#this drabble is a continuation / love letter to some of the concepts i had running in the bg there

[wolfhednn]

　𝐨𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐰𝐞𝐩𝐭 　/　drabble ₊

bones never need be cast to tell stories. in its living, that shield walked the earth as one of nameless thousands, whose dragonhood we may never know. in death, that name became obsolete, and its corpse the osseous structure of containment: for blood and glory, and many such things besides. history tells its tales in loops that are not quite loops, echoes that repeat with a different face, and in itself manifests between the cracks that form between memory, just as root and plant finds sunlight between the tines of a ribcage.

this is only one of such histories.

an oath to a master who did not hear:

the soldier wipes her spear on the wet leather of a dead man, and in the miserable muck of bog and rainwater ponders grimly the last of her strength. she has forgotten how she had come here and from where the fire in her breast had come ; she is certain it is the shield's doing, as certain as she is that maurice had not vanished as by accident as nemesis would have it seem. some of the others turn their eye from the abberations of their own selves ; and they are wiser for it, for in this hour it is only knowledge that deepens suffering when they are otherwise suffering all the same.

is there glory in dying knowing you are as wretched as you feared?

her mother would have said yes. yet she wishes now that these relics would take first the living mind before the body, so that if they had to suffer corruption for victory, they would at least do so with spirits unbound.

in this age, who can save them? who can save her, when nothing waited for them but dissolution?

in the end, there are those who would never be willing to turn. some, who had loved and hated their lord, who would let their pride become them before submission. some, who had begun to peer into the truth and could not stomach the resolve of the dead. some, who in their long night grew enfeebled, who had been stolen from in strength and twice over in spirit, in whose eyes the soldier understood the simple naivete of the mantra that said the strong would never be humbled.

she had grown, in the dark, to cherish one of these latter men, whose hands were so wetted in blood that the people called him saint for it. she had watched, in the dark, his flame dim and dim and somewhere along the way turn black ; the numbness of his heart and body made a far, far better shield than armor plate and leather strap, than one more person who would be willing to die in his name. and in that darkness she knew she was anathema to all their suffering and everything they had gained, and thus her shield could never be called love.

she would, instead, take rein for him and call down the white lance for him, renouncing her fealty for a belief in one who could not be belived in. this she knew——the helmed knight, behind his mildness, was mad. and yet in that madness was the sanctuary she had been searching for: an alternative to her mother's noble creeds and a fitting reprieve from a reality unfounded and too terrible to be beheld. to trust blindly that, in her last days, she could pretend to still be human.

. . .

so that, in ages forward, when they picked up the dead aegis from where the root and fern had taken shape between the crevices of her cadaver, there would be no shadow of her to be burned by the sunlight which may now shine. so that when they called it the steadfast, they might do so with a real reverence for a story that was never true. they would speak of a soldier whose heart had been strong enough to safeguard her lord, and not of one whose heart had learned, out of love, to guard itself——not in duty to, but in spite of.

for every soldier throughout time would find their rest someplace. and when the peek of twilight began to color from just beyond the sightlines, it was not abnormal to begin to wonder just what kind of haven that someplace may be.

　 the AEGIS SHIELD has awakened.

[a-stitch-in-time-and-space]

You ask for prompts and I'm here again to seek new content to read: 3. How often do/can they see each other (due to living on different planets, having stressful jobs, etc) with Gashir (/Garakshir) 🤩🤩

 Eyyyyy. I am just gonna… casually fold into this… a little trans-Bashir as a treat…. because it’s trans day of visibility!!! Also I hc Cardassians as intersex, in the sense of they as a species don’t call themselves intersex, but their genders are far more loosely determined at birth, because there’s not really sexual dimorphism (or rather, there is, but it’s so many different factors that it’s not classified) and then gendering comes later in life depending on what role they’re supposed to play in society ahem – different post to make!

Also Garak has a tail in this, also casually.. also this got longer than intended… oops?

—– Letter Analysis ——

1.

Their lives have a sort of normality that many families in this day and age exist with. Space travel, careers that necessitate being off-planet for long stretches at a time, the struggles of being a representative for entire planets or systems, all of this isn’t out of the ordinary.

Still, it takes them a little while to adjust, if only because they spent so long not getting it together that now that they have, well, they want to savour it. On the flip-side their relationship functions much better than so many who enter into partnerships of some kind without fully considering the difficulties of spending so much time apart and inevitably crumble.

Because of all that time they know, without a doubt, that their lives are entwined for good, regardless of how much of it they spend without one another’s physical company.

They fall into letter-writing naturally. After all, they had been doing the same before, why stop now.  

