#the one you devoted yourself to is dead. the person you trust most in the world cant stand to look at you.

[commanderofthegrey]

whenever i start thinking about leliana for too long i start taking psychic damage. woman who is constantly doing shit she does not believe in out of devotion i love you.

[neerons]

Some of Chevalier Michel’s best quotes

“You have plenty of time. Therefore, it’s not necessary to overload yourself to the point of harming your health just for the sake of learning. I’m not in a hurry. I’ll wait patiently for you to reach your full potential.”

“I don’t mind making you my woman.”

“If you value your life, trust no one.”

“Allowing their deaths to be in vain would be an affront to those who utterly devoted themselves to the kingdom.” (—Chevalier talking about the dead soldiers to Emma)

“That’s how values work. Just because two ways of thinking are incompatible doesn’t mean one is right and the other is wrong.”

“If you ever feel like crying, tell me. I’ll torment you so thoroughly that you’ll forget how to cry.”

“Until I’d met her, I’d never have considered letting another person touch me.” (—Chevalier’s thoughts about Emma)

“Can a man read in peace without you staring at his face?”

“Don't... say another man's name... so much. It grates on my ears.”

“You're quite graceless, you know? Your legs seem to be shaking.”

“You are my queen. It does not matter how many years go by, I have no intention of loving any other woman.”

“If the rabbit has time to spend with you, she'll spend it with me instead.” (—Chevalier talking about Emma to Clavis)

“I had no intention of letting anyone complain about a commoner being in a relationship with royalty, and it didn't bother me, either.” (—Chevalier's thoughts)

“What might your hand be doing in your pocket? I dare you to throw one of those concoctions of yours at me. Just know I will kick you into the next century.” (—Chevalier to Clavis)

“Maids are servants. They follow their master or mistress' orders, thus creating a clear discrepancy in power. But I do not wish you to be below me. What I desire is for us to be equals, serving each other in a cooperative and mutual manner.”

"...Now that I think about it, I was rather fond of you from the very beginning. (...) To begin with... is there any man who would barge into the room of a woman he doesn't like? The palace is huge. There are many places... where I could go to spend leisure time, instead of expressly going to your room."

"You look terrible. (...) There's no need to feel ashamed. Not everything that has value is beautiful."

"You're the one at fault for leaving the covenant YOU created so open to interpretation. A shame." (—Chevalier to Sariel)

"Currently, a servant manages the palace library, but he's no expert, so his work is sloppy. I've been dissatisfied with it for a while now, but... you're proficient at handling books, yes?"

"It's not that you 'can' stay by my side, it's that you 'will' stay by my side."

"(...) Do you think I would allow you to die so easily after you laid a hand on my lover? (...) I've said as much before, but dying is not what you should be doing. What you should be doing is returning home to your loved ones, no matter how shameful you look." (—Chevalier to Flandre)

"Ever since I was a child, love had been the one thing I was most indifferent to. (...) My one and only reason is that I wanted to know what love was. Ridiculous, I know."

"I'm not so famished that I'd eat something I don't need. ...I want you so much that I could just eat you all up right now."

"(...) Any guest of Emma's is a guest of mine as well." (—Chevalier talking about an enemy to Clavis)

"...If you stay with me, many things will be taken away from you, and you'll be limited in what you can do. Sometimes, you'll have to bear the heavy responsibility of royalty, and occasionally your life may be threatened. You'll be the target of scheming. Other people will look upon you either favorably or unfavorably—nothing in between. No picturesque world like those found in your romance books exists in a real palace. You'll see it for yourself. Despite all that, do you still stand by the nonsense you spoke of earlier?"

"When every man in the kingdom knows you're mine—they'll stay away from you, lest they incur the wrath of the Bloody Tiger."

"It wasn't in an official capacity. It was personal time. I simply wanted to have you with me as always. You should be grateful. You don't have much time left at the palace, and I'm going out of my way to spend time with you."

"Hurry up and prove the value of love, simpleton. While we're still able to be together like this."

"It doesn't matter to me what happens to them... But it matters to someone else." (—Chevalier talking about Luke, Rio and Emma to Clavis)

"On the battlefield, you belong to the second prince. Remember, dying would be foolish, and even getting hurt would be a transgression."

"I came to save you. ...Did you think that's what I would say, simpleton?"

"I'm not so idiotic that I'd let low-lives like those do me in. I'll cut down every last person who rises up against me."

"I never had any intention of letting an enemy nation have you."

"You faced the Brutal Beast... so that you could fulfill your duty as Belle. We couldn't understand each other because our values were polar opposites... yet you tried to meet halfway. You believed that the beast was a person and tried to discern his true nature. It was the first time I'd ever met... a woman with such strange tastes. Actually... even if I searched the entire kingdom, I wouldn't find anyone as eccentric as you. 'I want the person I love to live, no matter the cost to me. I want to be by his side... I'll do whatever it takes to make that happen. (...) I feel the same way. You call this emotion... 'love', correct?"

"The king's lover will most likely face many difficulties, but unfortunately, I have no desire to bestow my favor on anyone but you."

"Emma, look at me. (...) You're no longer Belle, right? (...) Is that the first time I used it? It's not that big of a deal, is it?" (—Chevalier saying Emma's name for the first time)

"I don't want to be disturbed during mealtimes. I've decided to lock the door whenever you're here."

"Currently, only one woman is close to the king. There seem to be many fools who believe they can crush the leading candidate for queen and have their own daughter marry me instead." (—Chevalier talking about Emma to Clavis)

"Do I look like I care? And do you really think I'm going to do something as stupid as losing such a valuable pawn?" (—Chevalier talking about Emma, in Gilbert's route)

"Until now, the Obsidian royal family have had nothing but war on their minds, but through this we can rebuild our friendship. This is a sizable accomplishment. This accomplishment was achieved by just one woman... and we most certainly cannot disrespect what it means." (—Chevalier to Emma, in Gilbert's route)

"The only occasion I have spent time with another person and found worth in it... was with you." (—Chevalier's thoughts about Emma)

"She's eager to hear whether I like the fragrance or not. But it is her own scent. There is no way I could dislike it." (—Chevalier's thoughts about Emma)

"I don't need you to tell me my fool brother's worth. I knew it from the start." (—Chevalier talking about Clavis to Emma)

"As long as you were convinced you couldn't win, there was no way for you to unlock your full potential. That's why you never stopped failing. You were never going to win unless you believed in yourself." (—Chevalier to Clavis)

"People are fools. Everyone is contradictory in some way, because they're not perfect, and they can't be. But you and my fool brother are both fine that way. (...) Someone who is free of contradictions, who always chooses the right path... cannot really be called human. They're nothing more than a beast." (—Chevalier talking about Emma, Clavis and himself, to Emma)

"I learned how from watching you do it countless times." (—Chevalier talking about doing Emma's hair)

"They have the kind of decoration my fool of a brother would like." (—Chevalier talking about cookies with colorful and festive icing that Clavis would enjoy)

"...You're the only one. The only woman who would take pleasure in being at my side."

"Sometimes, you have quite violent coughing fits. I have a fool brother who gets ill a lot. The physician gives him this tea regularly, so I swiped some." (—Young Chevalier giving rose tea to his 'childhood friend')

"(...) keep cajoling him. You can shape the menace that he is." (—Chevalier talking about Gilbert to Emma)

"...I knew I made the right choice when I chose you as my pawn." (—Smiling Chevalier praising Emma, in Gilbert's route)

"An auction master working in collaboration with the Obsidianites had an official document from the king of Benitoite. That's quite a big catch, simpleton." (—Chevalier praising Emma's discovery, in Silvio's route)

"...I want you so much that I could just eat you all up right now."

"My clothes will be gone soon enough. After all, I have only one reason for locking a woman in a room like this. (...) Love me, Emma. This is an order from the king, and it's absolute."

"I recall you writing that you love hearing my voice. If that is what you want, you may hear it as much as you like."

"Hundreds of medical books, both domestic and foreign, are stored in my head."

"To have nerve enough to approach me... She's quite the woman." (—Chevalier's thoughts about Emma)

"That gaze of hers struck me as straight as an arrow, and unneeded emotions began to well up within me." (—Chevalier's thoughts about Emma)

"Don't be ridiculous. She would never be interested in the likes of you fools." (—Angry Chevalier talking about Emma and his brothers to Leon)

"I would far prefer to have you to myself than let that man have you." (—Chevalier talking about Gilbert)

"Indeed. I'm so vexed, I could throttle someone to death." (—Chevalier teasing Emma)

"You are our Belle. You spend your time determining our worth. Use some of those skills for yourself too." (—Chevalier telling Emma to care about herself more)

"I am not asking for a 'good' drawing. I am asking for your drawing."

"This is a Rhodolitian handshake. The more it hurts, the stronger your display of friendship." (—Chevalier to Gilbert)

"I don't believe I have ever seen Emma read it before. Perhaps I will recommend it to her. She cannot stay in the dark about it forever." (—Chevalier's thoughts while he's picking a romance book for Emma to read)

"If 'lovable' could be defined by any person, it would be her." (—Chevalier's thoughts about Emma)

"I had often read about this urge to dote, but I had not understood it until meeting her." (—Chevalier's thoughts about Emma)

"Theoretically, I have no use for romance novels now that I have Emma. However, thanks to her, I have learned how to enjoy them with no other motive." (—Chevalier's thoughts)

"I've become fond of seeing the variety of emotions on your face as you go through a book."

"Hm? Ah. Don't worry about the blood. I was just 'playing' with my brother who's made it his hobby to tease you." (—Chevalier's lobby dialogue)

"This absurdly lovely woman has my dearest affections." (—Chevalier translating his words of love from another language to Emma)

"The reason I still function so well despite having discarded my humanity is because I have my fool brother. And conversely, the reason my fool brother can do as he pleases is because he knows I'll always be there at the final moment." (—Chevalier talking about Clavis to Emma)

"Severing your Achilles tendon shall do the trick." (—Chevalier threatening Licht)

"I never had much chemistry with the twins. (...) They were just noisy children who cried if I so much as looked at them. However, one day, they stopped crying. No... If I think about it, there was a clear turning point." (—Chevalier's thoughts)

"It is true that you are useless right now, Licht, but you do not have to be that way forever. (—Chevalier's thoughts)

"Even with the first aid I have given you, it would be in your best interest to put on a convincing act for your twin if you do not wish to shock him." (—Chevalier to Licht)

"Oh? That was a much more thorough analysis than I would have expected from someone so heavily wounded. With some training, he could become an excellent commander." (—Chevalier's thoughts about Licht)

"Textbooks can be helpful, but not in the way that it obscures her lovely face." (—Chevalier's thoughts about Emma)

"I was never much one for drawing, but once during our childhood, Clavis pestered me to sketch something. Back then, I knew he suspected me to be a terrible artist, and asked me to do so in order to expose me. The resulting tantrum when his expectations were reversed was certainly memorable." (—Chevalier's thoughts)

"I would value this far beyond what any professional artist could draw. There is, however, something missing. (...) I must prepare a frame for this at once." (—Chevalier adding a little bunny on Emma's drawing of him as a tiger)

"I have never, ever laughed as much as I have with her. No wonder she is the one making my facial muscles exercise so much." (—Chevalier's thoughts)

"I want to do whatever it takes to see her entire spectrum of emotions." (—Chevalier's thoughts)

"Every second that ticked by was becoming another moment for me to cherish. I suddenly became overwhelmed by gratitude for being born the person I was. It won't be long before the entire collection of my memories is overtaken by you. And it will be just the way I like it." (—Chevalier's thoughts about Emma)

[necrotic-nephilim]

hello, it's me again. so i saw you mention on my prompt how jason would be jealous of rose's healing factor when it comes to fucking kara and the jaycass you wrote and i thought why not combine them? in young justice jason and kara are part of the light and cass was in the shadows before defecting and joining the bats. what if she doesn't? childhood friends/lovers jaykara but kara becomes a red lantern after jason's death. after a while jason heals and goes on a mission with kara and they recognise each other. they cry, fight, fuck, all of that before breaking free of the light and run into cass. maybe cass and jason fucked a couple of times in the league to release some stress, and kara would be attracted to cass, so all three of them have a threesome inside a lazarus pit. just a cycle of fucking and breaking and dying and soul breaking healing. you can get really kinky with this too, like kara could ride jason to death, jason could fist cass until she needs the pit, cass could ride jason's face until he chokes on her juices, could even have kara bring a strap and her and jay could fuck cass at the same time (regular dp or anal dp) or peg jason until he can't walk. maybe they force kara to take a kryptonite shard up her pussy while jason fucks her and cass rides her face. technically the lazarus pit would boost their stamina every time they dip, and kara's a kryptonian, so they'd fuck for actual days or weeks. maybe they fuck so long they don't realise it until a team associated with the justice league walk in on them on a mission to rescue cass or something

HELLO YOU. YOU GET ME. it's my favorite thing EVER when the Laz Pit is utilized for a vicious cycle of fucking, dying, and fucking again. the altered mental state, the violent levels the sex can be taken to when dying no longer matter and longterm injuries aren't an issue... it lives in my brain.

i'll be honest, i don't know or care much about the Young Justice tv show so you'll have to forgive me for this being divorced from that world bc it's just. foreign as fuck to me so my apologies for that but as for the porn. (decided to put this headcanon/concept under a cut bc i feel like what could be considered snuff is probably a jumpscare for most ppl so. click at your own warning)

i just. i adore brutal dead dove sex that is destructive. like the whole "i want to crawl inside your chest" but it's *literal* and no one takes advantage of Laz Pits enough to do just that. like sex where you just physically can't hold yourself back from tearing open the flesh of the person you love bc you need to see their blood, you need to hold their heart in your greedy fist type shit. and if this is an AU where Jason and Kara were close but got separated by Jason ended up with the League, i do think their reunion could bring about just that. for once Kara isn't holding herself back and she's clawing at Jason's skin until he's bloody. i think it's fun if sometimes she just fucks him *in* the water bc it's quicker that way and Jason is constantly on this edge of death and rebirth at the same time. and with Cass in the mix too. JayCass you get me anon <3 Jason loves Kara still but it's clear he and Cass are a sort of package deal now and Kara might not know Cass well but if Jason loves her, she can trust that. so she gets to know Cass in the only way she cares about at the moment, pinning Cass down and fucking her. with a strap, with her own fist, anything that she can get inside of Cass to feel her body. maybe she pushes in too far and fucks Cass bloody until Csss needs the Pit sooner than even Jason did. and for Cass, who has no benchmark for real love but this dizzying feeling of being revived over and over, this is all she can ask for. devotion.

them suffocating on each other is so good- Kara doesn't care if Jason or Cass need to breathe, she cares about getting off and feeling whole again. she holds them down until their body gives out and forces them into the Pit again. maybe at some point she gets curious and holds one of them down facedown in the waters just to see if it's even possible to drown in the Lazarus Pit or not. she breaks bones just because she can and she wants to see what level of pain it takes for Cass to actually react to. how long it takes for a human body to bleed out. exploring their bodies means memorizing the limitations of them. it means she learns what them getting close to death looks like the same as getting close to an orgasm and whispers filthy dirty talk about how she can hear Jason's heart about to go out as he's trying desperately to come before he dies again. she counts how many minutes it takes before they die from lack of oxygen and compares who can last longer.

the Kryptonite shard is also enlightened- eventually Cass and Jason want to be the ones in control bc fair is fair and they deserve to do the same to Kara so they find some stash of Kryptonite and hold Kara down until it's deep inside of her and she's weak and in pain but still getting fucked. and she gets to taste the Lazarus Pit too, which i think would make her absolutely feral. Kara deserves some Pit rage for fun, i think even if she only gets to taste it while Cass is holding her down so Jason can fuck the Kryptonite deeper inside of her. every now and then Kara actually manages to strike one of them hard enough to injure them and it doesn't matter bc the Pit is right there.

all of it lasting for Days is just. good. like the haze the Pit has on the mind, being used over and over? almost like a spell none of them can break. they'd live the rest of their lives like this if they could and there would never even be a realistic end. it takes someone else walking in and managing to separate them before they actually calm down. and days before all the Lazarus Pit wears off and it finally sinks in just how fucked up what they did together was. and how fucked up it is that they don't even regret it. they're already trying to figure out where another Lazarus Pit is and how they can get control of it. i think it's fun if they spring it on each other too. like Jason will fall asleep in his bed but wake up to Cass and Kara holding his head under the green waters as he thrashes on instinct. Cass will be minding her business until Kara literally grabs her at superspeed and just flies her off to the waters to spread her legs and fuck her at superspeed until she's a bloody mess. they never know peace with each other and they irreparably damage their psyches over this. ty and gn.

[tinfoil-jones]

Early Amnesia AU: What was Stan and Rick's relationship like?

WARNINGS: TW self harm, toxic relationship

When Rick found Stan in the woods, he tased him, because Stan was in some dissociative state and tried to attack him. He would have just left him there if it weren't for the fact that Stan had survived a tasing device that would kill most humans. In fact, despite clearly already being injured in some way Rick couldn't immediately see (he was awfully sooty and his clothes were in bad condition), Stan was just unconscious, the shock didn't seem to damage him in any way.

So Rick was curious.

He was even more curious when the guy woke up and he was missing memories. He could remember his name - Stan, just Stan, Malone. He didn't know who he was really, where he came from. He'd been living on the streets for almost a decade and he remembered that. He remembered  criminal associates, places he'd been banned from, how much he hated cops and the IRS.

Rick didn't have a lot of friends or allies as it was. When your wife and daughter are dead, all of your closest friends are aliens, and a considerable amount of your social circle is just alternate versions of yourself, lonliness tends to happen.

This 'Stan' had no real connections with other people, and with the first 17 or so years of his life missing from his memory, he was nothing but curiousity.

Sure, he wasn't as smart as Rick (after all, he was the smartest man in the universe, it was objective fact within the central finite curve) but he was clever, he was tricky, and although his personality left a lot to be desired (not that Rick was one to talk) he could read and manipulate the people around him quite easily.

And more than anything else, the dude could take an insane amount of punishment. It didn't matter what he went through or put himself through, he always managed to just walk it off in some way, shape, or form.

Rick learned quickly that once you got his trust (which wasn't easy to get), he would do basically anything for you if you'd just let him stay by your side. Guy was lonely and desperate for connection, and Rick didn't mind the clinginess. It was nice to have someone be that devoted, yet require so very little from you back.

The first month was harsh. Stan had been fine at first, but it quicky became clear that he must have inhaled something bad, or a lot of something bad, because he had acute bronchitis - the bronchial tubes of his airway became irritated, and the irritation turned into a chest infection.

He was delirious with a fever, and it was a good thing Rick had a steady supply of advanced painkillers and narcotics, because keeping Stan unconscious was the only way to properly treat him. He needed an oxygen mask at the time, to deliver not just oxygen but an inhalant version of an antibiotic, but anytime he was awake he would try to tear it off, wheezing that he was being smothered or suffocated, so unaware that what was actually smothering him was the fluid build up and inflamation in his lungs, and the mask on his face was what was keeping him alive.

When Stan finally got better, he took to Ricks sci-fi adventures in stride. In fact, the whole prospect excited him, like a kid getting to live out their adventure fantasies. Except in this case, the grit and the violence didn't scare him away. Like Rick, he treated it like a challenge. Like another thrill.

In fact, for all of their differences, they had some glaring simularities.

Particularly, the tendency to be destructive. They were both self destructive, but while Stan tended to turn his destructiveness inwards and towards himself, Rick projected his destructiveness outwards and towards the very universe around him. Sometimes to multiple universes all at once.

And rather than temper each other out, they encouraged each other in the worst possible ways.

Stan got into an argument at the bar? Rick egged him on until it turned into a full scale brawl.

Rick was self harming by cutting into his thighs? Stan told him he could go deeper than that.

Stan wanted to steal something? Rick reminded him that he had quicker hands than that, he could steal more, in fact why not just burn the whole aisle down while you're at it?

Rick on so many substances his vision is dancing and he feels disconnected from his body? Stan urged him to take some more come on we're just getting started.

It's like they wanted to share their pain with each other but also make it worse until it felt good again. They'd push each others limits constantly.

But they also did influence each other positively, in very minor ways.

Stan didn't have his memories. He didn't remember being the "dumb twin" so he didn't have the self esteem issues he had before. However, he was still lazy. Rick encouraged him to apply himself in ways he otherwise wouldn't have - Stan of course you can learn Gromflomish, those bureaucrats can do it and they arent even real people. Stan you're not as good as me as math because no one else in the universe is, but you can learn math you just need to learn it in a different way. Working my inventions isn't hard its just like picking locks you love picking locks, Stan, you fuckin kleptomaniac.

