughter into such a cruel, dangerous world.

Danny barely remembers breaking the glass to get her out of there. He doesn't know where he found the coat to bundle her up in, flying out of the facility as fast as he could. He feels sick, knowing it's his fault that she's here now, forced into a painful, terrifying existence because he wasn't strong enough to save himself.

He's a runaway meta victim of mad science. He can't take care of her.

"I'm sorry, Ellie," he whispers to her, pressing a kiss against her head. "I'm so sorry."

She small in his arms. She barely weighs anything.

Danny blinks back tears and tries to find some place he can stop and rest, somewhere safe he can gather his thoughts and figure out his next steps.

This isn't like when he first woke up in this world, with both sets of memories.

This is Ellie.

She deserves more than just a wish and a half-baked plan for a better life.

She deserves a family that wants her, that can care for her, that can protect her. She deserves to grow up normally and not worry about destabalizing or being a replacement for him or being hunted down.

She deserves one life to be a kid and grow up safe and be whoever she wants to be.

Danny will never be able to give her that.

But maybe he can give her to someone who can.

8.

Danyal grew up with an assassin mother and a cruel grandfather who expected far too much from a child. He was taught to kill and be more weapon than child. He was taught the world was something for him to take, to protect, to water with blood.

Danyal was meant to be the next Demon Head, and the next Bat.

Danny knows he can't go to his mother. If they're both lucky, he will never have to see her again. Knowing his luck, he's already planning explanations for why he never went back to her.

Danny's father, on the other hand…

It didn't take much to put the pieces together. The notorious Bat is Batman, Gotham's vigilante and one of the founders of the Justice League. While a child would have been left confused by the many comments his mother made about his father, it was simple enough for Danny to line them up with what he learned about the heroes of this world and realize, oh, that's my dad.

It takes a few weeks of research, using public libraries with Ellie tucked securely in a wrap to his chest, but he's able to learn more about Batman.

The most important thing being that he has kids.

Of course, none of this is officially acknowledged, but everyone knows that the Robins are his kids. Current Robin, especially, likes to remind people that he's 'the son of Batman'.

Okay. Cool.

Danny has siblings.

Awesome.

He's… not looking forward to those conversations.

At least it means more people to look after Ellie. Assuming they take her in, which Danny's really hoping for.

But it's the best he can do, so Danny sets course for Gotham and hopes that just this once, everything will work out.

9.

Meeting the Bats of Gotham is a lot harder than he expected.

A week in the city and he's barely caught more than a glimpse of them. He can't dedicate a lot of time to tracking them down either, needing to break into grocery stores to get food for him and Ellie.

She's so quiet as a baby, and it terrifies him. She's only cried twice the entire time he's had her, and Danny spends every day begging her to hold on.

Time during the day is spent catching naps and researching common vigilante spotting areas in Gotham. He's got a map of Gotham taken from a library and has been steadily marking it up, putting stars in the best places to find a Bat. There are places all over the city, and Danny has no idea how to know which ones are the best.

The only thing he can do is wait at a different rooftop each night, clinging to Ellie, wondering if this is the last night he has with her.

On the ninth night, someone finally arrives.

"Step away from the edge," a voice demands.

Danny turns to see Robin approaching, hands held out as if to catch him. He's bigger than Danny was expecting. Which makes sense; most of the stories Danny got online are from when Robin was a kid, and it's been a few years since then. He must be a teenager now. Older, but still young.

"Robin," he manages to say, his throat tightening. It feels almost like there's a noose around it. It feels like that meta-suppressing cuff has clicked back into place, leaving him helpless.

"Step away from the edge," Robin repeats. "There is no need for this to be your last resort."

"But it is," Danny whispers.

Robin darts forward and wraps a hand around Danny's wrist, yanking him towards the center of the roof. "Why on Earth would you come up here? Surely you must have known that someone would stop you."

"Batman," he gets out. "I need to speak to Batman."

"What for?"

"I'm… I was told, once, that I'm his son."

10. Robin stares at him for a long moment.

Then he takes off his mask.

Danny knows those eyes: he sees them every time he looks in a mirror.

"Danyal," Robin breathes. "You died before I was born."

"I did. Are you…?"

"Mother told me about you."

So he has a little brother. If only he hadn't left first chance he got, he could have known his little brother, gotten away from that place before it hurt him too. Danny has made many mistakes since he arrived in this world. Missing a little brother is perhaps the worst of them.

"Mother…" Danny repeats. "She put me in the Lazarus Pit. I remember that. She didn't want me to die."

"I was born to replace you."

Just like Ellie.

So many mistakes repeating. He's never felt like more of a failure.

"Batman. Our father. He treats you well? You are safe with him?"

Robins brows furrow, but he nods, which is enough for Danny. "Yes. Of course. Isn't that why you're here now?"

"I'm not asking for me." Danny carefully, gently, unwraps Ellie. "I'm asking for her. Please, take care of her. She deserves more than I can give her. Ellie… she'd be your niece."

Robin's eyes are wide. He's frozen until Danny pushes Ellie against his chest, forcing him to lift his arms to hold her.

"Wait, what about—?"