2.

It has become something of a competition at this point: who can write the longest letter. Thus far, Julian is winning and Elim is still in the process of reading his when they see one another again. He pretends to be blasé about it, but Julian can read him easily these days. He wonders at the time when he couldn’t and can’t really picture it.

While Elim is giving him a back-handed compliment at the way he’s managed to fold three words worth of content into whole paragraphs, Julian realises that he’s never known anyone as well as he knows Elim. And every detail of himself is known in turn. From the scars of his chest surgery that he purposefully kept, to the ridges at the base of Elim’s tail, it feels like everything about them was perfectly made for the other.

It’s strange, how many tiny moments are filled with love, they both learn.

(After Elim sends him a letter of 3000 pages, Julian simply answers: You win).

3.

They consider what it would be like to have a family with the way their lives are run. Elim generally lives on Cardassia unless his diplomatic duties take him elsewhere, while Julian is hopping from emergency to medical find to distress call to conference.

Still, they approach the matter on the premise that it will happen. Their letters during these years follow a trajectory of thought with little variation, as they can’t actually be together for the discussion.

They discuss pregnancy – both of them are capable of bearing a child, but the time needed (nine earth months for humans, even longer for cardassians) makes it a challenging prospect. Moreover Julian and Elim, each for their own reason, have issues with concepts surrounding an uncontrollable force fundamentally changing their bodies.

It doesn’t take them long to agree that adoption was always the only option. Still there’s the matter of their careers being incompatible with children. Neither of them wants to put a child in harm’s way and both of their careers contain elements of danger. I believe, writes Elim drily and with an underlying sadness that Julian wishes he could heal, that this sixth assassination attempt may contain a sign that a child would not be particularly safe in my company.

4.

The way this resolves itself is oddly perfect for what they need and who they are and comes through both of their continued work with mixed-species war-orphans, who more often than not are homeless, ostrasized and suffering from any number of easily treatable diseases. Garak opens a series of institutions in the name of Ziyal and habitually lends a hand in their various gardens where he befriends a number of the kids.

This plan also works to ground a lot of Julian’s focus in the space of mixed-species research, specifically writing papers on the future of the galaxy needing to see species integration for the sake of these kids as an inevitability as cultures mix and to understand the medical and cultural implications thereof.

Kira and Ro get heavily involved on the Bajoran side of things – in general a bunch of adults from DS9 days come together to give kids a better chance than they had.  

Beyond that though, they come to realise that they’re okay on family. With these kids – many of whom they get to know personally over the years – with Molly and Yoshi O'Brien and Rebecca Sisko getting older and the two of them functioning as uncles, there’s more than enough for them to be getting on with on the children front: Elim and I were very happy to see you all again – Don’t worry, I’ll keep Yoshi safe – we’ll be making a stop at Bajor where Nerys is very excited to see him again –

Their circle is actually a sizeable, cross-galaxy household. They come to realise that it doesn’t matter if your family is someone you can’t see often, what matters is they’re all inhabiting the same space.

5.

They don’t argue often. With the lack of time they have together, what would be the point of raising petty squabbles. There are things like the time Julian forgot about a very important dinner that Elim was a guest of honour at, which opened up a box of the kind of loneliness Elim thought he’d overcome, but it wasn’t about anger or arguing, it was about the two of them figuring out that sometimes this not seeing one another was actually damned hard. It was about asking for forgiveness and receiving it even before the asking. It was about making sure that they wouldn’t let things ever be unsaid, because their time together – comparative to their whole lives – was always going to be so short.

The actual worst long-standing consequence is that Elim and Julian are political celebrities, and so whatever tabloid-equivalent exists publishes one thousand pieces on their apparently irreconcilable relationship. Julian finds himself referred to as everything from a “heartthrob who found he needed more,” to “a cheater who habitually has several affairs at once.”

It’s amazing, remarks Elim in his latest letter, how these kinds of spurious articles are written even today, and how they still don’t seem to know the facts. On that note I hope you have a wonderful time with Data, and Parmak sends his love from my lap - it’s making it very hard to write this.

6.

They’re both twenty years older by now, but things aren’t slowing down with their work by the looks of things. Julian’s work centres more and more on the various groups whose medical needs are considered less valid or even non-medical, because of their social status and who often have medical issues of kinds that don’t come up in normative societies – mixed-species, augments, A.I. (for awhile his standing suffers, when he argues that mechanical needs for A.I. ought to be taught in Starfleet Medical), non-bipedal species, Ex-B’s, Jem'Hadar, clones.