Rick was often comforted and grounded by Stan in return, and reminded that he was still a human being and not a god or monster - You're nothing like that bastard Prime, you'd never hurt your family like that not even alternates. Rick, you're so brilliant, I'm glad that I met you. Its okay that you still love her even though she's gone, Rick, you're not wrong for that.

Ultimately, Rick did not fight Stan's decision to stay in their dimension and planet because they both knew that though they held a special place and time in each others lives, it was never meant to last. They would have either killed each other, or gotten each other killed.

[arlechinav-blog]

Mediterranean Trancework Part IV: Deity Bridalwork

This one is kind of tough to write about because there just aren't a lot of surviving traditions in the Med that deal with this. Not a lot but there are some. This is the point where things become a little bit more speculative. Due to the fact that a good deal of trancework is psychological and physiological, it is pretty simple to reconstruct this one though. Moreso than other traditions might have been. And that is because there is a very specific spectrum of ways that this can actually be done and be functional.

*Bride is a gender neutral term in this context. It comes from the cultural concept of being horsed or ridden like a horse by a deity. The Bride is the one under the bridle. The idea is that the deity steers the body of the person who is being horsed. This concept is also tied to a permanent relationship, similar to that of a mortal marriage. A deity Bride (capital B to denote a difference between someone engaging with a trance tradition and someone who is getting married) undergoes sacred vows and strict codes of conduct in their daily lives. The basics of that are that the individual must be of good social standing–not an outlaw, a drunk, a thief, or criminal of some kind (though that depends strongly on the deity involved, certain kinds of shady activities might be a bonus depending on the tradition you are engaging with). There should be a familial or an occupational connection to the deity, as in there should be a good unquestionable reason for this relationship and that reason should be conspicuous as should be the deity’s favor. 

There are four kinds of euphoric trance rituals. Each has a different goal and manner of interaction.  

Deity Bridalwork

Prophetic Bridalwork

Coming into the Presence of Divinity

Diagnostic Ritual

Deity Bridalwork

Deity Bridalwork is essentially making yourself into a horse for a deity. This is a culturally encoded concept that means "your body gets possessed by a god." This is done in ecstatic rituals where the deity is expected to be present and presiding. Non ecstatic rituals where the deity is expected to be present and presiding will involve a statue as a substitute for this. Ecstatic rituals are occasions where miracles take place and people get to interact with an embodied deity in the limited ways that would be appropriate--engaging with their preferred rituals tools, foods, colors, scents, drinks, and anything relevant to the current place in the calendar cycle. 

The Goal: To inspire, to bless, to actively participate.  

How Does This Work? 

A Bridal relationship is an act of devotion. At its very core, it is a state of sacrifice. To give up one’s body, to trust, and to be present for the community. It is an honor to participate in but it is a lot of work.  Preparing to perform an embodiment ritual like this starts with preparing the body through fasting, prayer, meditation, and good hygiene. I personally do a vitamin boost and water push during this time as well and abstain from meat (not even handling it or looking at it), alcohol, swearing, and I will wear white for an odd number of days in the lead up–usually 7 because that is the number of greatest fortune. Some deities have sacred numbers though and those may be better to use. 

On the day of, the Bride will take a ritual bath (or multiple) and get fully exfoliated from head to toe of all dead skin while chanting prayers (like the purgation chant). The body is fully waxed (if appropriate for that deity) and then moisturized with oils and bathed in scented smoke. The Bride is then veiled (eyes covered), having never looked into a mirror or into the eyes of another, and taken to the place where they will be dressed. The Bride will then be painted, dressed, and adorned with all of the clothing and tools of the Deity while music is played, cymbals are the most essential component unless it is a nature/agricultural deity–then it is clacking wood or grain stalks instead. 

Once fully dressed, the veil is removed from the eyes and the eyes of the deity are opened. The deity is then fed (or given a drink of) something that they are strongly associated with. From that point on, the transformation is complete and the Bride’s consciousness is pushed aside. The Bride then does whatever the ritual objective for the day or night is. That usually involves multiple activities and traveling on foot from one area that requires their presence to another. Music is played the entire time to keep the Bride in the proper state and to cover any unlucky sounds that may try to break through.  

Links: Because seeing it helps to understand so many tiny details that don’t make it into words. 

Bonalu ceremony for the goddess Mahakali. You can see the Bride’s body is adorned the same as the goddess would be dressed complete with the deity’s familiar tools that she interacts with. Music plays throughout, including drums and cymbals. Music holds up the ritual state, that is load bearing music. You can also see the attendants handing her things and holding her tools that are not in use. People gather to watch. There are familiar gestures and acts done by the goddess that further establish her identity. There are ritual objectives to complete as well–processing through certain areas to bless them, bathing and making offerings, receiving https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mByafJxhDYU 

Thaipusam is a festival that features a lot of Bridalwork with both deities and spirits. It also involves body mortification, mostly through dermal piercing. This video features close ups of Brides getting pierced. It may not be suitable for all audiences, especially those who have phobias of needles. This is an own voice presentation so we can hear the Bride describe this in his own words. (Many thanks to Cousin Camilo for sharing this with the world.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qmo0BRMeHK4  

Prophetic Bridalwork

Prophetic Bridalwork involves all of the above plus the added bonus of receiving a truthful statement about matters beyond human perception. That phrasing is important. If a prophecy is truthful and useful then it is divine. If it is untruthful or not useful (or just gibberish) then it comes from some other source--most likely a daemon. The ability to do this accurately and to be able to spontaneously compose it in verse on the spot provides proof of state. In other words, the proof is in the prophetic pudding. 

The Goal: To provide truthful/ useful information that others can act on. 

How Does This Work?

The process for this is largely identical to Deity Bridalwork but instead of processing through the town and using their tools to bless the public, the Bride is led to a place of prominence. Music is played and when/if inspired to do so, the Bride will speak truth through spontaneously composed verse. This lasts until the Bride drops into a PTFO (more like slumps). At that point the Deity has departed and the Bride is fed something mundane to fully bring them back to their body. As a personal note, expect them to be completely exhausted and incapable of doing anything important in this state. They can go with the flow, they can talk, they can be social, they may even get up and dance around a little, but they will definitely be trance drunk and they will not be fully functional until they have slept. 

Presence

Coming into the presence of a deity is done without any kind of embodiment. It is merely a matter of singing the right songs and doing the right kind of dances. These are (usually) stately and highly formal. Most of the gods are dignified in their conduct but there are a few yahoos in the pantheon that prefer a bit more crash and chaos. (Looking at the entourage of Dionysos and Kybele here.) This can be done without a lot of messing around with other forms of trance but you should at least be able to reliably get yourself in and out of a basic trance before giving it a go. The goal of this one is just unity, oneness, feeling close to divinity. It has an extremely positive impact on the mind, body, and spirit of the participant and that is enough of a reason to do it. 

Special Note: Imagine that the single most important holy doctrine in one’s faith was simply “Joy.” The holiness of joy. To experience oneness, enthusiasm, euphoria. To feel compassion and camaraderie with others present, stepping into a communal experience of pure untethered joy. 

The Goal: To be in a state of unity.

How Does This Work? 

Presence ceremonies are handled by organizations like fraternities. As such they will have several levels of education and experience within them and whatever level you happen to be at determines the ways that you might engage with this. In the beginning you will know nothing but you can observe. As you progress you will learn to sing, learn to dance, and learn the philosophies of the individual group. A lot of latent learning happens during ceremonies but there are also occasions when you just get to learn outside of the confines of a ritual. Learn while awake, put into practice in ceremony. 

The movements, songs, and breathwork utilized in a presence ceremony are designed to bring you into a deep and powerful trance. The coordination of it allows for participation from many people at once. It is holy, good, and family friendly. It helps if things are clean, beautiful, and treated with the utmost sanctity. 

The presence of the deity is meant to fill every pocket of the self with love and joy. It is a generous, uplifting feeling. 

Links:

Semah ceremony from Turkiye. It demonstrates what a formal group presence ceremony can look like with participants dressed formally and engaging in the same movements together. Dancing in a large circle as a group and then making personal spins or turns within that wider circle is an extremely effective method of achieving a trance safely in a large group. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFJ_cgpjFyQ 

Semah again, several styles this time. In this one the participants are using coordinated breathwork and well choreographed movements that induce and hold trance. I really like this one because you can clearly see three different types of group dances used in a presence ceremony. You can also hear and see the transitions moving from one holy song to another. Everyone benefits from this. There are dedicated musicians and people who are observing.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USccRnT45cQ 

Diagnostic Ritual

This one relates to the rites of the Kouretes and Koryvantes and to the Orphic Hymns. The Kouretes and Koryvantes performed a ritual in which people would gather and lay very still while priestly musicians played sacred hymns and their special rhythms. If an individual had done something to offend one (or more) of the theoi, then their bodies would begin to contort and dance around ungracefully when that deity’s thread was played. This person could then afterwards perform the appropriate sacrifices and all would be mended. 

The ritual should begin at dusk with the setting sun and end either at or just before dawn. If you finish a few hours early, that's fine as it will then leave room in the night for making those aforementioned sacrifices. In addition to their own rhythms and melodies, each deity will also have a scent trigger (incense) burned at the start of their hymn. Offerings are not made until the end of the ritual though.

The Goal: Bring peace between humanity and the gods.  How Does This Work?

This is done largely the same as a spirit possession ritual and I strongly suspect that this is the origin of all possession rituals in the Med. Special Note: To my eyes, this is what the Orphic Hymns look like they were built to do if sung in order from start to finish.

[fionaapplerocks]

I read I was dead on the Internet.

POP QUIZ -- Q & A With Fiona Apple Published 4:00 am PST, Sunday, Dec 7, 1997

Q: Was this a good year to be Fiona Apple?

A: This was the best year. For me, the best times are always going to be the most intense, the ones with the highest highs and the lowest lows. I was so pissed off that I was misunderstood on this whole worldwide level for a while that it discouraged me. Because I don't feel that way anymore, I can use those experiences and think they're wonderful. If I had the worst of times this year and I had the best times, that means I really kicked ass because I got past those worst times.

Q: Any reflections on your acceptance speech at the MTV Awards?

A: That was a big step for me, and it had nothing to do with the content of my speech, or lack thereof. It was the fact that I said what I wanted to say. If I can't show everybody out there that I'm willing to go up there and make an a-- out of myself and be inarticulate and be nervous and be angry, then I have no right speaking because I have nothing to offer that hasn't been seen before.

Q: Do you feel old now that you have turned 20?

A: I don't know how I would feel old or young. I don't understand how people can really answer questions like that. I have no basis of comparison. I've never been anyone else.

Q: Do you feel more mature?

A: I was just telling my sister yesterday that I feel like I'm 6 years old. Everything I do with my free time is absurdly kindergartenlike. All I do in hotel rooms is, I lay out the blanket on the floor and get a bunch of magazines and make collages. I had a day off yesterday and that's all I did.

Q: Are you worried your next album will lack the intimate quality of your debut?

A: A lot of times when you're surrounded by all these people it can be even lonelier than when you're by yourself. It can be a huge crowd, but if you don't feel like you can trust anybody or talk to anybody, then you feel like you're really alone. I have a very steadfast tendency to parent myself, to monitor my development into the person I want to be. I've tried to keep the corruption minimal. I try not to pay too much attention to what goes on around me. It's like when you see those horses pulling carriages in Central Park and they've got those blinders on so they don't get spooked by the traffic outside. I feel like I'm in a place where I don't feel too comfortable, so I'm just going to keep my eyes on the road ahead of me and not look around and not get spooked or brought down by anything.

Q: What's the best rumor you've heard about yourself?

A: I read I was dead on the Internet.

Q: How did you die?

A: I don't know. I just heard about it yesterday.

Q: It must be your a𝑛or𝑒xia.

A: Yeah, that's great. I dare anybody to look at me and I say I'm a𝑛or𝑒xic. I'm so totally not.

Q: Does it bother you that people make out to your music?

A: Hell, no. I don't care what people do. Honestly, I don't care how people remember my first album. I did it for my own reasons. I don't have a big thing with leaving my mark or being historic. It made me feel good. It made some other people feel good.

Q: What do you listen to when you make out?

A: What's really good is African drum music.

Q: Did your boyfriend (magician David Blaine) really get your name tattooed on his shoulder?

A: Yes. He did it as a surprise. He had talked about it, but I kept telling him not to do it. I would feel stupid if somebody had to get me removed. It's not like he'll ever have to get it removed, though, because we'll always stay best friends.

Q: What did you do to show your devotion to him?

A: I have a tattoo and part of it says "kin" on it, because I call him my kin. He's my best friend. I'm a writer so, of course, I'm going to find something a little more poetic than just somebody's name.

Q: Are you going drinking when you turn 21?

A: Come on. I got drunk when I was 5. Everybody gets drunk before they're 21.

Q: Do you really believe that you will die young, as you said in a recent Spin article?

A: I was being sarcastic, but the writer just didn't get it. I wasn't misquoted or anything. I don't think anyone had it out for me or anything, but I was just misunderstood. I had been fighting all day about what I was going to wear and how I was going to look at the photo shoot. I just got p -- off and was in a weird mood. I was being deadpan and the man didn't get it. I got into therapy in the fifth grade because I said I was going to kill myself in a sarcastic way and they didn't get it then. Nothing's changed.

By Aidin Vaziri

[sylvaridreams]

I think Alba is going to retire

and step down as Wayfinder, post-SotO. (SotO spoilers, obviously, new Wayfinder, eventually.)

And this has been a long time coming. He's been wilting (off and on but mostly on) 8 years, since the botched Maguuma breach and subsequent war campaign and then the long period of mourning after, over a year of it. He struggled with Mordremoth in his brain, and Mordremoth was not the first elder dragon he'd had a hard time keeping out. He struggled with Zhaitan too; and with each subsequent dragon he faced. He's always been susceptible to elder dragon corruption and control, and every time he killed something, absorbed more of their magic, more ley energy, more power that should have killed him, it became more of an issue.

Looking at the parallel Tyria that Nemeos reigns over, his botched Dragonstorm was a tipping point -- but you don't just tip. The burden comes long before the tip -- and this version of Alba has persevered and struggled a lot longer without breaking, but I can say with confidence that he is at absolute rock bottom right now. His relationships are fully destroyed. Canach hates the choices he's made, that he'd choose the Wizards over his guild, his world, people who love him. Auruim-- when he eventually wakes up and begins recovery-- is afraid of the world Alba's dragged him through. The kryptis scare him. The Wizards scare him. By the end, he'll have spent most of SotO, over a year, rotting in a bed in the tower, dying and trapped inside his own mind. Meisi hates him. Their last chance to talk has long passed and all Meisi had for him was a look of disdain and distrust and anger, and a "tell them I'm sorry." Nothing for YOU. Just the others. How bad does it have to be for you to lose the loving devotion of someone called The Loyal? BOURBON would tear Alba's guts out with his teeth if someone would just give him the go-ahead, fucking BOURBON who forgave Alba in minutes for killing his best and only friend and stealing his purpose in life because he looked sadder than me, a loyal dog always seeking a master to lie at his feet, Bourbon can't fucking stand what Alba's allowed to happen to anyone. Auruim, Meisi, Bourbon, Deidre, himself, the guild, the world.

The guild. It's decayed a lot. They've stayed together but... you know how people talk, when his back is turned. How can you expect him to be fit to lead? Can you trust him with your life? For how long? And then he vanishes. Leaves you a message on your comms and then he's just gone. The stitch that had pulled everyone together, unraveled and lost. Presumed dead, until they knew he wasn't. Knew he'd just left.

Nobody trusts him. Everyone's tired of him. People want him to get better because people still love him, unconditionally, genuinely, they want him to get better for himself and for them, for anything. But you can't continue to, hand over hand, pass matches and gasoline to him to watch him burn himself with them. At some point you have to refuse and push his seeking hands away and say no. You're hurting yourself and it hurts me. You're hurting me. I refuse to be a part of this.

People still love him and if he stopped what he's doing and said "I need help. Please help me. I want to stop," people would come to his aid but he won't. He will never stop until he's dead, because The Role is all he thinks he has. The title. Commander. Wayfinder. Hero. Whatever.

What are you? If you turn your back on the world in need and say "I know I've saved you every other time, the past 13 years of my life, I've dropped everything and come to your aid and met every single call before, but not this one and never again." He'd feel like a monster. Walking away from a duty. You can't ask him to do that. To feel like such a horrible person-- but you have to! He has to stop doing it! It's not rising to the call, it's not the hero's fucking journey and it's not Alba's never-ending quest to kill himself one way or another! He has an addiction to the release of chemicals in his brain that he gets when he averts the apocalypse. There is no way around saying it. He's an addict. He gets his rush by inserting himself in life or death, this world or no world left, absolute tragedy and destruction scenarios. He stopped the dragon cycle and then Aurene left and he had to be alone with himself for five minutes and he got fucking bored and felt withdrawals, having nothing to do, nothing to satisfy that sector of his brain. He needed the dopamine and adrenaline and he went looking for something to feed it to him through a drip.

And the Wizards needed a hero. So fucking convenient for everyone involved.

But you know. He went with the Wizards, he's played their games (and will continue to do so presumably until the end of SotO, I don't intend to yoink him away just yet) and he's spend months and months with them, trying to trust them--

and he doesn't trust them. He still feels like an outsider. Even being called Outsider, Outlander, at least down in the world of Tyria he felt like he belonged, if not "in this new foreign place, with these strangers" then at least "with his friends and allies, doing these good things." He doesn't belong among the Wizards, the Astral Ward. He doesn't understand magic. He doesn't understand what they're doing or why. Not just because he's an idiot, Vigil-brained and no good at puzzles and feels so stupid he could cry when he has to do math, the numbers all seem to move around -- He cannot understand the point of view that we should sit back and watch (the world) suffer and learn from it from afar. Countless copies of the world, even. Let's see how they burn and we'll take notes and maybe the next one will burn a little quieter. He will never be able to see this as a positive, as a win for Tyria. He will always distrust the Wizards and feel like an outsider to them-- because they shrugged their shoulders and said "well, we decided to hang back and watch." He isn't a watcher. He's a doer. Good or bad, Alba acts.

And he does feel like a true outsider, to this circle of old companions. These people are mostly very nice to him, with time, but they aren't his friends. And he's not in on their group. They've had years, some of them decades, some of them centuries together. He's 13. And all his friends hate him right now. And he feels alone, and he feels like a moron that he doesn't understand the motives behind not helping Tyria, and he feels listless and depressed and he's going through withdrawals when he doesn't get his adrenaline rush, his dopamine drip. Something has to give at some point and eventually that thing is that

he wants to go home.

He can't say it out loud to anyone. He doesn't trust the Wizards, and he doesn't trust that they'll let him go willingly. If the Wayfinder says hey, actually I don't like it here, I'm heading back to the surface later. See you. -- someone is going to say WAIT. We have one FINAL task for you. To save this world one last time. And Alba's going to look at them like

"for.... for me?"

and he's going to fall for it and he'll fall for it again after that, over and over. And he will never be able to leave as long as they have some errand for him that "no one else" can do.

So where does this leave us?

It leaves us with a "sudden" decision. Once Auruim is well enough to move, to get out of bed and at least be somewhat mobile again -- and this will be months off. We're not even at the "Auruim is awake" point yet, this is the future we're talking about--he's going to spring on one of the Wizards a "well, actually, today we are going home." "Oh. Are you planning on coming back?" "No... not really. Ow." (got kicked in the shin. "Uh, no. Not at all."

And then he's going to leave, practically being steered out by the last few remaining of his long suffering companions, before he can change his mind and "well, actually" his way back into Wizard Tasks.

So WHERE does this leave us and with WHOM?

I have touched briefly on Siraz before and I won't go into the deep details of his life again here, but as Alba very quickly and suddenly and "surely you haven't put enough thought into this wayfinder haha" steps away and exits stage left, Siraz is going to be the next available "yeah I guess I've literally got nothing else going on" person around, with pre-existing ties to The Wizards and The Tower anyway. This is him, in case you need a visual:

This is kind of funny to me for reasons:

He's ex-mordrem which means I get to continue to explore my favorite little plant hivemind sub-species again and again and again and again yippee wahoo yay hip hip hooray wheee!