When Robin looks up, Danny's already gone.

It's for the best.

(masterpost for all parts)

[em-xzm]

fic writers exaggerating Neil's one sided beef with Betsy might be the FUNNIEST thing I have ever read;

Betsy: would you like some tea Neil? 😊

Neil: no, what I would LIKE is to leave

Neil, internaly: I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you

[ukulele-hero]

I do wonder if the writers of 23.5 didn't anticipate how immediately the audience would both love and deeply understand Aylin as a character

like I wonder if the reason the last few episodes felt very awkward and ham-fisted is because they assumed the viewers would find aylin strange and mysterious and had this arc that "explained" her behavior by having a big reveal about getting bullied when it seems that in reality everyone understood her whole deal from the very beginning

i also get the impression from aylin's big confession scene that they might have expected the audience to overall relate more with the popular seniors (which could explain the otherwise baffling decision to have ton and mawin present when they had no significant part in aylin's story otherwise. I also think they expected the reception to ton to be a lot warmer than it perhaps has been, but that's a whole other post)

either way it feels like there was a big disconnect from what they expected out of their viewers and what people ultimately wanted out of the show

[creations-of-the-dreamlight]

While I will always vote for Lizzie and Grian to win every life series ever I am very excited for winner Big man. I just KNOW his watcher lore is gonna go so hard.

[empressofthewind]

Not to be That Guy but I'm so happy to see that meme format used with someone other than Mello. Like yeah Mello has very deeply complicated feelings about Near that are often most effectively summarised as hatred but he never wanted Near dead and that's a hill I will forever die on

[ashtonisvibing]

i've seen the minecraft movie trailer

who was the writer that decided to make steve reference "the children yearn for the mines"

i just want to talk

no ignore the baseball bat in my hands

[somewhereincairparavel]

i came across a (typical) reel of jason pov slander and the comments DIDN'T fail me for the very first time, EVER. Literally everyone was agressively defending him in the comments and called out how overused the whole "jason is so boring I couldn't wait to end his povs" videos were?? And all those comments had the most amount of likes??? jason grace defenders, I think our time has officially come. Our hardwork has paid off till the point it has reached the annoying Instagram pjo fandom to angrily condemn against anti jason videos and call out how dumb and unoriginal it is to hate on him simply because the majority of the fandom is and you wanna appear cool.

"no i will not stand for jason slander"

"what did jason ever do? Y'all just hate him bc he is capable enough to compete with percy"

"jason slander is so overrated. His povs were interesting y'all are just being dramatic bc you want to hate on him somehow"

YES. YES. YES. PREACH.

[pharawee]

—Why did you come into my room? —Your room is my room.

S H A D O W ◊ Ep.6: Funhouse

[shurisneakers]

ok and if i wrote harmless in a different font. so what

[angeltannis]

People being like “I finally have an excuse to draw [two random characters from different franchises] together” wrt that I Think We’re Gonna Have to Kill This Guy meme is sad to me. Drawing random crossovers has become so “cringe” and unacceptable in fandoms that people will go crazy over a mid-tier meme that gives them a free pass to do it.

You can draw whatever you want forever. Drawing and writing crossovers is so much fun. The early internet was built on people putting random characters together in situations, what we could have if copyright laws didn’t run everything. I’ve seen so many creative pairings of characters with this one meme! I’d just love to see them outside of this single panel redraw!

[redbuddi]

it can't possibly be that bad

[luxaofhesperides]

the harmless series

Danny Fenton is reborn as Danyal al Ghul, Damian's older brother. He dies young and returns with memories of his past life in tact, which leads him on a long journey away from one home and to another. Damian, meanwhile, is searching for his long lost brother while trying to care for Ellie, the niece left to him by Danyal before his second disappearance, and the rest of the family is struggling to hold things together.

all parts will be linked on this post! please don't ask to be tagged, just check here occasionally for new updates

the beginning - danny

the lost brother - damian

a safe place to rest - duke

title from this excerpt of Ada Limón's "To the Busted Among Us"

[in-the-multiverse]

I really enjoy the life series being a thing that goes “thrown into a death game and shit gets intense and we all end up needing therapy” BUT ALSO the meta version where it’s “Grian invited us to a death game and we voluntarily went and shit got intense but it’s all good we know we’re doing this for entertainment, no hard feelings anywhere (although some players hold grudges stronger than others)”

But what if it was combined? Sorta like genloss

Maybe it’s only the winners who see eldritch beings holding cameras or floating cameras. The winners get a special mic held up to them while they rant about their strategies or thoughts. Maybe everyone else sees it too, but it becomes invisible to them as the season progresses. As shit gets intense and they get their head lost in the game

And Gem, the newest addition, doesn’t have seasons worth of ignoring the things out of the corner of her eye. She catches a camera and stares right at it. At the audience. Us

The eye imagery still stands, because what the players perceive as floaty glowing eyes are actually camera lens. Reflective black “eyes”. Watching. Waiting. Recording

[sunshinechay]

Okay so I was musing about it in the tags of @respectthepetty’s post here but I also want to make a tiny post about it.

It’s only the second episode but does anyone else get the feeling that a significant portion of the show is going to end up coming down to Mew vs Boston?