Elim keeps his Carrington Award on the wall for everyone to see. Partly to mess with him – To The Prestigious Winner of the CA – many of his letters begin for several years after, but mostly out of pride.

(In return and with as much love, Julian addresses him as Ambassador and Castellan – the joke evolves as they find ever more flowery titles for one another. Julian wins this one: My Dearest, the Ambassador to the United Federation of planets, Castellan of the Cardassian Union, Blusher when Being Whispered Compliments about the Length of Your Tail, Not-So-Secret Reader of Austen and Pratchett, Seducer of Doctors (No Doubt Currently Spluttering in Denial), Possessor of Biteable Ridges (Blushing Again, I Hope) and of My Heart… this opening continues a further four pages. The letter itself reads: I expect to land on Cardassia within the next three days. Surprise.)

7.

At the end of it all, Julian finally comes to Cardassia for good. Along the way it’s become his home more than any planet, station, starship, or system, for the simple fact that he’s been returning to Elim, and Elim is home.

There’s a strangeness to all the time they have. The walks they take, the languid mornings, the discussions of books they’ve read whilst in each other’s company, it’s all far more surreal than the years spent wanting to see one another again and catching whatever moments they could.

They can’t shake the habit of writing one another letters, even as they’re sitting in the same room. They don’t need to be long or well-formed any more, although occasionally silly competitions spring up, just for fun.

The one Julian’s reading right now, as Elim’s tail languidly curls around his waist, simply says: I am glad that you’re finally home – E

–— The End ——

Submissions for drabbles are now closed, thank you for sending me asks!

[monikafilefan]

#32 for the drabble prompts

I’m fully admitting to cheating and using my very, very old fic I wrote not long after I started writing for this one because the line fit perfectly. I hope a little angst and lots of fluff okay with you. Not to mention, I was NEW to writing.

“I locked the keys in the car.”

Tagging @today-in-fic and @baronessblixen @kyouryokusenshi @cultureisdarkbeer for the fluff aspect.

——

The freshly fallen autumn leaves crunched under her black leather boots, breaking the silence as she slowed her pace. She knew her way almost without looking. The memories of past visits throughout the last twenty-four years here were ingrained in her mind. The guilt filled, emotional and sorrowful past occasions that brought Dana Scully to visit this place back then were very different now. This was a visit that would never be looked back on with pain attached. This a memory she won’t want to forget.

Scully hadn’t been back to visit this very spot since 2014, when she found herself here on her hands and knees sobbing. She was heartbroken and distraught with guilt and regret after walking out of her home she shared with the only man she will ever love. Leaving to save themselves from the darkness that was eating them both from the inside out, even if it was temporary, was completely devastating. An all consuming pain that she prayed never to feel again. She remembered wishing she could fast-forward time to know if she would return to the home they shared together, if they could let the light back in.

Never would she wish the pain of separating from your soulmate, your other half, on her worst enemy. Seeking comfort and praying that her thoughts would be heard in this quiet place is what she needed at the time. One of the only places she felt closest to the one person that, at a point in the past, had known her best.

Winding through the trees she let the warm gentle breeze blow through her hair while she fingered her gold cross that rested on her chest.

Now—now it was all different.

There was no more darkness to chase away in her life. Pain remained only in the few memories she pushed away for her sanity and his. Her life is amazingly full of happiness now. Even after the events that took place that night out on the cold pier, when they thought Jackson had died and couldn’t even stop it from happening. That was completely devastating. They had thought their son was dead for days after, even though he wasn’t. Yes, their son. Neither of them chose to really believe what Skinner had told her that night about Jackson’s conception.

To live the lie you had to believe it; and neither of them wanted to believe this time.

Soon Scully realized she could feel Jackson again, as soon as she pushed her sorrow down in order for the new life growing in her belly, to continue to grow. She tamped down her all too familiar pain of loss and agony she felt for her son to protect their unborn baby. While doing so, she had unintentionally invited him back into her mind. She felt his presence and life line like her own beating heart.

Another miracle.

Utter relief, incredible love, and unwavering joy are the only emotions she has felt since that day.

Seeing her usual spot where she had always sat, she came to a stop and lowered her body down in the grass and took a cleansing breath. Staring at the familiar words written along the stone, she began to talk about what was on her mind. Just like she always had.

But this time is now; and it’s far different from then.

“Oh Missy, I have so much to tell you. But you already know that don’t you? After all these years of witnessing the paranormal, I’m thinking that you really were clairvoyant.”