After Auruim is awake and mobile but before Alba and everyone leaves the tower, Siraz is going to beat Auruim's ass, not even for his own personal "I have beef with you" reasons -- but because AURU picks a physical fight with him, ON SIGHT, that he has no chance of winning, and refuses to stop getting back up to try again-- to the point that Siraz is not just ordering him to stay down, but begging "please, stay down, I don't want to have to keep kicking your ass into the ground." They can move past this eventually. We hope.

While his day job is apparently going to be Wayfinder now -- is he excited by this? Possibly, but probably not, he can unpack it at some point -- his side thing seems to be psychoanalysis for other people. What am I saying here? I think Siraz' main hobby and something he really enjoys and is good at is administering therapy to people in mental health crises. He's literally going to do some Wayfinder shit on Tuesday and then on Wednesday afternoon, go and give Canach counsel on how to deal with Alba and then walk outside to the beach where Alba is daydrunk and asleep and wake him up like hey. Let's talk about this. FINALLY: Wayfinder who also gives you therapy and takes your insurance. Or payment in booze and vegetables from your garden. And maybe, maybe fucking finally, Alba can eventually learn how to rest. How to close his eyes. How to lie down and relax even when the world feels uncertain beneath you. Maybe eventually he can heal, and his relationships that he spent ovrr a decade destroying and scorching and salting the earth to ensure they'd never grow back-- maybe they will crawl up through the cracked dry crumbling dirt and seek sunlight once again and flourish.

And with all that said, Alba is going nowhere in terms of who my main character is, who I play, etc. He's my main. And my baby. And I love him. And he has relatively okay/good gear and I don't want to rip all focus off him. I just want to correct his course and see if he can heal from it all.

I will work on Siraz more (build, gear, wardrobe... etc lol.) After SotO wraps up and we see what the future holds for the Wayfinder title... it would be fun to play some story on him at that point. Get some screenshots of him in the job. But Alba is still my center focus. And personally I'm incredibly excited for what lies ahead for him. Not an easy road or a quick journey but a long life of trying. You have to want help, you have to say you want help, and then you have to accept the help, every day for the rest of your life. Healing narrative lets go.

[lightcreators]

@schxdenfreude continue from here

"If you think blind faith can carry you through this world, then by all means, I have no right to stop you. But don't expect me to do the same." Even though she says that, her tone is laced with judgment. She can't imagine herself acting with such flimsy backup.

"Though, I have to wonder. Faith in what exactly? Yourself? A higher power? A loved one? Beliefs and devotion change from person to person. What is it that fills you with this much confidence?"

He  couldn’t  express  disappointment  ---  he  had  been  expecting  that  kind  of  disagreement  …  Nevertheless,  as  dramatic  as  it  was,  he  desired  believe  she  might  trust  some  portions  of  his  words,  taking  all  the  hope  within  them.  Something  he  did  so  vividly  before,  carry  on  regardless  if  the  result  didn’t  ending  up  as  he  was  expecting,  as  he  wanted  hoping  influence  of  his  words  or  his  presence  would  made  eventually  an  difference  …  that  he  would  make  better  humans  he  came  across.  She  probably  won’t  understand  why  it  was  so  much  important.  Actually,  he  couldn’t  told  her  the  reason  why  it  was  so  vital  for  him  …  Playfulness  resonated  within  a  short  instant  within  his  features,  as  there  will  a  strange  resonance  of  the  tragedy.

  Tragedy  of  the  one  she  had  been  victim  of  … 

  ...  but  also  all  the  ones  he  had  been  carrying  away.

 ❝  Don’t  you  have  faith  in  something,  something  that  giving  you  hope  ?  ❞�� He  asked  as  innocently  as  possible,  as  there  was  awareness  his  future  rambling  will  touching  important  points.  Remembrances  he  should  left  behind,  direct  interferences  he  couldn’t  frontally  expose.  He  appreciated  her  various  propositions,  when  he  would  have  loved  confessing  the  first  one  as  main  argument  ---  or  the  third.  Second  one  was  a  bit  complicated  when  he  passed  twelve  years  remembering  he  had  been  an  witch  the  whole  time,  had  been  a  witch  a  long  time  ago  …  and  that  past  remained  yet  present,  within  another  exposed  cat  box  in  which  he  was  the  dead  cat,  in  which  resurrection  had  came  from  the  most  uncanny  of  manners.  ❝  Oooh,  you  steal  away  words  out  of  my  lips.  I  would  love  say  I’m  confident  but  I’m  trying  to  be.  Good  time  of  showing  off  had  been  a  bit  behind  me  considering  how  life  had  been  hard  these  days.  Humanity.  Didn’t  you  believe  in  humanity  ?  Probably  not.  Possibly  not  with  how  Ushiromiya  Eva  blaming  you  and  treating  you  the  whole  time  ---  ❞  He  was  pulling  himself  in  trouble,  but  regardless,  he  would  have  to  facing  judgement  when  it  came  from  that  last  chance.  It  couldn’t  be  worse  than  that  day  …  It  couldn’t  worse  than  the  day  of  the  tragedy  …  ❝  I  always  believed  in  the  goodness  of  humanity.  Always.  Sometimes  be  disappointed,  sometimes  exasperated  of  some  of  their  decisions,  but  humans,  always  moving  on,  always  found  amazing  ways,  always  surviving  on  their  own  manners  …  ❞  Sadness  wrapped  his  expression  at  once,  as  brown  eyes  remained  within  that  distress  as  he  couldn’t  finish  his  rambling  in  front  of  her.  He  learned  the  hard  way  how  it  wasn’t  always  the  case sadly. 

How  humanity  can  be  their  own  monsters.

[kyliafanfiction]

Contract Bound by Elle Mae

Tl;dr

Contract Bound by Elle Mae is a lesbian vampire x vampire hunter enemies to lovers romance.

It is an good read, though obviously if one isn't interested in a dark, toxic - to varying degrees - f/f romance involving vampires, it may not be for you.

Personally? I very much enjoyed it, and while I have too many books on my too read-pile to spend the money on the sequel now, I will almost certainly be getting the sequel (Lost Clause) sooner or later. Whether or not you will like it depends on you. Perhaps the longer review below the readmore will help you decide. (see the bottom of the post for a non-exhaustive list of links on where to get it, as well as details on potential triggers the story contains)

The Premise

The book centers on two characters - Silva, a Hunter for The Order, which is the organization that polices vampires and hunts ones that break the law. They also can be contracted by vampires (law-abiding ones) to protect them against other vampires, or 'Rebels' (humans that want to kill all vampires, even ones that don't kill or who can't be proven to have broken the laws) Her parents were hunters, and she came home one day to find them killed by vampires. (This is all shown in the prologue). She signs up with the Order, and devotes her life to killing vampires. She hates vampires.

The other character is Keir, the heir to the most powerful vampire clan in the world, or so we are told, and a child who acts out to piss off her father. She is due to inherit the clan soon, due to laws imposed by the order that put limits on how long clan heads may remain clan heads. her father, Raphael, is not happy about it, and does everything he can to try and control and restrict her, including contracting with the Order to get her a bodyguard/babysitter to keep her from going out to clubs, picking up girls, seducing them, drinking from them, taking them home, fucking them, wash rinse repeat. Keir, not wanting a bodyguard/babysitter, has gone out of her way to seduce, tempt or otherwise convince every hunter she's gotten assigned to her to break the contract or the rules hunters must abide by. As the back of the book says "whether it was sex, money or power, none of them could resist the temptation."

Obviously, you can see where this is going - the Order sends Silva to be the latest guard, trusting in the fact that she hates vampires so much, and the fact that if she completes the contract her entire debt to the order will be paid off (more on that later) to make sure she stays in line. it's only a few months, and then Keir will be clan head after the power transfer.

And of course, Keir immediately sets out to seduce Silva, only to find out that it isn't quite as simple as she thought it would be - and then, as tensions between them rise, and things happen, they're both faced with a reality they quickly want to deny, each for their own reasons.

It is, about what you'd expect - mostly. In terms of basic tropes and premises, it is an enemies to lovers story involving a vampire and a vampire hunter. It manages to be more than just the tropes, but if you don't like the tropes, you won't like the book.

I will warn that the ending is far, far from happy - it isn't unhappy, this story is not a Dead Lesbian Trope story, but bear that in mind. If you want your queer, toxic vampire drama to end on a fairly positive note, this book is not for you. Admittedly, I do hold out hope that the sequel will provide at least a bittersweet ending, but I was content with the ending for this book, knowing a sequel existed.

The Pros

The two characters have strong voices, and you will find yourself enjoying their POVs, and rooting for their romance as it starts to take hold. It has just the right notes of spiciness in all the right places.

It is indeed very hot, and the humor, dark though it often is, hits quite well. It has a fairly engaging cast of secondary characters operating around the main couple, and it presents Silvia with several moral challenges about her role as a Hunter and the Order, and equally, forces Keir to consider things in ways she never had before. Keir finds herself quickly fascinated by this hunter she can't break, who so clearly wants her, and of course, once Silvia starts to give in, she has that hatred for Keir mixed with the fact she hates herself for not hating Keir as much as she should.

The plot manages to have a number of satisfying twists, that while I didn't see coming - or at least not in the way they did, in some cases - they feel earned, rather than unearned or out of nowhere.

It is exactly what I was looking for involving lesbians, vampires, and enemies to lovers. It hit all the right notes in every way - I've said it several times, but if you are looking for what this story is, then it is very good, and you likely will enjoy it.

The ending was intensely emotionally satisfying despite being not happy. In a 'wreck the reader' sort of way.

The Neutral

The story lacks a strong sense of place, at least to me - the action mostly happens in and around Seattle, by all accounts, but for all that that is relevant, the story could be happening anywhere in America. There's tantalizing hints as to why so many vampires are in America, including the leader of the most powerful clan, a vampire who has been around for many centuries (or more, his exact age is never provided), but they are not really followed up on. (More on this later) This isn't necessarily bad, but it is worth noting.

The story treats vampirism as more an infection than a supernatural state happening to dead bodies, although one does have to die first to be a vampire, and being turned into a vampire is a way to not die if you are dying from some sort of injury. This - the vampirism being an infection rather than supernatural - is generally not a version of the vampire as a concept I personally care for, but that's a question of personal taste rather than a knock against the book.

In connection with the above, it also has vampires as something that can be born - two vampires can have a vampire kid, a vampire and a human can have a vampire kid - not a dhampir, or anything like that, an actual vampire (though half-human vampires need sleep and food, but they still need blood and are very much considered vampires in-universe). Again, this isn't something I really care for, but again, it's a question of personal taste.

The Cons

The biggest con, and arguably this is subjective, but it bugged me enough that I'm going to put it here, is the thin worldbuilding. We are given hints, about the emergency of vampires being this big deal that created mass chaos until the Order was established, but the details are left vague, at best, and it kept bothering me.

The Order appears to be a private organization, but also a government one, filling both functions, but none of this is laid out.

The reasons for why vampire clans work the way they do, why all vampires are largely so much in awe of Raphael (Keir's father) and his clan are implied, and not well explored.

The Order is presented as an intensely controlling, dickish organization that uses its Hunters and spits them back out - which is not exactly an uncommon trope, and some of it makes sense in-universe, but other parts - very much do not. Their controlling, jerk behavior to their own people, let alone their hilarious disregard for civilian casualties (and their apparent license to commit them) as well as some of their more absurd or draconian rules, seems to be there mainly to create conflict for Silva, but the problem is, these rules and behaviors make the Order's job much harder, to a rather nonsensical degree, as far as I can tell. Yes, people and institutions can be jerks, massive, giant jerks, but when that jerkishness undermines their ability to fulfill their function, especially in fiction, a little more explanation is needed.

Another issue is that the Order apparently keeps all it's hunters in debt, like indentured servants, as a means of controlling them. Being trained as a hunter costs money as do your room and board at Hunter HQ, which is still cheaper than living outside of it. They provide some meals free, but only two a day. And the only way to get money to pay off your debt is working missions to kill vampires, or trying to find other ways to make money (the main character alludes to a period early on in her career where she and her friends started doing chores for a high-ranking member of the Order). Since it seems that many Hunters join the Order because of personal tragedy at the hands of vampires, it seems very odd that this would be necessary. Though the Order is so cruel and controlling that even though Silva hates vampires, she does leap at the chance to have her debt covered entirely. In terms of the story, the debt does seem to serve as a necessary plot device to get Silvia to take the mission and then stay long enough for the 'to lovers' part to start to kick in, but it feels like a choice with less implications for the larger worldbuilding would have been better and done the job just as well. Because again, the seeming incoherence of it all bugged me throughout the book, even as I enjoyed it.

Which is really my issue with the worldbuilding in general - it is very thin, and yet keeps hinting at and teasing at implications. I don't know if the author intends to provide answers in the sequel, or if there never will be much followup. I didn't pick up the book with worldbuilding as a major draw, so the lack of it isn't a major detraction (though I am talking about it at length here, it didn't stop me from enjoying the book at all, it's just takes more words to say and I am, by nature, not prone to gushing in great detail about what I like about something), but it did bug me throughout the story.

I don't mind a story not doing a lot of worldbuilding, but when a story hints at greater worldbuilding just beyond the scope of the story, and doesn't follow through, that does bother me. If the author wanted to just focus on the romance over the worldbuilding, then I think they shouldn't have provided so many tantalizing hints and teases and implications, and then not followed up on them to any significant degree, if at all.

Conclusion

Though the thin worldbuilding was a distraction and a negative, overall, the story is excellent at being what it sets out to be, and for that, I did love it. I wanted an f/f vampire x vampire hunter dark romance, and I got that in spades, and a few more things I didn't expect.

But, if you are the kind of reader that needs the worldbuilding to hang together or be good, or seeks out worldbuilding in your vampire stories, this may not be it for you.

Trigger Warnings For The Story

The book actually does have some surprisingly good trigger warnings before you actually get to the story, in the first few pages. But of course, you have to buy the book first to see those. From the Author's website, we have this accurate list of warnings

The themes can include but are not limited to; sexual assault mention, death, gore, parental abuse, nonconsensual biting, off and slight on page SA, trafficking mention, dubious consent, blood play, biting, self harm, tourture, violence.

Of those, I think bloodplay, gore, death and the two biting ones should be pretty obvious - it's a vampire story. Still, better to list them. Of the rest, dubious consent, violence and torture were the ones that really stood out to me as worth drawing attention to. If any of those are significant issues for you, you may want to be careful about the book - that doesn't mean don't buy it or read it if it is otherwise interesting, obviously how or if you engage with what squicks or triggers you is up to you, but always keep that in mind.

How To Get

Full disclosure, there are all on US versions of these websites, I don't know availability outside the US or prices or anything like that, but one would assume the ebook is available through amazon in other countries if nothing else. In principle some of these options should also be available in other countries, but in practice, I don't know. I apologize for my US centrism.

If you want an ebook copy, there appears to be only one way to get it, Amazon. On principle, I'm not going to provide a link to Amazon, but googling 'Contract Bound by Elle Mae' should turn up the amazon page in the first few results. The price there is $4.99.

It appears to be the case, but I am not 100% sure, so please, be careful, that you may be able to get an ebook copy of this book and the author's other books through her Patreon. But like I said, I'm not sure.

You can order a physical copy online, but is of course substantively more expensive. Through Amazon it is $15.99, through Barnes & Noble's website it is $16.99, and on Books A Million it is also $16.99, though it appears shipping is significantly more expensive through them. I think the best option would be Bookshop.org, as buying through them does support independent bookstores (affiliated independent bookstores get a small portion of all sales that aren't done through a specific store's affiliate link. You can also choose to use a specific store's affiliate link to search for the book and then buy it for them to get more directly), but it is the most expensive option, running at $19.54

You may be able to request that your local library buy it, if they haven't already gotten it

Depending on if you have a local independent bookstore or another bookstore that is willing to do special orders to get a book delivered to the store and then you come pick them up (I believe Books A Million Does This), you may be able to request they order it. Procedures for this can be simple or complex. Some bookstores may not want to do this, or may charge you more than it would cost online, as the cost to bookstores through Ingram (one of the main channels for small bookstores to get books) is fairly high relative to the price it costs through larger retailers. If you have more questions, you can ask me, and I'll try to elaborate further.

I don't know of any other ways to obtain the book at this time, but if anyone else does know of others, or has specific details on how one can get it in other countries, please let me know and I'll try to add them to this post or in a reblog.

If you do get the book, I hope you enjoy it!

[dragonbanexxi]

Soul of Bronze; Blood of Fire

Helaena Targaryen x OC Targaryen Royce

Not canon Compliant!!!

The Heir of Runestone would often joke that he should be referred to as Rhaegar Stone. Seeing as his father (Prince Daemon Targaryen) had no want for him and his mother (Lady Rhea Royce) was long dead. All jokes end when he and Ser Gerold Royce are summoned to the capitol by none other than King Viserys the First of his Name. The King wanting nothing more than to bring his estranged nephew into the fold, Viserys offers Rhaegar his so called Targaryen Right. A betrothal to the Princess Helaena and the chance to claim a dragon. Will Rhaegar be able to claim such a beast? Even if his valyrian skills were lacking? Prince Aemond seems to think so. Though he’s mostly is just thrilled to finally have someone around who’s willing to be his friend. Also the court begins to notice that the Princess Helaena seems to have taken a liking to the new prince. Much to her mothers dismay, who’s fighting tooth and nail to have the girl be given to Aegon. Something neither sibling wanted. To Rhaegar everything was going smoothly until the news of Laena Velaryon death had dampen everything.

Chapter 13: Rhaegar

The clouds above were heavy and gray making the ambience befitting of Rhaegar’s grim mood. The Runestone heir stands next to his regent, solemnly observing Ser Gerold’s departing party.

“The time has arrived my boy” His uncle says jovially. “The wind summons me home.”

Rhaegar frowns unhappily. In all his ten and four years of life, Rhaegar has never been separated from Ser Gerold. The boy understands that Runestone needs its lord to run the keep. That in order to maintain peace and stability, its lord cannot wonder too far, for too long.

Still Rhaegar didn’t want to his uncle to leave him alone in King’s Landing. Ser Gerold is the person he trusts most in the world. His uncle gives him a sense of secured devotion and protection. Rhaegar likes to think that’s what a fathers affection feels like. It’s not like Rhaegar knew what that felt like, since he didn’t have one. Sort of… Yet Uncle Gerold was the closest thing he had to one.

“Can’t you stay uncle?” His voice soft. Lavender eyes sparkling with sadness. It makes his uncle smile sadly.

“Don’t let the small council catch you making watery eyes now Rhaegar” he jests.

Rhaegar blushes in amusing embarrassment.

“We’ve been here for almost a turn of the moon nephew. I have to make sure Gunthor and Yorwick haven’t burned Runestone to the ground while we’ve been gone.”

Also to make sure they haven’t tried to press their claim of their home to the wardeness of east. Though Lady Jeyne Arryn is as shrewd as she is astute. She’d likely turn them away if they even tried to bring up the subject. The wardeness of the east understands what it feels like to rule in a castle of vipers ready to strike at her heels and do away with her.

It won’t be problem for Rhaegar much longer, he muses. Soon he will return to Runestone. Though unlike how he left; on horseback, the king’s nephew will return on dragonback. No one will be able to better defend him, the Princess Helaena, Ser Gerold and even the Lady Jeyne Arryn if need be; better than his Cannibal.

“If you won’t stay, than I should go home with you.” Delivering an alternate approach. Desperately trying to prolong time so they don’t have to part ways.

The older man sighs dejectedly.

“His grace wants you to stay longer lad. We cannot refuse his grace’s will.” The raven haired boy slouches his shoulder in defeat.

“Besides you have to stay to get lessons from the dragon keepers.” His voice now serious. “I’m no dragonlord nephew but even I understand the gravity of neglecting to attend these lessons. That obsidian beast of yours will have to be put to heal or else Runestone will turn against you if anything bad happens.”

“I understand” a sad smile spreading on the boys lips.

“Stop it! We will only be apart for another month lad. Pull yourself together!” The older man gripped his wards shoulder firmly and gave him his signature hearty laugh.

“Enjoy this time you have Rhaegar. Not to mention there’s a pretty maiden waiting for you in the keep. I think she’d want you to stay a little longer.”

The newly knighted boy’s cheeks flare up again. A goofy twitter-pated expression takes over his face. By the gods Rhaegar is severely taken with the Princess Helaena. Remembering how just a few nights ago she’d snuck into his room, glowing in the pale moonlight. Looking like the angelic nymph she was.

“Seven hells lad, you’re damn near drooling.” Ser Gerold says barking out an amused hearty laugh.