A truly colossal showdown in which they are going to destroy each other and irreparably damage everyone around them?

As RTP pointed out, both use sex as a means to control. Both have a thing for Top and want him for themselves, but (and I’m might be projecting here) it also feels like it’s going to be about more than that. It’s going to be about Ray and his feelings for Mew. Chuem and her attempts (sometimes half heartedly) to get everyone to get along. It’s going to be about Boston’s inability to recognize his own faults and his belief that he’s better than everyone else. It’s going to be about Mew’s feelings of surperiority towards Boston (and even Ray and Chuem to a certain extent). I even think how Boston is using Nick is going to come into play as well, I’m just not sure how yet.

I posted about it yesterday that this friend group doesn’t really feel like a friend group and a big part of the reason I feel that way has to do with Boston’s barely veiled resentment/animosity towards Mew and Mew’s smugness right back at him. Each thinks they’re better than the other and (imo) both are wrong.

And even to connect it to the post I made about the projector light and Mew’s mugshot from ep1. I’m starting to think Boston got left out of the light because he is the closest thing this series is going to have a bad guy. I mean this show clearly is not going to actually have one, but I think Boston is going to end up filling the antagonist role because the show seems to be more from Mew’s POV than Boston’s. Ray and (Chuem) are partially in the light of the projector to symbolize their more innocent status (again, not true innocence because they have their own issues, but closer to innocence in the battle of wills between Boston and Mew).

They’re going to explode at each other and probably sooner than we think. It’s going to be mutually assured destruction and they’re going to take at least Top down with them. Likely Ray and Chuem and maybe even Sand down as well. I’m not going to even speculate what’s going to happen to Nick because it’s going to be bad, probably almost as bad as (if not worse than) Top.

These are messy imperfect characters who are going to say and do terrible things, both to themselves and each other. They are each the “bad guy” in each other’s story and even in their own to a certain extent. Neither of them are really better than the other and both are going to end up down a rabbit hole they can’t get out of.

I could be very wrong and I might be jumping the gun a little too much but after two episode, this is what it’s starting to feel like to me. I’m not trying to say one is better than the other or that they shouldn’t do what they’re about to do. This is just the sense I get. I’m completely open to being proven wrong. Hell this whole conflict could end up being a red herring before the “real” conflict emerges.

I would love a showdown between Boston and Mew though on any scale. Neo and Book would eat it up and put out an amazing performance. Only time will tell I guess haha.

[frobby]

I'm excited for the yohaji anime and I'm glad it's gonna reach more people BUT there's 2 things I'm afraid of:

People canceling haruaki ep 1 for his autistic swag

2. People shipping haru and Sano because they're the two protagonists

[bayofwolves]

Do you have any thoughts on what Meilin’s mother was like? She’s such a source of untapped potential in canon. What happened to her spirit animal? Does General Teng share stories about her with Meilin? Do she and Abeke bond over losing their mothers at such a young age? I feel like she’s one of the many many things the authors forgot about :(

Yes! I agree, we really missed out on learning about Meilin's mom. I haven't developed her too much yet, but I'll tell you what I do know.

I currently have her name as Qianyue (骞月), but that is subject to change. Her spirit animal was a yellow-throated marten named Sujia. She was only twenty years old when she died giving birth to Meilin.

Qianyue did not get the chance to become a Greencloak, as her betrothal to Teng was arranged quite soon after her Nectar Ceremony. She was no warrior, conforming to what Zhong expected of women in that period, but Meilin desperately wishes she knew her. Everything she knows about Qianyue came from General Teng and her maternal grandparents. They told her she was clever and artistic but solitary, spending long hours in the garden of their mansion with Sujia by her side, lost in her own thoughts. With the guidance of her Marked parents, Qianyue spent much time working on her bond, too, learning to channel Sujia's speed and agility. Had her circumstances been different, she could have made a fine Greencloak. Teng always expressed that he loved her deeply, and she him, and Meilin doesn't doubt that -- but she sometimes wonders if her mother felt unhappy in her life. Married so young, unable to choose her own path, and on her deathbed five years later. It's not a life Meilin would have wanted.

Sujia survived the initial loss of her human partner and lived in agony for several more years. She was allowed to roam the family mansion freely and wanted for nothing in terms of comfort, but she never found peace. She retreated into herself and, over time, started to act more like a common animal. Finally, when Meilin was six, she refused all food and fasted to death. Meilin's memories of her are hazy, but she remembers being very little and sitting with her as she gazed wistfully into the garden where Qianyue used to walk, stroking her fur, encouraging her to eat with offerings of fruit, asking her what her mother was like. Sujia, of course, couldn't reply. When she died, it devastated Meilin. Sujia was her closest connection to her mother, and it felt like Qianyue was dying all over again.

Meilin grieves for her mother in a strange way, given that she never knew her, and that she herself was the cause of her death. That's a fact that has always been difficult for her to reckon with, even if she knows it was not her fault.

The nature of Qianyue's death has shadowed Meilin her whole life. It has left her with a fear of pregnancy and childbirth, and is one of the reasons why she and Rollan decide to adopt in adulthood.