True to his nature the newly knighted boy blushes but this time giving his uncle a small glare. It doesn’t last however. Instead the boy hugs his uncle and feels him do the same. The older man gives three firm pats on his upper back before letting go.

“Rhaegar” he begins seriously. “I need you to be wise here. Stay out of conflict and stop thinking like a boy.”

Rhaegar’s lavender eyes grow wider not completely understanding.

“I am leaving you alone in a dangerous city, I cannot protect you from all the way in the Vale.” The older man puts a kind hand to the top of his nephews head. “I need you to become the man you were always destined to be”

His uncles honey brown eyes warm but holding a bit of sternness. Needing them to make his point as they locked with Rhaegar’s lavender ones.

“Not tomorrow, not next year, NOW. Behave yourself and uphold honor.”

Rhaegar nods his head in agreement. “I promise uncle.”

Ser Gerold smiles proudly at his ward before mounting his white steed and riding away back to the Vale.

Rhaegar paying no heed to area around him, eyes focused solely on Runestone’s retreating party; failed to notice footsteps nearing him from behind.

“Ser Rhaegar” a deep voice spoke, causing the newly knighted juvenile to jump in fright.

He turns around to find himself face to face with none other than Otto Hightower. The hand of the king looked down at Rhaegar with peering eyes, standing like an arrogant peacock.

“Lord Hightower” the juvenile replies in acknowledgement, giving the older man a poised raised brow.

Helaena had told him through their secret letters that her grandfather was the main reason why she and Rhaegar were not courting openly. That the newly reinstated Lord Hand thought the match between his granddaughter and the son of the Rogue Prince was a misjudgment on the King’s behalf. The Lord hand played it cool, hiding his disdain for the Daemon Targaryen’s son with civil chatter when forced to be in each other’s presence. Rhaegar however finds it difficult to keep up appearances. The temptation to outwardly show his dislike and give a piece of his mind to his betrothed’s grandfather was always at the tip of his fingers. However no matter how strong the urge to lash out at the Lord Hand, Rhaegar never gives in. That would be falling into the Otto Hightower’s trap. The arrogant peacock wants Rhaegar to break, to prove is bogus biased true. The prejudice bias that deep down Rhaegar Targaryen Royce truly is Daemon Targaryen’s spawn through and through. Nothing makes Rhaegar’s blood rage more than being compared to his sire. He would not give Otto Hightower that satisfaction. Rhaegar would carry himself with honor and prove them all wrong.

There they stood at the castle gates, getting sprinkled on by light rain; in a stand off of bronze and emerald green. Observing each other in shrewd calculative contempt.

“His grace wishes for you to be brought to his study, Ser Rhaegar.” Hightower breaks their tense silence.

“Very well” was all the juvenile said, walking away from the obstacle that is keeping him away from his princess.

Rhaegar made his way to his kingly uncle, taking the shortcut Aemond had taught him not so long ago.

Perhaps it was the sadness he felt from Ser Gerold’s departure, but there is a wave of uneasiness swirling in his gut. He pulls a folded note Aemond had passed to him earlier, from the Princess Helaena. He didn’t get the chance to read it since he had to see his Uncle Gerold off. Rhaegar unfolds it and begins to read Helaena’s pretty handwriting.

‘A red worm mourns a silvers seahorse, while little silver hatchlings meet a bronze horse.’

Rhaegar scratches his head in confusion as he walks further into the King’s hall. Tucking the note back into doublet, he’ll try to study it after he’s done with his summon with his grace.

The guard makes Rhaegar’s presence known to the king. Uneasiness hitting his gut once more. Normally his uncle would welcome him with a warm smile and a hug. This time King Viserys’s eyes are filled with sad anticipation.

“Dearest nephew” the king begins sadly. “A letter has arrived from Pentos.”

The Knights heart begins thump uncomfortably, if news has arrived from Pentos than no doubt it was from his sire, Prince Daemon Targaryen. Rhaegar doesn’t say anything but nods at his uncle to continue.

“Your fathers lady wife…” his grace pauses in hesitation, “the Lady Laena Velaryon has passed away. She died in the birthing bed.”

The Heir of Runestone lets out a haggard breath. His lavender eyes now glued to his black leather boots. “That’s awful news” was all he could say.

The king puts his good hand on his nephews shoulder.

“There’s more” The weak king says as his sad amethyst eyes lock with his nephews lavender ones.

“My court will sail to Driftmark for the funeral. I hate to command you nephew, but I expect you to join us as well.”

The juveniles jaw tightens in annoyance. If he’s expected to sail to Driftmark with them, than he’s expected to come face to face with HIM. Rhaegar isn’t sure he’s ready to face his sire just yet.

He lets out an exhale “of course your grace” Agreeing only because he was commanded by the King himself.

Said King gives his nephew a sad smile. “Don’t fret boy, if you don’t wish to converse with my brother than you don’t have to.” His uncle king says with promising conviction. “I’ll be there to halt any offenses Daemon gives your way. I may be his brother but fortunately for us both I am also his King.”

The glint in the Kings eye did nothing to reassure Rhaegar at all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sorry for the wait you guys! I told my peeps from my other fic that I’ve recently been taking new meds and they make feel a little funky! Thankfully I’m seeming to get used to them! So hopefully I can get back to regularly posting every Thursday and Friday! :)

Thanks once again!!! ❤️❤️❤️

[yhwhrulz]

Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer Devotional for September 27

Tozer in the Morning Serious Repentance and Restitution

. . . Well, here are some suggestions which anyone can follow and which, I am convinced, will result in a wonderfully improved Christian life. . . .

Put yourself in the way of the blessing. It is a mistake to look for grace to visit us as a kind of benign magic, or to expect God's help to come as a windfall apart from conditions known and met. There are plainly marked paths which lead straight to the green pastures; let us walk in them. To desire revival, for instance, and at the same time to neglect prayer and devotion is to wish one way and walk another.

Do a thorough job of repenting. Do not hurry to get it over with. Hasty repentance means shallow spiritual experience and lack of certainty in the whole life. Let godly sorrow do her healing work. Until we allow the consciousness of sin to wound us, we will never develop a fear of evil. It is our wretched habit of tolerating sin that keeps us in our half-dead condition.

Make restitution whenever possible. If you owe a debt, pay it, or at least have a frank understanding with your creditor about your intention to pay, so your honesty will be above question. If you have quarreled with anyone, go as far as you can in an effort to achieve reconciliation. As fully as possible make the crooked things straight.

Tozer in the Evening God Always Acts Like Himself

Since true faith rests upon what God is, it is of utmost importance that, to the limit of our comprehension, we know what He is. "They that know thy name will put their trust in thee" (Psalms 9:10). The name of God is the verbal expression of His character, and confidence always rises or falls with known character. What the psalmist said was simply that they who know God to be the kind of God He is will put their confidence in Him. This is not a special virtue, I repeat, but the normal direction any mind takes when confronted with the fact. We are so made that we trust good character and distrust its opposite. That is why unbelief is so intensely wicked. "He that believeth not God hath made him a liar" (1 John 5:10). The character of God is the Christian's final ground of assurance and the solution of many, if not most, of his practical religious problems. Some persons, for instance, believe that God answered prayer in Bible times but will not do so today, and others hold that the miracles of olden days can never be repeated. To believe so is to deny or at least to ignore almost everything God has revealed about Himself. We must remember that God always acts like Himself. He has never at any time anywhere in the vast universe acted otherwise than in character with His infinite perfections. This knowledge should be a warning to the enemies of God, and it cannot but be an immense consolation to His friends.

Copyright Statement This material is considered in the public domain.

[childrensbread]

Miracle Week: Encounter the Sacrifice

The Crucifixion of Jesus

💜 There was a written notice above him, which read: this is the king of the jews.

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence?

We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” ~Luke 23:38-43 ✝️

Devotional

Today is Good Friday, a somber landmark on the Christian calendar. Today, we commemorate Jesus' crucifixion.

Gently embrace a moment of reflection. Set your heart towards Jesus' cross.

Breathe deeply. Inhale God's grace and forgiveness. Exhale your fear and shame. Jesus died for you because He loves you.

Often, this can feel like a dark day: The Son of God killed by His creation. Yet, amid the suffering, victory was already stirring. Like a planted seed, buried deep and seemingly dead, an explosion of life was coming. Though nobody knew it, resurrection was imminent.

Our passage, though, reminds us we don't need to wait for Sunday for miracles to flow. Jesus' nature was a miracle-worker. Consequently, even under agonizing circumstances, Jesus transforms the life of someone around Him.

Today, we encounter Jesus as our miraculous sacrifice.

Nothing, not even death, can restrain God's supernatural power. Even if your life feels full of darkness and suffering, Christ's miracles can break in. Jesus can intervene and change everything in an instant.

This was the experience of the criminal who stood up for Jesus. He's been described as "the most unlikely believer in the Bible," and you can understand why. He was a professional wrongdoer. Yet, incredibly, he walks straight into paradise.

If that's not a miracle, it's hard to know what is.

This profound incident teaches us much about what the cross achieved in the contexts of God's cosmic redemption plan. It's a fast-tracked theology course on the miraculous power of Jesus' sacrifice.

The criminal, realizing Jesus was the Son of God, acknowledges his failings and simply asks Jesus to "remember" him. This briefest demonstration of faith and repentance leads Jesus to immediately respond with a personal invitation into eternal fellowship with Him. Jesus' forgiveness stunningly overwhelms the criminal's convictions. It's an extraordinary moment of grace.

As Jesus speaks of paradise, He uses language that stirs imagery of the garden of Eden in Genesis. His words nudge us to remember the relational intimacy with God that existed in Eden before humanity's rebellion. This deepens our understanding of what's happening. Jesus is saying Eden can now be experienced again. We can enjoy eternal fellowship with God once more. Because of Christ's sacrifice, we can know heaven.

If there was redemption for that criminal then, there's redemption for you today. God's salvation is available to everyone.

Jesus' death on Good Friday means there's nothing else we need to do to access paradise. Our achievements and failures count for nothing. As we approach God with faith and repentance, we're born again, forgiven and set free. Jesus, the sacrificial "Lamb of God", has taken away our sins!

The thief believed Jesus was who He said He was. That's all Christ asked of him. Miraculously, it's all He asks of us too today. Will you trust the cross? Paradise awaits...

Source: Glorify App

Image: Google

My Glorify Referral Link: https://share.glorify-app.com/MRSPINO777 ✝️

[cinnamonest]

Yandere Profile - Link (Legend of Zelda)

ABSOLUTELY YES. MY BOY. LOVE OF MY LIFE.

As some of you may know, today is the release date of Skyward Sword HD for Switch!! So I decided to release this one now in honor of that :3

NOTES:

I went towards the idea of a Princess!reader because that just opens the gate for sooooo much potential. I'm leaning heavily towards the ZeLink interactions in BoTW and Skyward Sword just because those games have the most interaction between the two.

Also! This is great bc it gives me the opportunity to explore an idea I've actually had a long time! I've always thought about how many opportunities there have been across the games for Link and Zelda to be kinda like "haha well seeya later" and just... bolt, run away from everything, abandon their roles and responsibilities and all that. Like, if OoT kid Link got her before Ganon did and ran, if SS Link just decided to get her on the bird and bolt before everything went down, if botw Link was just like haha what if we ran away from everything together... jk... unless...?

And final note, Link is a great pick for the very traditional yandere -- sweet and : ) but can snap into darker personas. I really liked writing this bc I tend to have more self centered yans and less of the "worships the ground you walk on" type of yans like I think Link would be, so it's a nice change.

As usual now the nsfw section is divided by a ---- line.

TWs: fem reader, heavily implied Zelda!reader, stalking, murder, very brief mentions of gore/dismemberment of rivals, manipulation, very brief suicide mention, themes of reincarnation (I’ve been told this can be triggering to some people so just in case)

TWs (nsfw section): noncon, somnophilia

--------------------------------

Severity Scale

Intelligence/Perceptiveness: 4 Brutality: 8.5 Physical capability: 8 Mental/emotional instability: 7 Restrictiveness: 6 Sexual sadism: 5 Stubbornness: 8

What are they generally like? Lucid, aware? Obsessive? How do they behave?

The primary trait of Link that any darling -- any person, really -- would notice is that he is, well, quiet. He has always been a man of few words, and really, he often doesn't know exactly what to say. On his own, at a first glance, he really does seem like a gentle, humble spirit, someone who blends into the background pretty well, who isn't particularly prideful or reckless or aggressive.

Which is why, to be honest, he might sort of evade the gaze of most people -- he doesn't stand out. You remember him as the boy that smiled at you now and then, it's a soft, gentle sort of smile, one that you feel conveys nothing but the utmost innocence and contentment with the world. You know he's pretty good at fighting, but doesn't get into fights needlessly, he's accomplished and respected, but has never been the guy everyone is talking about -- he's in the background, against the wall. Never speaking, always looking out, sometimes at the sky, sometimes carefully watching people. Sometimes you see him, gaze blank and tranquil, and wonder what he's thinking about. Whether he's the village boy in the time of Twilight, the trained and honored warrior that slept for many years, the boy that came down from the sky -- you can't help but feel at ease around him, safe, you can't help but find him endearing and pleasant.

Yet, you always seem to notice him. Other people... forget he exists, sometimes, he's so quiet. You never do, for whatever reason.

When he needs to get something across, he prefers to express himself through actions, not words. If you lived in Skyloft, or Ordon village, you might find problems mysteriously solved, work suddenly done that you don't remember doing. That fencepost outside your home that broke has been replaced overnight. A village child went missing and he comes back a few hours later with them in tow. Always humble, never demanding or expecting thanks, he tells you in his quiet voice that he's happy to help you.

And should you ever ask him for anything, he'll drop whatever he's doing to help. Anything for you, he says with a smile, which makes you feel a bit guilty when, honestly, you're not even sure you're remembering his name right.

And yet, sometimes, you feel so at ease around him it seems unnatural. He seems so easy to trust. You feel like you've known him forever. And sometimes you feel... for just a split second, less at ease. You find yourself randomly stiffening at his calm, sweet voice. You find yourself looking around when you're alone, as if you feel someone is there, and for some reason, his face flashes through your mind. Sometimes when he looks at you, you feel sort of cold. It's almost like invoking a memory you don't have, like some kind of learned instinct you can't recall a reason for. But those moments are fleeting, they come and go before you can even process them, replaced by warmth and comfort.

If you do spend time with him, if you find yourself gazing out your window when he's training, the next thing you notice besides him being quiet and sweet is that he's strong. It's almost ironic, how all the other knights or village boys are so aggressive and rowdy all the time, many of them taller or bulkier, and yet, none of them could ever dream of defeating Link. Not one can match his agility, speed, prowess. Such a pleasant, calm person, with so much skill, strength, and power, but that power is so rarely seen exerted. People marvel at his talent, they say it's as if he has the experience of lifetimes and lifetimes of battle in his blood.

And it's why you feel at ease when he's assigned the task of guarding you. His capabilities are unmatched, and yet you'd never fear any harm to you from him. Both of those traits put together make him the best candidate to protect you.

Of course, you do find yourself doing most of the talking. Sometimes you find yourself rambling to fill the silence, and you fear you're annoying him, but when you stop he raises an eyebrow and asks why you got so quiet. Did he do something wrong? He seems to worry about that a lot -- has he done something bad? Has he made you upset? Are you mad? At first you think he's worried about his position security, but after a while you realize he genuinely worries about it.

And when you do continue your ramblings, you're surprised to find he remembers your words -- every little thing you say. Things you don't even remember telling him. He asks you about that relative you mentioned one time, his eyes light up and he walks a bit to the side because look, it's your favorite flower over there, he'll get it for you. It's impressive, really, how he manages to remember such things. He must take his job very seriously.

He does enjoy giving you such things -- he loves giving you gifts. It's usually things he finds, wholesome little things -- makes a crown out of the flowers you like so much, finds something interesting here or there, while he was off-duty he saw something in the markets he thought you'd like and got it for you. You almost feel guilty, it's so constant that he's giving you things.

Sometimes you ask him about himself, you realize he knows so much about you and you so little about him. He blushes, he rubs the back of his head, he insists there's nothing interesting about him, he wouldn't waste your time like that. It takes time to get him out of his shell, but eventually, he tells you this or that, little stories from his life.

Sometimes you take long walks, you like to get out of the stuffy walls and have fun outside, he accompanies you across Hyrule. Sometimes it feels familiar, you pass places you've never been that give you a feeling of nostalgia, deja vu, a sense that you've been here before.

He’s protectiveness incarnated. Insanely so. He can spring to his feet at a moment's notice and deals with anything that comes for you before they can even get close.

It makes you feel safe, but there's something else there. It's a ferocity that is so contrasting to his normal self, different even from the times you've seen him fight as he trains. It's a glint in the eyes, an aggression in his expression, that almost makes him seem like a different person. And it lingers for a moment, once the creature is dead and his sword hand falls to his side, he turns and glances at you to his side, a hand raised to wipe the blood off his face, and for that lingering second, it's still there, his blank expression and wide eyes -- a ferocity so intense it starts to look like bloodlust, chaos, destruction. And then, it's as if you imagined it. Smiling and telling you it's gone now, you're ok. You're glad he's so truly devoted.

In fact, he's so dedicated to his job that he starts... doing it... outside of his job hours...? Well, today he was given the day off, and you were told to stay inside because you didn't have to go out. He comes knocking on your door, says not to be startled if you hear someone outside your door move or shift or anything, but he just wanted to let you know in case. He'll be right here. Keeping watch. So don't worry. You're safe.

And likewise, he was supposed to have a day off when you were supposed to enter the town. You were assigned two other guards to watch you, since it's a special trip, so you're surprised to find just Link waiting for you. He took care of it, he says, he didn't feel right leaving your safety up to someone else, he doesn't trust them. So they agreed to let him take over for today.

All of this said, he doesn't have to grow alongside you, he doesn't have to be the childhood friend, the knight who guards you. He doesn't even have to have met you. Fate works in odd ways like that. There's a sort of inexplicable instant attachment he takes to you, almost as though it's some kind of destined, divinely inspired sort of thing. He would describe it as saying you feel familiar to him.

He's also, notably, prone to a more traditional trope of what you might call humility whiplash. For the most part, he's got that overly humble, worshipping, "I don't deserve to even stand in your presence" sort of mentality. However, although it's rare and requires a lot of wearing down his mental state, if pushed far enough, he can have brief moments where he snaps into more or less the complete opposite -- entitlement, arrogance, aggression, getting mad at you for the behavior he'd normally take with a smile on his face. Thankfully, unlike some yanderes that have a whole snapping episode towards their darling, his are very very brief, usually only a matter of seconds or a single snarled sentence before he snaps back to normal, wide-eyed and apologetic and telling you I don't know what came over me. It’s... a little frightening to say the least, but you blow it off, tell yourself that hey, everyone has moments like that... Right?

How likely are they to kidnap their darling? How quickly will they do so?

For the most part, he doesn't need it, he can pretty easily cling to your side well enough to be assured of your safety, and he manages to scare off the undesirables not with a glare, but a smile that's just a little too sweet and far too persistent -- it unnerves people. You hear a lot of people say that something about that guy rubs me the wrong way. Or that he gives me goosebumps for some reason. Even the people he scares away themselves can't pinpoint exactly what it is, all they know is that, despite being reputed as kind and quiet (and maybe a little dense), somehow a lot of people agree that something about him puts people at unease, and that's all he needs. Because they stay away from him, and if he’s by your side all the time, that means they stay away from you too. Why keep you trapped when you can just be isolated?

An aware Link is a a unique scenario. One scenario that's rather... interesting to imagine is a Link that defies fate itself, a Link that decides to be selfish in one of those rare snapping moments of his. Perhaps he makes a decision when everything starts going down, when the chaos is beginning, or perhaps he has somehow managed to gain knowledge of the bigger picture at work, the reality of the nature of your existence and his.

Perhaps he begins to think it's unfair. To suffer again and again. To prove himself again and again, and not always even to reap any benefits, to work so hard and yet still -- still -- you slip out of his grasp. He longs for a life with no tribulations, no struggle, no fights to be fought. He begins to feel like it's what he wants the most. He begins to feel like maybe it's what he deserves. So many lifetimes of struggles, if the higher powers won't give him a reward, he'll take it himself.

And perhaps, for all their higher power, not even the great goddesses themselves would have ever predicted it -- humans are ultimately creatures of will. To defy fate and to run away from destiny -- it wouldn't be the first time a human has tried such a thing. Sure, Hyrule may be destroyed. The people may all die. There may be nothing left. But you know what? He's stopped caring. If you're alive and he's alive, tucked away in your little corner of the world where you've found respite, well, that's all he needs. Even if you're on the run from forces that would want to find you, even if the threat of the final third of the triforce owner looms over your head. He'll ignore it, he'll look away.

You'll live a quiet little life together, a happy life without suffering, without quests and enemies, without strife, without worry. That's what he tells you when he steals you away, lifts you out of your bed one night. Says to be quiet, there's danger outside your door, he's rescuing you. You have no reason to not believe him. He waits until things go down, a castle under siege, but rather than taking you to where you're supposed to go, he climbs onto the horse and starts... riding away. It gets further and further into the distance, and you might ask why, what's going on? You have a job to do, he has a battle to be fought. But he says you're going far, far away, someplace you'll be safe.

But what about the divine beasts, the seals, the Twilight, whatever threat runs in this world in this time, what about the threat of Ganon, you ask? He says it doesn't matter anymore. You were doomed to fail, he thinks, it's either stay here and die, or run away. All that matters is you. And he'd like you to feel the same way for him. You will with enough time, don't worry.

He just wants this happy, quiet life with you that he’s been denied time and time again. It’s all he wants. If fate won’t give it to him, he’ll make it happen himself, and carve out the life he is determined to have, defying even the will of higher power.

How difficult is it to escape from them? How do they keep you restrained? How do they deal with attempted escape? 

He gets it. Really, he does. "Stop following me!" You yell. Well, he understands why you might feel that way, but this is kinda his job. He thinks you're naive. Not that he would ever, ever have a thought that you're imperfect, of course! It's because you're so perfect and pure that you're... less aware of the dangers all around.

He'll let you think you're free, perhaps. He's more than capable of being quiet, quiet is kind of his thing. Watching you from a short distance is easy. Of course, his horse might make a noise, he can't really help that, or he might misstep on a branch or something. And then you turn around and get all mad again. Now you're even more angry. Well, he can also tell your guardians/father, who will encourage you to accept it. You can't help but feel a little bad -- he's just doing his job.

Now, our aware, runaway Link, well, does he really need to keep you restrained? What would you go back to? Certain death, a land destroyed? Sometimes you mention home, and he's quick to remind you that home doesn't exist anymore. His home is where you are. Can't you feel the same way? You found peace here in this little place -- a village far far away. Travelers, you call yourselves. What's the point in going elsewhere? How would you ever survive without him? He's not very good at being subtle or skillful about the psychological manipulation, it's obvious he's trying to scare you into not leaving, but... it still works, because really, he has a point.

He doesn't want to have to use physical restraint, in any case. And for the most part, it's not needed, because one important aspect of your relation is that his job kinda revolves around you (in some incarnations), or, perhaps you live in the same little village, but either way the thing is that his presence does the job well enough -- he's always there, perhaps more so than almost any other yandere. Even when you think you've managed to get away from him for a moment, somehow his face pops up out of nowhere. How he manages to pull it off is a mystery, you swear he manages to find you so well and predict your movements it's inhuman.

But if you really, really pose a problem, a smarter and sneakier darling that somehow manages to keep slipping out of his grasp and running off (you never get away for more than about 20 minutes or so, but nonetheless), you keep trying to run off when he's sleeping (he wakes up in approximately 25 seconds if your presence is absent from the bed, but that's still enough time to run out the front door), every time he turns his head (which isn't often) you're trying to disappear... well, in that case, he can reach a point of deciding more straightforward measures are necessary. He hates to do it, really, at least when he's not yet at a snapping point. But it's for your own good. And he says so, quite apologetically.

But it's not so bad, it's not like you're being chained to a wall or anything. For one, he got leather ties so you'd be more comfortable, but more importantly, as your guardian, he figured the best thing for you to be tied to would be... himself. Think of it like friendship bracelets! It's just... got a 5-foot chain connecting them. This way you can't sneak off at night, and you won't get too far when he's distracted. It's a safety measure.

How easy are they to trick, deceive, or manipulate?

He's a learner. At first, it's easy. Honestly, he is a rather naive, gullible boy, sometimes he reminds you of a happy dog with his bright eyes. He likes to believe the best of people, give them the benefit of the doubt in all circumstances, and that goes double for you, who he believes can do no wrong.

And even when you do lie to him, it's still not wrong. You didn't do anything bad. Clearly there has simply been a misunderstanding, and you thought you had to lie. Or perhaps you simply forgot a detail or were confusing something with something else. It wasn't malicious on your end, he knows that.

He's actually significantly smarter than he lets on in practical knowledge, though. Those dungeon puzzles pay off, you know? He's got pattern recognition down. So over time he learns how to distinguish when you're lying to him or attempting to deceive him, and sees through it increasingly well.

And yet, he doesn't really... get mad over it, most of the time. Again, he's just capable of deluding himself into believing there's a reason. He believes so strongly in your goodness that he finds a way to interpret everything you do as out of benevolence. So you snuck out the window and didn't tell him you were going for a walk because you just wanted to get away from his suffocating presence for once? You were just thinking of him. You didn't want to burden him and wanted to give him a break. Well, that's thoughtful, but don't worry, he doesn't need a break. He thinks it's precious you're so considerate of him though!

You don't tell him you were talking to that person, and you lie and say no when he asks, because you don't want him to worry, and because you underestimate how dangerous others can be. He's told you a million times and you don't listen, but that's ok, it's because you're just so pure you see the best in everyone. Everything you do is good.

Because he perceives your lies, he will still work against and around it. He won't confront you on your lies, he'll just make sure to deal with the situation -- you lied about sneaking out, well, he'll just keep watch and be ready to meet you outside next time. You lied about talking to a person, well, he'll just have to make sure they stay away from you instead.

If you're trying to trick him, he just plays along until necessary. Smiles and nods. He gets the suspicion you're planning a break-out when he told you he was leaving to go get something from town... rather than saying so, he just decides, you know what? Why don't you come with him? Oh, you're feeling sick, you tell him it's ok, go without you? Well, he can't leave you alone then! Because you're clearly not and just trying to get him to leave... or, as he says, he can't just leave you alone. He'll go another day.

He's fairly manipulable when it comes to praise and affection. You can easily Pavlov him into certain behaviors or patterns with just the slightest words of praise and affection. He's not a very outwardly expressive person, tends to stay quiet, but you can tell how he feels inside when you give the slightest praise, a hug, a kiss on the cheek -- you can see that soft hint of a smile and tell that inside, he's basically melting, even if it's not obvious to most people. And, much like the lying, he’s honestly often aware of it, but he just can’t help it.

How lenient are they? What privileges can you have, and what will you be denied?

He tries to get you the things that he feels will make you happy. Your happiness is incredibly important to him, and he usually thinks about how any action he plans to take might affect you, spends a lot of time debating choices of things to do or say and try to determine how each one will affect you and choose accordingly.

As such, he goes out of his way to support the things you want to do. Have a hobby? He'll find the best materials available. Want a book or a food? He'll obtain it through some means. Even if procuring it involves a side-quest-y set of mundane tasks or scouring the world for 70 of this and 50 of that to exchange it for the item from an obscure specialist, it's all worth it.

The only thing he just doesn't give up on is the constant vigilance and insistence on being by your side more or less every waking second. And every sleeping second. And just every single moment you're alive. It's for your safety.

This is actually one of the things he can get a little nasty about when it comes to how he deals with it, because he quickly has the bright idea that if you don't get it, he'll make you understand. Of course, he can't actually risk you getting hurt, so he stages it. Allows you to sneak off, or at least think you have, and walk right into the path of those monsters he lured, or the people he hired to intimidate you. Of course, it's only natural that he shows up at the last possible second, right on time to save you. You should expect that, after all, it's his responsibility to protect you, of course fate works out perfectly like this. See, he was right, it's so dangerous, and without him you'd be dead. Hopefully you grasp that now.

What kind of rules do they have? What kind of punishment would they use?

His is mostly related to vigilance. Where are you? Who have you been talking to? Who was that person you were talking with just now? What did they say? He's not nosy. He just cares about you. It’s in the job description. You ought to understand just how much certain bad people would love to find you and hurt you. That's why he has to know.

This isn't our modern world, so there's no phones or tracking devices to speak of, just himself, which, well, might as well be a tracking device since he never seems to have difficulty finding you. Sometimes you're not sure how he does it.

He tells you that you don't have to be with him 24/7, but you will be, even if you don't realize it. He's aware enough to know that you'll feel suffocated and get mad if you're aware of his presence all the time, so he gives you your "alone" time, aka, the "follow her quietly from a 20+ foot distance" time. It all feels the same to you. Well, sometimes you feel eyes on you, but you shake the feeling off as paranoia.

So it's not so much that he sets rules and reacts when they're broken, but rather, he works his way around anything you might do so well that he doesn't need you to follow his rules, or really, you take them more as suggestions. But honestly, that's kind of worse. It's enough to drive a darling to the brink of a mental breakdown very quickly. With Link you will inevitably become paranoid, nervous, you feel like you're going insane because he manages to pop up everywhere, he always knows what you did when you did it and you have no idea how it is even conceivably possible for him to know some of the things that he knows. He confronts you very plainly and quietly, often sweetly, asking why you did this or that or telling you it's ok, you don't have to hide anything, surely there’s a good reason, and if not, he forgives you anyway. In a way, it's worse than an angry confrontation. You begin to feel like he's omnipresent, like he can read your mind, and it truly takes a mental toll and affect you worse than any normal yandere's concept of punishment.

This ultimately works out well in his favor. The more you just do what he wants, the less it feels like a violation or intrusion that he knows these things, since he was there with you, it makes sense, and you continuously get bent to his will.

How do they deal with rivals, or perceived rivals? Will they get rid of them? Will they kill them themselves, or find another way?

Ah, and thus we get to that brutality rating.

It would be unthinkable to think that any sort of scum would even dare. Even he isn't worthy of being with you, and someone else thinks they could be? So, he more or less views "rivals" as an offense. When they're threats, well, he's allowed to deal with them. When they're not, well... he has a wonderful reputation. If he says he overheard that person planning usurpation or assassination, that they realized he was listening in and wildly attacked him, everyone will believe him. Even if the death seems a little... non-immediate. And uh... frankly... overkill. How exactly... did those limbs get perfectly severed during equally armed combat? And was it... really necessary... to kinda spill entrails all over like that? He'll apologize, of course, he was just so outraged by the thought of someone hurting you or your family, you know? You notice his eye twitches a bit as he says it.

He has a lot of... bottled up frustrations, which we'll touch on in the nsfw section as well, but it tends to manifest in those two ways: sex and violence. Rather than exerting stress and anger and frustration as it comes, he lets it fester. He tries to maintain being the noble, humble, self-sacrificing person he feels he should be. That is... difficult to do for a long time. People expect a lot from him, even in timelines where he's not necessarily realized as the hero quite yet, he usually has a lot of responsibilities. But then you tack on the whole hero thing? The weight of the world is sometimes, quite literally, on his shoulders. Do you have any idea the kind of stress that comes with that knowledge? It's not pleasant. And it quickly bottles up, a very very fragile bottle set to eventually shatter in a matter of time.

On a longer sort of quest, he just kinda... leaves a trail of destruction in his wake. Enemies don't actually just poof out of existence the way they do on-screen, you know. Anyone coming across an area he's just been through is met with literal piles upon piles of corpses, sometimes monsters, but sometimes people. He takes a very scorched earth sort of policy when it comes to dealing with things.

He's able to easily get close to people, with that sweet face and puppy eyes and lithe body, people don't really feel on guard around him nor intimidated. That makes it significantly easier to infiltrate enemy hideouts, earn favors, and work his way in to be able to commit mass murder more easily. Granted, no one thinks too much of it because they *are* truly enemies, after all, they *did* need to be taken out and well, if the rulers can choose to either send a group of ten soldiers or just one guy and get the job done equally well either way, they'll go with the latter option. No one thinks anything of it, except the occasional person who laughs and says something to the effect of remind me to never get on your bad side, haha! He gives that sheepish, sweet little smile, and jokingly tells them that yeah, better not.

How easy is it to make them mad? What does their anger look like?

For you, nearly impossible. For others, at a hair trigger.

For the most part, he conceals anger well until, as aforementioned, it bottles up and bursts. The truth is he gets irritated virtually all the time by other people. People who talk to you. Look at you. Smile at you. He’s actually rather easily annoyed even when you’re not involved, but again, he’s good at hiding it until it builds.

His rage has a commonality with his calm -- it's quiet. At least, at first. When it's directed at others, his eyes narrow. It's the telltale sign that someone has ignited his rage. It burns on the inside, it starts off as a spark that builds and builds and grows larger and larger until it's a blazing fire that consumes everything in his path. It's a loss of composure, a rare moment of complete loss of self-control. From his own perspective, it feels like he's not in control of his own body, it's all a blur happening in front of him and when it's over he's looking down at his own hands, unable to process his own actions, sometimes unable to remember them.

But it's violent, merciless, unforgiving. It does not yield to begging, it does not leave anything alive unless forced to. You remember the first time you realized how unnatural it was, how shocked you were at how he did something that certainly went against the code he was sworn to follow, the very first time you felt truly afraid of Link. It was a walk in town -- someone called out to you, spitting obscenities about you and your family, your lineage, threw something at you -- he caught it in his hand and crushed it, and quickly, without a word, advanced on the offender. And, to make a long story short, you had to prevent him from beating a man to death in public in broad daylight. He was forgiven by his superiors, but even they seemed shocked. You had to pull him off, and when he jerked his head around to look at whatever was stopping him -- before his face softened as he recognized your own face -- the split second you saw the burn of hatred and fury in eyes that were normally so soft and loving, was nothing short of unsettling, you still recall the chill that ran down your spine.

And honestly? It's terrifying. And the first time, it's shocking. Sure, you knew he could fight. You've seen him fight off monsters, bokoblins and lizalfos and the like. But something is different about seeing the blood of a human being run down his sword, dripping onto the ground, to see the bodies and the blank, numb gaze on his features he always has after it's over. The absolute lack of hesitancy he has to run human enemies through before they even have a chance to explain themselves, how unbothered he seems by the carnage left in his wake. The way he turns back to you, drenched in red and smiles, tells you it's ok, you're safe now. There's no need to look so scared.

And it changes how you view him, in the long run. Less of a guardian angel, more of a guardian dog, one that defends your name when you never asked him to. Pleads to tell him not to fall on deaf ears -- you just don't understand why it has to be this way, he says, you can't comprehend the threat they posed. From the sweet boy that leaves you flowers and repairs and instead leaves a wave of destruction in his path you would not have thought possible.

Directed towards you, though, it's entirely different. He tries his best to have patience with you, no matter what. He smiles, he tries to make excuses as to why you'd say this or do that, why you'd feel a certain way, and he's rather good at deluding himself to give you the benefit of the doubt.

But when it reaches an end, when he can no longer lie to himself, when you push it to a point that you truly make him mad, it's more of a snap. The times he'll lay hands on you in a truly violent way are rare, and as aforementioned, very brief. It's usually not so much of actually a blow, so much as a grab. He just can't get what he's trying to tell you through your thick head, so he stresses it, trying to make you understand as he grabs you by the upper arms, shaking you with each word, and he only stops when he sees the pain and fear in your eyes, drawing his hands back at lightning speed. He saves you from some danger very narrowly, one of the few times he lost track of you for a moment and had to frantically search before coming across you being attacked. What would I have done if something happened to you? Don't you understand that? He's so lost in the relief it takes him a moment to feel you beating on his arms in the embrace, choking and wheezing that you can't breathe, that his grip is so tight it feels like he'll snap you in half. He draws back again, and he apologizes, but it will certainly happen more than once.

So they see you as above them, beneath them, or equal to them?

Above. Like, so, so, so far above. He feels like he doesn't even deserve to look at you. Of course, neither does anyone else, so he's just, you know, stepping up to bear the burden of wrongdoing to keep people even worse than him away from you.

So it's less that you're just above him so much as you're above everyone. He's actually, perhaps surprisingly, a little bit of a pessimist about the world. The world is full of so many terrible people and so many horrible things happen that he's borne witness to. It's a "world cold and hard, (y/n) soft and warm" sort of thing. You're the one good thing, the thing that makes him happy, the ultimate source of comfort he has, and he has to prevent you from being defiled by the evil of the world, keep you innocent and sweet (even if he's just deluding himself to think you are those things in the first place).

This ties into, again, how he interprets every action you take as good and benevolent -- he has the "you can do no wrong" mentality. Even very blatantly malicious things, he'll interpret in a way that makes you somehow still come out a perfect, innocent angel. If you do harm to others, well, they simply deserved it. You did something technically wrong, but you knew no better, or you were desperate. You can't be held responsible for any of it. And if you're mean to him, well, he probably did something to make you upset.

How determined are they for you to love them? How hard will they try to make it happen? Or are they content just having you?

Sort of a duality. Yes, he's very persistent. He thinks about it all the time. Every time you yell and try to run and hurl nasty insults at him, it hurts far more than you realize. He doesn't let it show on his face or in his voice, but it really does, and it gets to him sometimes. He's hyper observant of every little thing you do, your body language, your tone, the way you look at him, and the slightest of differences can change his mood internally, although it tends to look the same outwardly.

He makes little mental notes of it -- today she didn't flinch when I touched her shoulder. Today she didn't frown when she saw me coming. Little things like that will make his entire day. Likewise, the inverse kills him inside. He aims to make every day one of the former days, where the littlest signs of acceptance or even kindness and affection give him a sort of high that makes him feel like he's floating.

He tries his best to do things that he thinks will, well, earn love. Every opportunity to do something for you, he takes it. Everything he sees he'd think you'd like, he buys (or steals, or... loots from a dead body) for you. On and on that idea goes. And although he doesn't say too much, when he does speak to you, he usually has something nice to say. He views it in a formulaic way -- ironically, think about it like those collectibles in overworlds. You get enough of this or that thing, and once you have enough, you can go talk to this or that person and donate them all and get a reward, right? He's accustomed to viewing things that way. Love should be the same way. If he just completes enough tasks and gathers enough items, eventually he'll unlock your love.

That being said, even if it doesn't happen, much to your despair, he just... doesn't. Give. Up. He doesn't quit. No matter how many times you tell him, it doesn't make a difference. You can tell him you'll never love him, and it's like it goes in one ear and out the other. He keeps trying. And he never, ever, ever stops trying. What did you expect? The boy's been fighting the same enemy over and over across lifetimes, needless to say his spirit has build up some persistence.

Bonus: Is there anything that makes them unique, in comparison to other yanderes?

Bonus: Zelda/Triforce of Wisdom Darling

And don't worry. If it all goes wrong, when he fails, those divergences in time where the hero is vanquished and evil wins out -- it's not the end. Somehow, that's the feeling he gets, holding your little lifeless body up, running hands across your cold skin. Somehow, he feels oddly calm. Like it hurts, but it's ok. Like he'll see you again. Maybe not soon, but one day. This time didn't work out. But the next one will.

And that's the feeling you'll always have. Every time you meet him and you feel like you've met before, the lingering memories when you wake from your dreams -- flying through skies and sailing on oceans, a child, an adult, a boy you've never met, or one you've known all your life, but it's always the same face, the same voice, the one right beside you in the waking world. You sometimes wonder if he has the same feelings, the same dreams, the same sense of something greater than yourselves at work, the sense of being just smaller pieces in a much bigger picture.

The sense of permanency, that each other is all there will ever be -- regardless of how it makes you feel, regardless of how that scares you, sometimes you feel like you can never be free. Sometimes, when you think of running away, those dark moments when you think of even escaping from life itself, it feels futile. It's as if you know it would never hold him away forever. As if death is insignificant. Perhaps in this lifetime, you'll become aware of why that is, or perhaps not.

With other obsessive lovers, just the idea of til death do us part is a terrifying thought. But, for Link, not even death can keep him away from you. Your suffering is already determined by the will of higher power, for the sake of a greater good. 

In truth, it’s the goddesses who made him this way intentionally -- it’s designed to ensure your safety, even at the cost of your suffering. Again, for a greater good. Sure, you may live one lifetime to the next desperately locked in the same cycle in which your freedom and will is stripped from you, but in the end, it serves a purpose. 

Nor will he change -- perhaps this one this time is a bit more spirited, more calm, more pessimistic, more optimistic... but in the end, at their core, they're the same soul, with the same will deep, deep down. The same drive to find you and protect you. The same love for you, an all-consuming love that destroys everything in its path to you and leaves ruin in its wake.

And if fate should one day keep you apart, should things change, for whatever reason, it’s unable to change him. There's another force even more powerful than fate determined to keep you together. The only thing more unavoidable, inevitable, and unescapable than fate, is Link himself.

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General perverseness: how sexual of a person are they? What’s their drive like? How touchy do they get? Do they have any reservations about sexuality?

In moments of passion, he changes a bit, unlike other more submissive yans who stay consistent in their reverence and desire to please.

You see, after a while, being as lenient and tolerant and flexible and completely devoted as he is... constantly self-sacrificing in so many ways, to you, to Hyrule, to the world... some frustrations build up. It's a big, big bottle of emotion, all tucked away and festering, getting greater and greater and eventually it has to explode somehow.

His reservations and inhibitions fall away. Perhaps a darker, more selfish side comes out. Perhaps that's why he's so rough. He knows he'll regret it later, the bruises from how hard he grips, the marks from the bites, but the hormones and the heat takes over. He'll feel bad for defiling you. He'll apologize. And he'll do it again. And again. And again.

But once the resolve crumbles, it topples. That is, he can't partially maintain it -- if it's partially gone, it falls apart completely. He lets go, so to speak. And when he lets go, you find that underneath that carefully constructed resolve and willpower that holds him back, he can be a very, very rough and possessive lover. In his normal state, he wouldn't dare think of you as a possession, or as something he's even worthy of. He would like so, so much to think that, to feel like he's allowed to -- but he doesn't. He chastises himself for even having such a desire. But in those moments, when his resolve is gone and his brain isn't thinking quite too clearly, he might even have to audacity to say "mine." Even if it's not true, not now, maybe it will be. He would like that so much. His and his alone.

And in a moment of clarity, he might even throw away the inhibition on purpose. The more selfish side, the same Link that drags you away from your destiny -- he's already forsaken his responsibilities, hasn't he? Why care anymore about the structures that no longer exist, your status and his, if there's no kingdom left? He likes that it happened, even. This way, this time, you can throw off those titles, those roles. Without your status, your title, there's nothing stopping him from making you his. And you will be his, and nothing more. It's all you need to be. So he doesn't have to care anymore about any of that, he doesn't have to stop himself from going wild. Biting into every little spare patch of skin, covering your body with marks that make him feel comforted to see.

As far as drive it's a bit of a two-sided duality. Outwardly he's not a very sexual person at all, blushes and stutters and averts his gaze at the slightest mention of suggestive topics, tries his best to be Respectful(tm) by always looking away when you're in a compromising position, or your skirt flies up, etc etc. Given how constant his vigilance is, he has a tendency to accidentally walk in on your changing or bathing, except unlike with many yanderes, it's genuinely an accident. Not that the image doesn't stick in his mind, nor does he wish he hadn't gotten to see, but he does feel guilty, and it was genuinely unintentional. He kinda freezes up, so it takes a moment for him to actually snap out of it and run out.

That being said, he quickly develops something of a masturbation addiction when he's younger, it starts as more of a stress reliever than anything, He's so sweet and always feels bad about talking about his problems and feelings, so that and, well, violence are the only ways he can get it out. Thus he learns to channel stress and nerves into sexuality, and once he has a real living body and not just his hand, that dependency on cumming to relieve it doesn't change.

How forceful are they? Do they care about your willingness?

Particularly so, yes, cares quite a bit. And it takes a while for him to feel comfortable. Even consensually, the first few times he touches you for several months, he's got trembling hands and stays quieter than ever, constantly freezes up every time you move or make a noise because he thinks he's done something wrong. He has to be coaxed into feeling more comfortable before he gets used to it, but he will build confidence over time.

As addressed before, though, if he's pushed and pushed and pushed long enough, you can get a darker side to come out. This is most likely something that would only occur post-kidnapping in a distant time, once he's far away from any possibility of consequence and destruction has set in to the world around you. He starts to get a little bitter, if you've been mean to him. It all builds up. Don't you get that he's literally saved your life? That he devoted every waking second to you? Isn't he kinda entitled to some thanks? The cycle of time never rewards him. Even the figures he helps over time rarely give him more than a verbal praise and thanks, maybe an item here or there, and then disappear. His role feels thankless. He starts to feel like he deserves something, something tangible, in return.

Surprisingly, though, he actually does not take the route of guilt-tripping or emotional manipulation or gaslighting his way into it like a lot of the sweeter yanderes when he does have that snap. His snaps/breakdowns are rather extreme in terms of how much of a polar opposite they are to his normal state, rather than just a slight bend of his normal personality. Rather than taking the route of most yanderes like himself, he just gets directly physically forceful. Still somewhat sweet, though, reminds you he loves you, he'd die for you, you're his entire world. You'd argue that doesn't really change the actions, but considering how frightening he is in that state, you're not dumb enough to vocalize that.

The guilt consumes him alive afterwards. Like, immediately afterwards. He's still panting and twitching and buried inside when it sets in. That being said, he doesn't get to stuttering and profusely apologizing, like he does over smaller offenses. It's all done and he can't take it back, so he just kinda collapses and says nothing. He's not the best with words, you know. It's an odd mixture of guilt and, honestly, a bit of satisfaction and relief. It feels like letting go of some self-imposed burden, that feeling of finally surrendering to some deep want, even if it comes with a lot of remorse, the relief of finally letting go does have a good feeling as well... and because of that, it’s another one of those barriers that, once broken, can’t be built up again.

What sort of kinks or fetishes do they have, or would they fill?

In all honesty the boy is, for the most part, a fairly gentle and vanilla lover. He doesn't really need anything special to get off -- he's easily excited and cums very very easily too. Just the prospect of getting to stick his dick in you in any capacity is enough to make him nearly burst at the thought honestly.

In general, as aforementioned, he's very very cautious and gentle to a point, but has a tendency to get actually kinda rough once he gets into it. The thing is, the roughness aspect is actually unintentional. He's one of those boys that is a little bit unaware of his own strength, doesn't process exactly how hard and fast he's going. He just gets lost in the feeling, kinda enters a dazed lusty haze where he's less aware of his actions. Doesn't realize he's literally got an iron grip pressing your head down on his dick or into the bed until you start flailing your hands because you can't breathe. Doesn't realize how hard he was gripping until he sees the bruises on your arms and hips later. That sort of deal -- poor thing is just unaware and doesn't have enough blood in his brain to think straight.

Biting

Surprisingly a really big one for him. (Remnants of a past life cycle with some lupine experiences perhaps?) In all seriousness, he could not explain exactly why if asked, it's one of those "I just like it" sort of things. It feels like yet another way to conjoin the two bodies, pulls you close. The marking aspect is also nice. Granted, he feels guilty afterwards, tries to help it heal. He has that same duality where moments ago he was this intimidating beast of a human being, rough and growly and jerking you like you were weightless, and now he's back to this bright eyed softie stuttering while he apologizes.

The guilt is mixed with a bit of enjoyment, though. It's constantly conflicting -- sure, part of him understands it's embarrassing and will help you cover up, but part of him doesn't want to, he wants people to see. Part of him looks at the marks and tells himself internally to never do that again, and part of him sees them and just wants to give you even more. It's a constant internal conflict, poor thing.

As far as a place, he likes the neck and shoulders best, simply because it's the most visible and it's the most passionate ones to create, when your bodies are tightly locked together. That being said, though, he also has a thing for biting at the insides of your thighs. It's another one of those I just like it sort of things.

Sometimes, when you're asleep, or pretending to be, you can feel him trace the bite marks with his fingers, softly running them over the circular pattern, just enough to barely ghost over your flesh.

Somnophilia

It puts him at ease. This one is particularly prevalent towards the beginning of your relationship, before you really know... how he is. He has this image of you as so pure and he couldn't bear the thought of defiling you with his horrible horrible thoughts. The guilt eats away at him for a while, but eventually he just can't hold back, but how could he ever do anything to you and risk consequence? So... the solution he comes up with is waiting until you sleep.

He tests the waters to see how heavy of a sleeper you are. Calls your name at increasing volume, lightly runs his fingers over your hair, pokes your face, whispers in your ear, runs his hands over your arms. Just to see what makes you rustle, if anything, so he knows the limits. If it turns out you're an incredibly light sleeper, well, unfortunately that means he's limited to just jerking off to your sleeping form, but that's ok. Just seeing your soft face and the cute way you breathe, the slightest way your lips open, that's enough for him.

If it turns out you're a heavier sleeper though, well, he tries to fight the temptation, but ends up going further. Slowly climbs onto your bed, careful to make the weight shift as gently as possible. Slowly pulls the covers back. Runs his hands up and down. It's a lot better when he can actually see your body as he jerks off, honestly. If he's feeling particularly risky, he might press your thighs together, feel how soft your skin is to his cock, how nice the squeezing pressure between them is.

He gets easily lost in a haze, though, so he inevitably ends up accidentally cumming on you and has to frantically find a way to lightly dab it up without waking you. He panics quite a bit, but that doesn't stop him from doing it again the very next night.

Overstimulation/Forced Orgasm

It just means he's doing a good job, really. Sure, you squeal and kick your feet back and forth and tug at his hair, but that's just because it feels good. Orgasms equate to love and feel good, right? Sure there's a little bit of pain when you go overboard, but then it just leads to feeling even better, right?

It's kind of an irrational compulsion rather than a logical goal, though. He just has an impulsive need to feel you quiver and spasm and clench, it basically gives him a chemical high hit and a wave of reassurance, makes him feel good in both the physical sense and the emotional sense. The first one sends him into this compulsive need to feel it over and over and over again, as many times as he can. It's another one of his internal conflict things -- sure, he knows it's hurting, but he just has to get one more. Just one more. But of course, every time turns into "just one more" when he's been saying that for half an hour now.

And, to be honest, it kind of gives him a pride boost to think he can make you cum against your will. How many people struggle to achieve that even when both parties are trying? It makes him feel good in an adequacy sort of way, he feels needed.

Size Kink/Distension

You know, there's a well-known thing among the male-lovers in this world when it comes to size. It's never the arrogant, loud guys, it's never the social butterflies, it's never the tall guys, it's never the beefy muscly guys. No, they're not the ones that end up somehow bestowed with absolute monster cocks. It's always the soft, lean boys who don't talk much. And they're always painfully unaware of it, too.

He's no exception. Not to the size or the complete lack of awareness. He hasn't spent a lot of time around guys his age too much, he's always been the one sent for some special task and ends up out in the wilderness by himself on journeys, or, in some lifetimes, accompanying you most of the time. He doesn't know what the average dick looks like, so he has no idea he's far above average.

This might sound like a plus, and of course in some ways it is, but also he doesn't think about the fact that the average body isn't properly equipped to handle it. You're supposed to just kinda put it in, that's how the sex works, right? Poor thing, especially if it's entirely consensual sex, he's just kinda ???? because why are you in pain? What is he doing wrong? You have to eventually explain it's literally just his body, not something he's doing.

That being said, naturally, he's a humble person, but hearing you say that does kinda... make him feel good inside. A little bit proud. He's not a person who takes a lot of pride in many things, so he likes having this one thing, and quickly notices you can visibly see it through the bulge it makes in your stomach. Especially if it's in a position where your back is pressed to his front, every little movement creates the bulge, so expect to get a lot of that.

He doesn't really bring it up much or talk about it when he's actually fucking you, it's more like, as with many things, something he's quietly aware of and silently enjoys a lot internally, even if it's not voiced.

How do they feel about pregnancy or babies? Do they want them?

Yes and no. It has to do with his overactive protection instinct. What if something happened or went wrong? He couldn't take that. He couldn't lose you.

At the same time, he likes kids, and he's very good with them, very patient. And over time, realizes that a kid would be the perfect tool of manipulation, and besides that, isn't it a beautiful thing, an ultimate manifestation of love?

So how to work around that... Ultimately, what he decides to do is have a kid... Just not by blood. There are plenty of orphans in Hyrule, wandering the streets and the wilderness, picking one up is easy. ...You wouldn't leave this poor child to suffer out there, to fend for themselves, would you? Nor would you leave him to take care of it by himself... Right?

What kind of (nsfw) punishments would they use?

Oh, it's not like he thinks of it that way. He would call it... a reminder. You put yourself in danger again? You tried to go back again? You were gone and for ten whole minutes he didn't know where you were? What could the solution to this issue be? The only thing his brain can really come up with is making sure you need him. Making sure you're content and satisfied here with him so you don't go running off.

Thus we return to the forced orgasm thing -- see, you do need him. It feels good, right? You say it hurts, and maybe it does a little, but ultimately you wouldn't be cumming if it wasn't good. No one else can ever do that. No one else knows you like this. No one else was made for you like this. You can't replace him. You need him. And he can keep going as many times as it takes until you see that, too. Even if he gets milked dry, he has a mouth and hands for a reason.

And by "until you see that," I mean until you say it. In his more... emotionally intense moments, he gets a bit insistent. He needs to hear you say it. Admit it to yourself. And to him. That you need him, that you depend on him, that you'll never leave again. And don't think your patience and tolerance can stand a chance of outlasting his -- it will keep going until you say it.

What body parts of their darling do they like the most?

He's one of those wholesome type of boys who goes with something sweet. He says maybe your hair, your face, your skin, your eyes. It's all so comforting. So familiar. Of course, not to say that he doesn't like your less wholesome mentionable parts, but he wants to be chivalric about such a question, and feels answering that way would be too disrespectful.

In his unspoken thoughts, though, he likes the hips. It's a part of you he can grab onto and hold you close with. He puts his hands there a lot and holds tight, like he feels like at any moment you could slip out of his grasp. And, I mean, it's nice to look at, can't forget that.

[iwannaseeyainakia]

Eren Jeager X Reader Angst

TW: gore, cursing, angst, spoilers

I do fanfic commissions so let me know if you’re interested. Enjoy!

The ground quaked under the thundering steps of the Wall Titans. Screams rang out amongst the residents of Paradis as they struggled to stay standing. Surrounded by rubble, all you could do was stare. In awe. In absolute terror. You couldn’t stop him. You DIDN’T stop him. Eren wanted freedom, and he sure as hell got it. No matter the costs. Your own home was destroyed. But dirt under the Titans’ feet.  

Mikasa was gripping your shoulder, shouting over the rumbling. Armin attempted to assist her in getting your attention. But you did not hear. No, the only thing you could focus on was the rumbling and your sister’s mutilated hand beneath the debris. Ripping yourself from her grip, you jump down and trudged over to her corpse, falling to your knees. So much blood. Her blood. Numb, you gently took her hand in yours. Looking over the shrapnel lodged in her palm. Her face crushed under fragments of the roof. Her jaw was broken off, tongue lulling out nearly split from her throat. Your tears would not flow. Until you turned and saw her most prized possession.

The poorly sewn bear you made for her. Just a foot away from her body. Your screams mixed with the many other voices and the deafening rumble of the Titans. Eren Jeager. The man you’d devoted your life too, promised to see the world with. He’s not just doomed everyone outside the walls. He’s also brutely murdered your sister. Your throat bled from your consistent wailing. She’s dead. He’s killed her. Threads of hair rip from your scalp into the grip of your fist. What has he done. What has he donewhathashedonewhathashedone-

“[Name], WE NEED TO GO!” Mikasa shouted over the noise. Her words continued to fall on deaf ears, your sobs overpowering you. After glancing at the large feet stomping through the town one last time, she promptly lifted you up and launched with you in an attempt to regroup with the others. Armin could only follow with somber eyes. Pure grief clouded your mind. You’ve lost your family and your lover in one split second. You saw him. You got close enough to stop him. He lied to you. You knew he was never going to do what Zeke wanted. He told you. But he also refused to disclose what his true intentions were. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll protect you.” You believed him. So, when you were only a few feet away from his fallen titan, you did not engage. As he burst out of his titan and made eye contact with you, you didn’t move. His eyes locked on and all you could do was nod and back up. You trusted him. You trusted him more than anyone else.  

And now your sister has paid the price for your naivety. It all made sense now. Armin’s sudden realization of Eren’s actions brought you to the reality of it all. He’s going to kill everyone. To protect you all he’s going to wipe out the majority of humanity. And in doing so he’s killed many of his own.

He’s met your sister. She thought he was amazing. The annoyed look he had on his face to hide his smile the day he met her, seeing her tiny feet padding on the floor to hug him, was the day you fell in love. And decided you could trust him. The person who promised to protect you all, also killed your sibling. You’ll make him pay. Any love for him is overpowered by the growing hatred you’ve developed in these past few moments.  

The three of you land on the roof of a building untouched by the rumbling. Mikasa loosens her grip and puts you down gently. She places her hand on your shoulders as they shake. She assumes because of your cries. But as you lift your head, she knows that’s no longer the case. You were filled with unbelievable rage. “[Name]…” She didn’t have the words to console you. She knows she can’t do anything to help you. Eren has done too much damage. Your hands clench into fists, veins popping out. The glint your eyes held made both of their stomachs drop. Armin reaches out.  

“I’m sorry. I wish I realized sooner. I know I can’t understand, but right now we need to keep moving. We have to meet up with Jean and Connie, [Name].” He places his hand atop your closed one. “Please.” You knew you couldn’t keep sitting and crying. Couldn’t keep thinking about what Eren has done. How he’s betrayed you. Still numb, you take Armin’s hand. He helps you up and puts his hand on your back. He and Mikasa help you back to meet up with the others. As you glide in the air with them, you glance back at the Titans. The steam that filled the air. Your gaze hardens.

You’re going to kill that fucker yourself.  

[universallychaoticpan]

Hello! I’m not sure if you are still taking requests but if you are I have a Levi x reader one for you! (If you’re not feel free to ignore)

Levi and the (fem) reader are married, but have chosen to keep their relationship private for safety reasons. One time after an expedition he doesn’t see her among the survivors or deceased and can only assume she was eaten outside the walls. He’s devastated ofc but tries to hide it and no one understands why he seems so shaken. A few days afterwards there’s an announcement that a scout member managed to survive and has returned and he allows himself the *smallest* amount of hope that it’s her. Surprise! It is, and they reunite in the infirmary. Happy cuddles and tears all around. Whether or not the other scouts learn about their marriage at some point up to you!

Levi was no strange to tragedy, no newcomer to the realities of the world. He'd grown up around death, the reaper at his side in his cradle. But this was pain the likes he'd never felt before. It was always different.

When it had been his mother, it was slow and creeping, pain sharp and biting moving in through the constant waves of sorrow.

With Isabel and Farlan, it had been heavy and full of disbelief, their faces on the ground haunted with the memory of their last scream.

And now, with you, it felt as though it was burrowing into the deepest part of him, like he was missing a piece of himself; an ache that slept in the back of his mind at all hours.

It had been two weeks now, since you had died. Since Erwin led the scouts once again outside the walls, you giving your husband a playful smile as you pulled away for the right flank's interior. You were justly respected in the corps, skilled, strong and experienced to the point that cadets and fellow veterans like sought out your advice. Erwin trusted you, and so did Levi. They trusted you to stay safe, to carry out your mission well and protect your comrades in arms down to the last breath. But for Levi, there was an added layer of fear that ate at him no matter how much he trusted you. There was the danger only he knew of, that he'd loose the person he loved so dearly, that one day, in fulfilling Erwin's mission of devoting your life, you'd break your promise to him.

That you wouldn't come home.

And suddenly, that day had arrived. Once back inside the walls, once again surrounded by the sounds of weeping families and wailing loved ones, and you weren't there. He waited for the better part of an hour, dread mounting with each and every second that passed without you, and eventually, Hange came to drag him inside.

He felt nothing.

There was nothing to feel.

Not when there was only one possibility left, really. The facts were harsh and clear:

You'd gone outside the walls.

The scouts had returned.

You weren't among the dead or the survivors.

Meaning that you'd been eaten outside the walls, your body past recovery.

Feigning his usual indifference, he'd slipped away into the room he'd once shared with you as he felt his heart shatter once more. He was so used to it, so why did it still break him to realize you were gone? Why did he still feel like whatever fragile remains of himself had been taken, ripped from him, when he'd faced this tragedy before? He knew the answer, the delusion of ignorance only lasting so long. He knew why.

It was because after everything, you'd still found a way to love him. You'd made him smile and laugh when he'd needed it the most, held him close during the long nights, brushed tears from his cheeks and kissed his scars with such gentle care he was scared he'd break as your eyes looked back at him. It was because you'd stayed, you hadn't left, not when it was hard to love him, not when he pushed you away. You'd promised yourself to him despite everything, your vows a heavy secret in both your minds.

He loved you because you helped him find a way to live without needing to be strong. You'd protected the weakest parts of him from a world so ready to exploit them, and told him it was ok to break.

So break he did. He rushed back outside, the cold night sending rain across his face. He crashed through the turbulent quiet with a voice raw and pained, the voice of a dying animal, of a breaking heart. He felt his legs give out, his body give up, sending him to the ground as water pelting his skin. There was no difference now, between his sweat, his tears, and the rain that washed them away. It was all for you. The sky mourned with him as he screamed out to no one, cursed the world that had stolen you from him.

"She was my wife, you bastards," he cried, "That woman you took from me was my wife! She was incredible and beautiful and so damn strong and there's no way in hell I ever deserved her." Pulling at the string that held his ring around his neck, he showed the circle of glittering metal to the clouds above. "This was a promise! I promised her I'd take care of her and protect her, that we'd be together forever and now," he gasped, once again sinking to his knees with the ring pressed to his lips, "She's not coming back.

She's not coming home because I failed."

He stayed there for a while, sobs ripping their way through his body with the storm dancing around him, before he pulled himself from the ground and walked inside. He brushed past Hange at the door, their eyes wide with concern as they saw their friend in such misery. It was clear as day that this was a pain no one would ever really be accustomed to but him. It was a loss bespoke to him, and as she turned in, she felt her heart break a little more for you too.

And so two weeks came and went, the scouts did their business as usual, Levi pushing through it all. Even if they didn't know why, everyone could see how his skin was pale from lack of sleep, his eyes more shadowed than usual. It wasn't hard to notice the shaking in his hands, the way he jumped at the slightest movement and wandered aimlessly at night. It was during another one of these days when he let himself hope again. Training had been stopped for a break, and a flustered looking cadet had run up the captain and told him Erwin had requested his presence in his office at once. Groaning internally, Levi had nodded, briskly walking away as he pondered over what the commander could want. Surely it had something to do with his declining health, his poorer performance as he pushed himself to the limit, then pushed past it. Sure, he was still just as good as any soldier at his worst. But Levi wasn't any soldier. He was better, and he was fully prepared to accept Erwin's disappointment.

But when he walked in, he saw the commander looking shaken and..relieved?

"Erwin," he said, nodding respectfully as he entered.

"Levi," he responded, voice low and steady as ever. "I have some news I think you'll like. You see, it turns out that there has been a scout that, somehow, survived outside the walls for two weeks after being separated from the corp during the last mission and-"

He didn't have the chance to say another word. Levi was already gone, the door still swinging open as he tore down the halls towards the infirmary.

Please, he thought, let her be ok. His heart thundered in his ears while his feet struck the stone floor, slipping around corners and upstairs, startling cadets and members of his squad alike.

"Where's he goin," Connie asked, Jean shrugging as Sasha's face lit up.

"You mean you don't know," she gasped, eyes bright. "They found captain Levi's wife alive outside the walls after two weeks!"

"Wife," Jean asked, confusion on his face, "I didn't even know the guy was married!"

But married he was, and, as he laid his eyes on a familiar shock of hair against the clean white sheets of your bed, he felt himself fall to pieces all over again. You were asleep, with bandages over your skin and a nasty bruise painting your collarbones, but you were breathing. Carefully, he sat beside you and pulled you into his arms, feeling you stir a little as you woke up. As soon as your eyes flashed in recognition, sleep fading from your mind at the sight of the man you loved, he brought his lips to your own for the first time since you'd gone. He had been worried he would forget how it felt to kiss you, to hold you, but know he knew he would never need to worry again. Because you would always be there to remind him of what it was to be loved by you, and he would devote his very soul to you in turn.

Finally you pulled away, flushed and exhausted but happier than you ever had been, tears beading along your eyes.

"I told you I'd always come home."

[robininthelabyrinth]

LXC offhandedly says something about his relationship with NHS that would be totally innocent from *anyone* else, but sounds scandalously filthy coming from *him*. Bonus points if it's around LWJ and/or WWX and they are floored. Double bonus points if he did it on purpose for revenge over having to listen to *them* all the time. - 🦇

Petty - ao3

The first time was an accident.

No, that wasn’t right. More accurately, the first time was entirely Wei Wuxian’s fault.

(Lan Xichen sometimes thought, not very kindly, that many things were, more than Lan Wangji would necessarily admit to. He had not yet settled with himself if those were his actual thoughts or if it was merely bitterness about everything that had happened and in which Wei Wuxian had played chief role, but that was one of the things he was working on, for himself.

After all those years of being deceived, it was important for him to get to know his own mind, his own thoughts, and to be sure about them.)

“It’s good to see you out and about,” Wei Wuxian said warmly to him when they met again, as if Lan Xichen had only been confined at home with a brief illness rather than in strict seclusion for over a year.

Lan Xichen thought, perhaps, that Wei Wuxian was attempting to translate for Lan Wangji, standing beside him, practically radiating welcome and hopefulness and other such things that Lan Xichen honestly wasn’t equipped to deal with at the moment and had been purposefully ignoring. If so, it was not a very accurate translation, and unnecessary – no one knew his brother better than him.

Certainly not his brother’s long-dead lost love, who hadn’t even known.

“Indeed,” he said, not smiling, and Wei Wuxian’s own smile faded a little, as Lan Wangji’s own hope already had. “Nie Huaisang will be coming to visit me, and I plan to host him at the hanshi.”

That might also have been at Lan Wangji’s request, although only obliquely, if at all – even when he had appeared at his weakest, his most fallible and pathetic, Nie Huaisang had always been as stubborn as an ox (as stubborn as his brother), and no one could make him do anything he didn’t want to do.  This included running his own sect, no matter how much they had tried, and it also included actually listening to the people he’d just begged to solve problems for him. Lan Xichen could remember all the countless times Nie Huaisang had sobbed on his shoulder, and Jin Guangyao’s, too, until they’d given him advice, at which point he would thank them effusively and merrily go along and do whatever he felt like doing regardless. He was very good at getting his own way in the end.

As subsequent events had shown.

Lan Xichen could tell from the expression on Wei Wuxian’s face that he didn’t understand why Lan Xichen would choose to break his seclusion to host Nie Huaisang of all people, especially when he had declined all similar efforts by Lan Wangji, but he wasn’t especially inclined to explain.

If he even could.

How to explain that contemplation had shown that he had been the one to fail Nie Huaisang and not the other way around? Long before they’d ever sworn brotherhood, he had promised Nie Mingjue to watch over Nie Huaisang and aid him whole-heartedly in all his endeavors. Nie Mingjue had always worried, first and foremost, that Nie Huaisang not be lonely, knowing that his brother, born with a weak body, had long struggled with finding his place in his martially-inclined sect – everything else was secondary in Nie Mingjue’s mind, even Nie Huaisang’s personal safety. He’d always said that Nie Huaisang was a proper Nie in that fashion, that he would devote every part of him to the things he loved no matter if it meant death, and there was nothing anyone could do about it; all he’d ever wanted, instead, was for Nie Huaisang not to be alone as he did so.

Lan Xichen had sworn to be there for him.

He hadn’t been.

He’d sworn to stand beside Nie Mingjue, too, promised it in his heart and in the eyes of all the world, and he’d even meant it when he’d done so. And then, despite it all, he’d spent nearly half his life supporting and shielding his murderer – he’d broken so many promises. To the Nie, to himself. The only thing Lan Xichen could do to atone for those failures was to try to do better: to learn from what he’d done, to teach himself what he’d lacked, to make up for his deficiencies. To live up to what little remained of those promises.

And so, if Nie Huaisang wanted to see him, he would see him, even if he had seen no one else.

Wei Wuxian didn’t understand that.

Couldn’t, maybe.

Wei Wuxian was his brother-in-law, he made Lan Wangji happy, and Lan Xichen was grateful for that. He was even grateful, in a painful, agonizing sort of way, for Wei Wuxian’s help in revealing the truth about Jin Guangyao and his dark deeds. But Wei Wuxian forgot pain as soon as it happened and believed everyone else ought to be the same: they were together now, so never mind about all those years Lan Wangji spent alone and in mourning; Jin Guangyao had been a murderer, so never mind about all the good things he’d done or the good times they’d shared; Lan Xichen was out of seclusion, so clearly he’d gotten over everything that had happened.

At least for Lan Xichen, pain did not work that way.

“Well, that’s nice,” Wei Wuxian said after a while, when the silence had gone from merely familiar to actively awkward and Lan Wangji was staring at the ground, his hopes dashed to bits, even though that had not been Lan Xichen’s intent. He loved his brother very much, but he couldn’t heal himself fast enough to assuage Lan Wangji’s guilt at winning his happiness at the expense of Lan Xichen’s pain, nor did he intend to try. “I didn’t know he was coming.”

Lan Xichen did not point out that he was Sect Leader, not Lan Wangji, and that his word was final regarding who did and did not have the right to enter the Cloud Recesses at any time. It would be petty.

He was trying not to be petty. It was very hard.

“I hope to spend some quality time together with him,” Lan Xichen finally said, some meaningless filler designed to let them get out of the current conversational impasse, and was bewildered when Wei Wuxian, possibly inspired by the high tension of the moment, burst out in raucous laughter, reaching out to elbow Lan Wangji in the side.

“I bet you will,” he said, his tone almost jeering. “Quality time, yeah? Just the two of you together in the hanshi and everything.”

It wasn’t until Lan Wangji’s ears reddened slightly that Lan Xichen comprehended what Wei Wuxian was implying. That he had left a year’s seclusion because, what, he wanted to hop into bed with Nie Huaisang?

The mere notion was so puerile that it could barely be considered as rising to the level of a joke, the implication not only crude but actively cruel and disdainful of all the work Lan Xichen had done to put himself back together over the past year, and Lan Xichen had absolutely no idea how he was supposed to respond.

He glanced at Lan Wangji, wondering if his brother would say something – apologize, maybe – but he was clearly unable or unwilling to help. Finally, he shook his head and walked away.

That was the first time.

-

The second time – and many of the other times thereafter – were not accidental at all.

Talking with Nie Huaisang had been wretchedly painful but cleansing, necessary, just as his silent and extended contemplation in seclusion had been. They had not wholly forgiven each other for everything that had happened, whether the harms they had knowingly or unknowingly inflicted or for the agonies they had each suffered, but they were on a path to get there together – each one of them agreeing to learn from what had happened, to try to extend trust to each other, real trust, so that neither of them had to continue on their lonely roads alone.

It might be nearly two decades late, but Lan Xichen was determined to make good on his promise to Nie Mingjue, and Nie Huaisang equally determined in his own way to live up to what his brother would have wanted now that it was an option.

One unexpected aspect of this, interestingly, was how the clash between their values – Lan sect rules, Nie sect principles – gave rise to any number of very interesting analytical conversations. Nie Huaisang was a poor scholar for rules that required rote memorization to learn, but he understood his sect’s moral code down to his bones, well enough to be able to fashion himself a path within it. When pressed for his thoughts on any given subject, his arguments were well-fashioned, logical, and difficult to refute.

Lan Xichen had not enjoyed himself so much in years.

Even in the days when he had wholly believed in Jin Guangyao, his former friend was simply too facile to have a proper back-and-forth with: he would always yield, or seem to, or else dance around the main subject until they were on another on which they could agree; he had always prioritized good feeling over intellecutal growth. He’d never understood what enjoyment could be gotten out of standing your ground on some theoretical or philosophical issue.

At any rate, one of the points Nie Huaisang had won, curiously enough, was in regards to the subject of pettiness: bad in large doses, but acceptable in small, in his view. He compared it to venting frustrations or to understanding and indulging oneself in the positive sense – if you’re a petty person, he said matter-of-factly, you can try to improve yourself, but you’re not going accept yourself unless you just admit it. If that’s the sort of person you were, you wouldn’t get anywhere constantly resisting the urge to fight things out in petty, stupid ways.

Sometimes you just wanted to get into it over something stupid because otherwise you’d get into it over something important, and that was, in Nie Huaisang’s view, not a bad thing: if someone got in your face, get back in theirs.

Lan Xichen was, in many ways, a petty person.

“So, how is Nie Huaisang doing?” Wei Wuxian asked when lunch was not entirely over. Etiquette dictated that Lan Xichen had to respond, and family rules that he knew Wei Wuxian knew made clear it was impermissible to talk over meals: the only acceptable solution, therefore, was for him to consider his half-eaten meal as already complete, respond, and wait until dinner to fill up. And all because Wei Wuxian simply couldn’t wait another half-ke to blurt out his question, because he was too free and unrestrained to honor the rules of the family he had married into just because he personally didn’t think they were important. “Where is he, anyway? I would’ve thought he’d be here with us.”

Lan Xichen put down his bowl with just a little extra more force than he should, enough to make it clink against the table, and Lan Wangji’s eyes tightened a little at the unusual display of irritation.

“He’s still in bed,” Lan Xichen said mildly. “I’m afraid I rather wore him out last night.”

Wei Wuxian choked, misunderstanding, just as Lan Xichen had intended him to.

They’d gotten onto an interesting subject of conversation and had ended up talking most of the previous day’s afternoon and evening, as it happened, and Nie Huaisang was still a sect leader, with important business to attend to; Lan Xichen was fairly sure that after he had retired at the usual time for his sect, Nie Huaisang had worked until nearly dawn. Anyway, Nie Huaisang wasn’t much for set meal-times, not even by Wei Wuxian’s lax standards; he’d shared an early breakfast with Lan Xichen before going to sleep.

“Perhaps you can speak with him later, if you need him,” Lan Xichen said, folding his hands in front of him. “I will pass along your regards when I return to the hanshi. Which I should do now, in fact: I have some correspondence I need to attend to.”

Lan Xichen wondered if Wei Wuxian even noticed that his words signified Lan Xichen’s graceful removal of the work of sect correspondence from Lan Wangji, returning it into his own hands. Lan Qiren and Lan Wangji had managed sect business between them during Lan Xichen’s seclusion, and both had recognized that even though he had emerged from that seclusion he was still very much in the midst of his recovery and neither had tried to push him back into the role of Sect Leader. His announcement that he needed to attend to correspondence indicated that he was shouldering that burden once more – moreover, it was, by Lan sect standards, a rather vicious snub to make the announcement of the transition a public one, however subtle the wording, especially when he did not similarly make any sort of announcement regarding the work his uncle was managing on his behalf.

Petty.

Unnecessarily petty, really – it wasn’t Lan Wangji’s fault that he’d married a man who couldn’t even after all this time comprehend that sometimes you valued something because someone else did, even if you yourself didn’t care for or understand it.  

It was, however, his fault in not putting a stop to Wei Wuxian’s rudeness.

It wasn’t actually hard for a grown man to at least try to respect a rule as basic as do not speak during meals, or for that matter the one about not making tremendous noise late at night when you knew everyone else was sleeping. Having previously been in seclusion, Lan Xichen wasn’t aware of how bad it had gotten, with disciples rearranging their living quarters further and further away from any place Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian might be found breaking the rules against excessive promiscuity – and really, Lan Wangji should know better. No one was asking that he refrain from being in love, even extravagantly so, but they did live in a community, and he ought to have basic respect for others, even if it meant occasionally saying no to his beloved long-lost and miraculously reunited lover.

Lan Xichen knew how hard it was for him to say no, of course; he suffered from the same generosity of spirit as his brother. But hadn’t everything that had happened a year ago shown the folly of always saying yes?

-

“Ah, Wei-xiong,” Lan Xichen said a few days later when they crossed paths in the middle of the day. “Are you on your way to the apothecary? Could I ask you to pick up a few items for me?”

Wei Wuxian shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, presumably still aching from the bout of early afternoon delight that he and Lan Wangji had been indulging in over by the cold spring – which was meant to be a place for cultivation for all, not a private garden in which the young master of the sect could frolic like one of his pet rabbits. It would have to be cleaned before anyone else could use it, and Lan Wangji was undoubtedly back there giving those orders now, his forehead ribbon no doubt askew from having been utilized in private activity before being hastily replaced.

“Certainly, Xichen-xiong,” he said. “What do you need?”

“Some ointments of the sort used for stretching and to ease pain,” Lan Xichen said. “Huaisang has been complaining of soreness and stiffness as of late.”

He had, of course – among his misfortunes, Nie Huaisang had been born with something of a crooked spine, and his lower back would sporadically spasm, causing him great pain. Not that that was what Wei Wuxian was thinking of, of course.

“I’ve tried using my hands on him,” Lan Xichen added, allowing himself to sound regretful – which he was, as he hated to see Nie Huaisang suffering. “But he says it’s not enough, given the, ah, magnitude of the issue. I want to get him some relief and make sure he’s comfortable…I’m sure you understand.”

He was sure Wei Wuxian did not.

“Uh, sure,” Wei Wuxian said, barely bothering to hide the fact that he was giggling under his breath. “I’ll grab some for you, no problem…you should really ask Nie Huaisang to give you some, uh, books. To provide you with some guidance.”

“He’s provided several,” Lan Xichen said peaceably. Nie Huaisang was extremely fussy; naturally he would ensure that Lan Xichen was well supplied in guides on massage before allowing him to tend to him. “But thank you for the suggestion.”

Wei Wuxian nodded and saluted briefly, clearly ready to move on.

“Oh,” Lan Xichen said, as if only just remembering. “And tell Wangji that he doesn’t need to come to the meeting this evening – I know the two of you have better things to do with your time than having him listen to interminable reports on agriculture.”

Wei Wuxian actually smiled at that, as if the quarterly agricultural reports from the farms that fed the entire Cloud Recesses weren’t one of the most critical duties for Lan clan members to attend to and one that Lan Wangji had been assisting with since the age of twelve.

That task accomplished, Lan Xichen returned to the hanshi, where Nie Huaisang was scowling over the initial reports that had come in from the furthest farms in writing – he’d already offered to supplement any harvest shortfalls with the excess from Qinghe’s own extremely productive fields, but any shortage in one area could lead to shortages in others; no one wanted another famine among the common people the way there had been during the Sunshot Campaign and the hard years thereafter.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked doubtfully when Lan Xichen mentioned that he’d excused Lan Wangji from attending that evening and would therefore be doubly reliant on Nie Huaisang’s recollection of the meeting afterwards. “Lan Wangji may think you’re punishing him for marrying Wei Wuxian, which you’re not.”

“I’m not,” Lan Xichen agreed, because he wasn’t. If anything, he’d encouraged them to get together, and no matter the cost to himself, he was happy that Lan Wangji had achieved his heart’s desire after wanting it for such a long time.

“He may also interpret it as you punishing him for failing to control his spouse.”

“I don’t want him to control his spouse,” Lan Xichen said. “I want him to have some self-respect. Wangji has always greatly respected the rules of our sect and, until now, has always thought carefully before choosing to break them, accepting the consequences for doing so no matter how harsh. If I believed that Wangji truly disagreed with the rules, I would be willing to engage with him on the subject in good faith, but that isn’t what’s happening. He still believes in the rules.”

“He just doesn’t have the balls to tell Wei Wuxian that he wants him to stop stamping all over them?”

Lan Xichen huffed lightly. “I wouldn’t have put it that way.”

“But it’s what you think,” Nie Huaisang concluded.

“It is,” Lan Xichen said. “They’re going to spend the rest of their lives together – is Wangji planning on letting Wei Wuxian to win every argument without fail, no matter the cost to himself? Is he even planning on informing with him what the cost of his actions is? To always give and never take is not an equal relationship.”

“And your increased sensitivity on the subject of keeping secrets from your loved ones for, purportedly, their own good is completely beside the point, I assume?”

“The fact that I’m sensitive doesn’t make me wrong,” Lan Xichen said. “If Wangji is keeping secrets from Wei Wuxian, if he’s unwilling to rely on him or share his troubles with him, if he intends to one-sidedly sacrifice everything for him without even consulting with him as to whether he would be willing to accept such a sacrifice, then what they have isn’t a marriage.”

There was a house filled with purple gentians in the Cloud Recesses that stood as the eternal reminder of what that sort of marriage looked like, a terrible sacrifice that eventually became as much of a shackle on the recipient as it had been on the giver. Lan Xichen wouldn’t allow Lan Wangji to make that mistake.

And as for Wei Wuxian...if he truly oved Lan Wangji, he wouldn’t want it, either.

Lan Xichen certainly hadn’t.

Nie Huaisang sighed gustily. “All right, fine, fine. You know me, I’m always in favor of people standing up for what they think is the right thing even when it’s hard –” This was an almost grotesque understatement, but the friendship they were forging now was in some large parts based on the gallows humor emerging from their shared traumas. “– so I will reluctantly endorse your actions and, even more reluctantly, attend your meeting with you to take notes for later.”

“I appreciate your help. And your endorsement, of course.”

-

“Nie Huaisang has gotten much better at playing the xiao,” Lan Xichen remarked to Wei Wuxian on the day he removed Lan Wangji from the teaching roster and disqualified him from accompanying the juniors in night-hunts. “He’s a very – hands-on learner.”

Wei Wuxian snorted.

“I’ve been demonstrating the proper technique for him. Breath control is paramount, naturally, but of course you also have to know what to do with your tongue…”

Wei Wuxian was full on sniggering. “Oh, I bet,” he said salaciously. “I’m sure you’re a very hands-on teacher, eh, Xichen-xiong?”

“I want him to excel,” Lan Xichen agreed. “And that means plenty of practice…oh, I’m sorry, Wei-xiong. I shouldn’t have interrupted you – you were running somewhere?”

Right in the middle of the main pathways, no less, where the quick footfalls and sudden movement had startled countless people into very nearly raising an alarm before they realized there wasn’t anything to worry about. There were too many of them that remembered the war.

They had taken comfort in the enforced tranquility of the Cloud Recesses, before.

“Oh, no, don’t worry about it,” Wei Wuxian said breezily. “Just had an idea and wanted to get back to my workshop as quickly as possible, that’s all.”

“I see,” Lan Xichen said. “I won’t stand in your way, then.”

He actually was teaching Nie Huaisang how to play the xiao, at his request – he’d made some comparisons to it while debating a matter of ethics, and Nie Huaisang was determined to learn just enough to argue back in kind.

Lan Xichen didn’t have any illusions that Nie Huaisang would stick with it any more than he’d stuck with any other type of cultivation – he’d first tried teaching him musical cultivation when he was a child without any success at all, and Jin Guangyao’s example had definitely not endeared Nie Huaisang to the concept – but it was rather nice to discuss music without necessarily focusing on the backdrop of cultivation within it.

Accordingly, he continued the metaphor with Wei Wuxian for several days running. He talked about how energetic a student Nie Huaisang was –“He’s wearing me out,” he said, shaking his head. “Draining me dry…” – and mentioned that they were having an interesting time going back and forth on the subject of fingering, despite Nie Huaisang’s claims that his weak fingers weren’t nearly as suited for quick, assured movement as Lan Xichen’s.

“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” Lan Xichen had said, even as Wei Wuxian had nearly cried from laughter. “His fingers are very flexible, and I get a great deal of enjoyment from his enthusiasm. Skill comes later.”

“Definitely something you have to work on together,” Wei Wuxian said enthusiastically. “It gets better as you go, doesn’t it?”

In the past few days, he had brought alcohol into public places, rather than leaving it in the jingshi where the breach would be a minor one, and tried to encourage the juniors to share it with him, although they’d refused; he’d even tried to bully them into doing so using his superior age and the respect they’d owed him until Lan Xichen had intervened with ‘urgent’ tasks for the juniors instead.

He had loudly speculated regarding one sect elder’s marital affairs after the man had refused to speak with him following a disagreement, breaking both the rules against malicious gossip and those against disrespecting the older generation all at once. He had gone hunting and fishing right outside the boundary line of the Cloud Recesses in clear sight of the disciples, including several who were attempting to practice cultivation based on compassion for all creatures; several others were pulled from their usual tasks to go purify the ground according to their customs, including a careful check of their wells to ensure that the blood and viscera had not seeped into the groundwater that ran so high and near to the surface.

In return, Lan Xichen relieved Lan Wangji of his requirement to go patrolling – “You’re married now, after all,” he’d said to Wei Wuxian, as if it wasn’t a duty shared by adult every sect member, “I’m sure you want the benefit of his company at night. Isn’t that right?” – and revoked his access to the restricted areas of the sect, including the discipline hall of which he had had sole charge since before the age of fifteen. He asked his uncle to resume the full schedule of teaching, including the classes which had previously been shifted in part over to Lan Wangji – his uncle agreed, understanding his motives, although he looked sick to his stomach with anxiety the way he always did when Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji were fighting – and had publicly chided one of the juniors for “bothering” Lan Wangji with questions regarding his cultivation.

“Aren’t you so old already?” he scolded gently, a smile fixed on his face and his eyes firmly on the junior instead of his brother standing beside him. “You can’t go running to Wangji with every little issue that comes to mind. Reflect on yourself, and take pains not to be a burden to others.”

The junior appeared very nearly on the verge of tears, and he was not the only one. He, at least, understood the significance of Lan Xichen issuing the reprimand in public – if the junior in question had truly been pestering Lan Wangji with too many questions, it would have been a tremendous rebuke to him personally; as he had not, and everyone knew he had not, it was a clear order from the sect leader that no one was to bring any questions to Lan Wangji.

“Brother,” Lan Wangji said, his voice low and hurt.

“I know you must be tired, recently,” Lan Xichen said, looking back at him with a steady, unflinching gaze. “I understand that you and your husband have been taking long walks at night.”

Through residential areas, no less, and Lan Wangji knew better. Perhaps their sect was too strict with the rules about waking and resting, strict enough that the other sects laughed at them over it, but the rules were in place for a reason. Even if Lan Wangji himself was feeling restless enough to wander at night, there were places he could go that were designated specifically for that – gardens, mountain paths, what have you – where their wanderings would not bother others who had already gone to sleep.

Lan Wangji hesitated, his shoulders rising to his ears, but he dropped his gaze to the ground and nodded, conceding the point.

He knew better.

He knew better, he cared about doing better, and he let Wei Wuxian walk all over him anyway.

“It must be difficult to go walking at zi hour and wake at mao,” Lan Xichen said. “Perhaps waking at si hour would suit you better.”

Lan Wangji looked stricken. After over thirty years of waking at the appropriate time, he would have to be suffering from true bone-deep exhaustion for him not to rise at mao hour per their rules; Lan Xichen’s suggestion, if he enforced it, would do nothing but restrict him from leaving the jingshi until that later time.

Confinement was not a punishment Lan Xichen inflicted lightly on anyone, least of all his brother. His brother, who had suffered just as much from what had happened to their mother as he had.

“Perhaps you can use the additional time to talk to your spouse,” Lan Xichen said.

Tell him that you don’t like how he ignores all our rules like he’s trying to make a contest out of it, he meant. Tell him that you wince every time he puts his foot in it, every time he offends someone he didn’t have to, every time he disrespects our ancestors and all but spits on everything they cared about. Tell him that you’ll compromise on some rules, the ones that are genuinely hard for him, but that you want him to follow others out of respect for the fact that they mean something to you.

He would do it for you, Wangji. He loves you. You don’t always have to be the one to sacrifice.

Just tell him.

Lan Wangji’s lips pressed together.

Another refusal. It wasn’t that Lan Xichen didn’t know how stubborn his brother could be, especially in matters relating to Wei Wuxian, and he didn’t really want to match wills against him – he never really had, not in all their life. He loved his little brother so very much, and so Lan Xichen always been the one to yield, the one to give in, the one to make up the difference between them. The one to encourage him, the one to look the other way: whatever Lan Wangji had needed or even wanted, Lan Xichen had sought to give him.

Even the dreadful punishment with the discipline whip had been something Lan Xichen had sought to avert, and would have, if only Lan Wangji had not so self-destructively insisted upon it.

He had allowed it to proceed only because he thought that the physical pain would give Lan Wangji some measure of relief from the enormous emotional pain he was suffering from.

But now – this wasn’t just a temporary physical pain that Lan Wangji was trying to choose.

This was the rest of his life.

Lan Xichen was not going to back down over this.

“Si hour it is, then,” he said with a sigh. Nor would he revoke the instruction he had implicitly given to the juniors that Lan Wangji was no longer an acceptable advisor, unable to guide them in the Lan sect rules that he was constantly defying by proxy. “It’s for the best, I suppose. It’ll help habituate you.”

Lan Wangji looked up sharply.

Lan Xichen met his gaze head on. His brother, he reflected, was for once the one underestimating his stubbornness.

“I understand,” he said, his words very slow and very deliberate and very carefully chosen, “that rising at si hour is customary in the Lotus Pier, if a little late. That’s where Wei Wuxian picked up his habits, was it not?”

Lan Wangji’s eyes were wide as if he couldn’t believe Lan Xichen was saying what he was saying.

Perhaps he had become infected by Wei Wuxian’s obliviousness and needed things to be said flat out.

Very well.

“The Cloud Recesses is the home of the Lan,” Lan Xichen said. “Our lives are here, guided by our rules that are laid out on the Wall of Discipline for all to see. It is the life we have all chosen, freely and without coercion – but I know it is not the life for everyone.”

“Brother!” Lan Wangji exclaimed, and he actually looked viscerally upset, the expression clear enough on his face that even Wei Wuxian ought to be able to tell what he was feeling.

“You don’t have to follow them if you don’t want to, Wangji,” Lan Xichen continued, inexorable. He, like most of his sect, disliked this sort of straightforwardness, but he was Nie Mingjue’s sworn brother and Nie Huaisang’s brother by proxy; he knew how to wield his words with the brutality of a saber as well as the grace of a sword or the gentle lilt of the xiao. “But I will not allow you to continue making a mockery of them. Not here.”

Lan Wangji looked as if he’d been stabbed.

No – Lan Xichen had seen his brother get stabbed. He had taken that better than this.

“I will write to Sect Leader Jiang by the end of the week,” Lan Xichen said, and clasped his hands behind his back to keep them from trembling. Tell him before then. Please. “Between the two of us, I’m certain that we can find somewhere to suit both you and your husband, so that you may live as free and unrestrained as you wish.”

He did Lan Wangji the honor of not looking back as he walked away.

He knew his brother wouldn’t want him to see the tears.

-

It was, if anything, a pleasant surprise when Wei Wuxian burst into Lan Xichen’s home less than a day later. Lan Xichen had thought it would take at least three.

“What is wrong with you?” Wei Wuxian shouted, slamming his hands down on the table in front of Lan Xichen. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Is it me? If it’s me you have a problem with, say it to my face directly!”

Lan Xichen finished swallowing the tea he’d just sipped. “Not everything is about you,” he said, feeling tired. “This is about Wangji.”

Wei Wuxian’s eyes were red-rimmed as if he, too, had been crying.

“You’re not seriously planning on kicking him out of the Cloud Recesses because I broke a few of your rules, are you?” he asked, biting off each word individually. “He’s your brother. He’s a perfect Lan – he ran your sect for a year!”

“Our sect,” Lan Xichen corrected. “Wangji will always have a place here, as will you.”

Wei Wuxian crossed his arms over his chest. “Then why is he convinced that you want him to go?”

Lan Xichen sighed.

“I’m sure his knees hurt,” he said.

“…what?”

“His knees,” Lan Xichen said. “From all the kneeling he’s been doing.”

Wei Wuxian looked truly bewildered now. “Are you – making a sex joke?” he said. “Now?”

“No, though I’m unsurprised you took it as one,” Lan Xichen said, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “I’m referring to all the kneeling in penance that my brother has been doing to atone for all the rules he has been breaking on your behalf. You wouldn’t have noticed it, as I assume he’s been deliberately hiding it from you.”

Wei Wuxian stared at him. “He’s been kneeling?”

“Wangji cares very deeply about our sect’s traditions,” Lan Xichen said. “He would never have been made the head of the discipline hall if he didn’t. He knows them backwards and forwards, better than anyone except for my uncle and the sect elders that specialize in it. They’re important to him.”

“But –”

“He keeps track of every rule you instigate him into breaking,” Lan Xichen said flatly. “Every single one, large and small, major or minor, and he tries to do his best to pay for what he’s done because he’d rather kneel all night without getting any sleep, rather hurt his hand copying out rules, rather endure a beating or two if it means he doesn’t have to tell you to stop.”

Wei Wuxian’s mouth was slightly agape.

“Do you remember the story I told you about our parents? I shared that story with you for a reason, because I wanted you to better understand Wangji. We all carry the scars our parents left on us, and he’s no different. He’s so afraid of imprisoning you the way our father did our mother that he has decided to follow in our father’s footsteps by sacrificing everything for you.”

“I don’t – I don’t want him to sacrifice anything for me!”

“I know,” Lan Xichen said simply. “That’s why I said that this wasn’t about you. Yes, now that you live here, you should follow our rules, or at least respect them – and respect means respect, not playing around to see how many loopholes you can find in them. Do you think we don’t know about them? That no one in the history of our sect has ever figured out that ‘do not take life within the premises’ could be subverted by taking a life directly outside of it?”

Wei Wuxian was silent.

“We follow the rules because we want to,” Lan Xichen said. “They’re the rules our ancestors put together and handed down. They are meaningful to us, even when they are awkward or seem pointless. Even when other people laugh at us or belittle us or act like we’re stupid for choosing to behave the way we do.”

Wei Wuxian winced.

“Your conduct would be a problem if you were a guest,” Lan Xichen continued. “But you are not a guest. You are Wangji’s husband, my brother-in-law. You are family. If you do not wish to obey the rules, you do not have to, and you will still be welcome here. But Wangji wants to obey the rules – it is only that he fears losing you more.”

“How long have you been having this argument?” Wei Wuxian asked, because he wasn’t actually stupid, merely oblivious.

“I started taking away his responsibilities on the third day following my exit from seclusion,” Lan Xichen said. “I have steadily escalated it with every rule you have incited him into breaking with you since. And still, he refused to speak with you.”

Wei Wuxian’s hands were clenched into fists. He looked down at them.

“I know how much you love my brother,” Lan Xichen said. “If he had told you that it mattered to him, you would have found a way to reach a compromise with him – of that I have no doubt. But if it wasn’t the rules, it would be something else; some other thing that he would choose to sacrifice, another situation where he would choose to endure agony over having a mildly uncomfortable conversation with you. That was why I couldn’t just reach out to you directly. It had to be him; he had to be the one to tell you.”

“I understand,” Wei Wuxian said. “I don’t…I’d rather find it out over this than have him throw away his life instead of telling me I was being stupid.”

Lan Xichen nodded. That had been his fear as well, and the reason that one of his first moves had been to restrict Lan Wangji from going out on night-hunts.

“I’ll talk to him,” Wei Wuxian said, and scrubbed his face. His eyes had started tearing up again. “I’ll – I’ll talk to him. I’ll make him understand that it’s not – he can’t just do that! He didn’t even ask me if I wanted him to give all of that up for me; he knew I wouldn’t want him to, that’s why he didn’t ask, and he just went ahead and did it anyway. He didn’t tell me that he was suffering, that you were taking away his responsibilities! He didn’t say a single word, and I just blithely carried on thinking everything was fucking all right and all the while he was suffering, and – and he – he…oh, fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”

Lan Xichen blinked.

“I did the exact same fucking thing to Jiang Cheng!” Wei Wuxian exploded. He leapt to his feet. “I’m such a fucking idiot! Lan Zhan and me, we’re both – we’re really well matched, aren’t we?”

He shook his head.

“I’ll talk to Lan Zhan,” he said again, and he looked grimly determined the way he had in the war, the same expression shining through even with a new face. “Don’t worry, Xichen-xiong. I’ll make him understand.”

He turned on his heel and marched out of the room.

Lan Xichen watched him go, thinking to himself that he might have inadvertently done something good for Wei Wuxian as well through all of this. And perhaps it would help Lan Wangji’s own crisis to see Wei Wuxian going through the same – because Lan Wangji’s crisis had already taken place.

He could have lied to Wei Wuxian’s face over why they were leaving. He could have chosen not to tell him that Lan Xichen was forcing him out, cutting him off; he could have kept it secret, hidden, could have come up with some story or just left it all unsaid. If he was truly determined to never let any of his pain onto Wei Wuxian’s shoulders, he could have done that.

He’d chosen to come clean instead.

Maybe now they’d be able to move forward as equals, as partners.

(And, if they were really lucky, maybe finally reaching agreement to stop breaking all the rules all the time would mean that they’d stop having sex on every possible available surface and keep it to the jingshi and a few gardens. No one else needed to see that. Really.)

-

“I see that Wangji-xiong and Wei-xiong are now even more disgustingly in love than ever before,” Nie Huaisang said. “And that Wei-xiong seems to have finally gotten over his obsession with defying authority through violating each and every one of the Lan sect rules. I was only away at the Unclean Realm for three days, you know.”

“I work fast,” Lan Xichen said with a smile.

Lan Wangji had come to him, eyes red, and put his head in Lan Xichen’s lap the way he used to as a child, and they’d talked. For hours, they’d talked, in the slow and halting way they had – where each word was carefully considered, each emotion analyzed, and only a quarter of conversation was said out loud – and at the end of it, they were both completely wrecked, but stronger for it.

They’d talked about their parents, which they had never verbalized before; they talked about Jin Guangyao, and Nie Mingjue, and Wei Wuxian, both past and present. They talked about their ruined expectations, their hopes, their guilt; they talked about the rules that bound them both, the ones that served them as both strength and weakness, the foundation on which they relied in their times of doubt. They talked about love, and fear, and anger.

They’d promised to never to need to have to have this conversation ever again, and they were both very determined to keep that promise.

Lan Qiren had agreed to work with Wei Wuxian regarding which rules could be bent and which ones ought not be – finally giving him the full version of education he’d missed out on when he’d been returned home too early by Jiang Fengmian all those years before, because copying rules didn’t mean understanding them – and Lan Xichen had returned to Lan Wangji all the responsibilities and privileges he’d taken away from him, much to the relief of all the juniors that had been suffering through their fight.

(Lan Wangji confided in Lan Xichen that he was relieved that Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi had been away on a long visit to Lanling Jin throughout the entire debacle, and Lan Xichen wholeheartedly agreed.)

“That you do,” Nie Huaisang said. “Did being straightforward help?”

“More than expected,” Lan Xichen conceded. That had been one of the things he and Nie Huaisang had been discussing these past few weeks, the merits of straightforwardness against obliqueness, and they’d both argued both sides of the issue, given their personal experiences. “I will grant you that it served its purpose well in this situation.”

“Good,” Nie Huaisang said, and put his chin into his hands. “Now tell me, what’s this I hear about you and me being the subject of a series of apparently godawful sex jokes?”

Lan Xichen froze.

Nie Huaisang grinned.

“It was…a metaphor?” Lan Xichen tried. “A means of communicating with Wei Wuxian while not acknowledging the ongoing situation, and a message about paying attention to underlying meaning.”

“Try again,” Nie Huaisang said gleefully. “You could’ve done that without invoking my name.”

“Who else could I invoke? I spend all my time with you!”

All the time he wasn’t being Sect Leader, that was. If there was one good thing that had come out of this entire debacle beyond his heart-to-heart with Lan Wangji, it was that Lan Xichen had been so anxious over Lan Wangji that he had forgotten his own fears about resuming his position, and now that he was back, it didn’t seem as scary as it had when he’d been alone in his room in seclusion.

Nie Huaisang did not appear especially moved by this eminently logical argument. He put his hands over his heart and fluttered his eyelashes, saying in an affected, almost operatic voice, “And all this time I never knew you felt like that, Xichen-gege –”

Lan Xichen choked.

“To think that all of this time that we spent cloistered together, pure as virgins, we could have been doing all sorts of things – using my, what was the term used, ample assets –”

Lan Xichen wondered if it would be possible for the ground to swallow him up at this very second. Failing that, a sect emergency would do.

Possibly an invasion?

“– and this, of course, refers to my extremely large…stock of picture books.”

“Huaisang…”

Nie Huaisang laughed at his face and settled down across from him. “I’m not ready to court or be courted,” he said. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“No,” Lan Xichen said. “I’m not either, I don’t think.”

He was starting to think that he might be one day, though. That there would be a day – a distant day, far in the future, just barely coming into view – where his days would be more all right than not, where he could make decisions and be confident that he was making them for himself and not to cover up some mess of trauma.

And maybe, when that day arrived for him, it would also arrive for Nie Huaisang, who was himself digging himself back out of the deep pit he had made in his soul seeking his lonely vengeance.

“Still,” Nie Huaisang said thoughtfully. “Since Wei-xiong and Lan Wangji are on their way here right now to join us, and given that I’m already crushing your hopes and dreams…”

Lan Xichen foresaw a great deal of mockery in his future, and he was almost looking forward to it.

“…do you want to pretend to be making out on the table that they’ll have to drink tea off until they catch us and plead for mercy?”

Well.

Lan Xichen did always say that he was petty.