Closing her eyes, she thinks back to what Mulder had told her about the time that he and Melissa spent at her hospital bedside together. Her open-minded sister called her partner out on his negative energy and repressed feelings for her made her smile now. Melissa had tracked him down to his apartment to remind him, in her own way, that his best friend needed him by her side in order to come back to him.

She opened her eyes also remembering what Missy told her about Mulder and shook her head. Not so subtly, she told her that her then, platonic partner was bound to her in a cosmic way that could only be shared by mated souls destined to connect.

Smirking, she spoke, “You always were the wise one. The only person who would ever know how much of my emotions I kept to myself. If I did share them, I shared them with you. And so much has happened since I’ve visited last. But I do know Mom is there with you now, watching just as you have been all these years.”

A pang of longing struck her heart with the thought of her mother. For a brief moment she allowed herself to it imagine her mom’s wry smile lighting up her face, as if she were talking to her in person over a cup of coffee.

The thought doesn’t sadden her in a way that it might have back then. Now, she can accept the memories and treasure them.

Scully huffed out a laugh. “I know you’d laugh at me and tell me, ‘Dana you should know by now my spirit is not with my body.’” But you know me, having a tangible place to visit and talk to you brings me comfort when I really need you. And this time, I don’t need my sister to unload my burdens on. This time I want to tell you only good news in person. Today’s a special day.”

She reached out running her finger along each letter, spelling out the word, Melissa.

“You wouldn’t be surprised that Mulder and I are happy together. We’ve been back living in our home again for almost two years now, and of course I know you would have said, ‘I told you so’. And you shouldn’t be surprised that our son William, known as Jackson now, is out there doing remarkable things in this world, surviving. He’s a survivor.” Her last words came out as a whisper.

Looking down while picking a few weeds, a bigger smile graced her face. “I also know that you’d be so excited to find out that you’re an Aunt again. She’s absolutely perfect, Missy. She’s our miracle. And she reminds me so much of Mulder it’s, well… spooky. With the exception of the red Scully hair and fierce temper, of course. She shares that with you and I.

“Did you say spooky?” Scully jerked and swung her head around to look up at Mulder standing near the tree directly behind her.

“Mulder, you sneak! I see the beautiful birthday girl finally awoke from her nap.”

Scully smirked at Mulder bending down at an obscene angle for his daughters tiny hand to wrap around his finger. “Yes, and she woke up happy! The first thing she said was, Mama. So after I gave you some more time alone, we came over to join you.” He looked down with the biggest grin on his face at the little green-eyed, copper-haired one old-year-old with a pouty bottom lip, holding a single pink rose. “You want to put your flower by the big stone, sweetie?”

Mulder gently pulled her hand, watching her toddle over next to Scully where she ended up tossing the flower on the grass. She clapped her little hands together with a big open-mouthed smile showing off her two top teeth. Her tiny, little red pigtails shone in the sun and bounced up and down on the top of her head from her claps, making her parents laugh blissfully.

Scully watched Mulder step over and kneel next to her on the ground while placing a bouquet of pink and white flowers next to the single rose.

Reaching over, he covered her hand with his while pressing a long kiss to her forehead. She leaned back and locked eyes with him while whispering, “Thank you, Mulder. Thank you for it all.” The weight and meaning of it was not just for his presence now, but for his presence in her past and future.

She had cried tears of suffering for what her life had become the last time she spoke to her sister here, but now, tears of joy spilled down her cheeks instead. Mulder kissed her softly and soothingly wiped her tears away. They looked up to find their daughter toddling off after a butterfly in her long sleeved pink romper, showing off the little green alien head design on her bottom that said, “Daddy Believes In Me!”

Scully slowly stood up eyeing the tiny miracle in front of her and said in a sing-song voice, “Margaret Mulder, come on sweetie.”

Mulder gasped and patted his pockets while his panic face washed over him. “I think...”

“You did it again, didn’t you?”

He grimaced. “I locked the keys in the car. Yes, again. Sorry, let me just call—”

Shaking her head, she reached into her pocket and dangled her set in the air. “It’s fine, Mulder. I’ve learned to keep a spare on me.”

”You always keep me guessing.” Mulder smiled and walked up next to Scully, palming her with his hand on her lower back. “Ready to go home now?”

She slowly nodded her head and said, “Yes, now is perfect.”

Scully reached her left hand down and clutched onto Maggie’s small fingers as the sun shone down on the gleaming diamonds wreathed around her ring finger, sending colorful rays into the sky.

“Let’s go eat some of that birthday cake now, Mrs. Spooky.” Mulder winked at her while rubbing his spot on her back.

The three of them started to walk back to the the car when Scully stopped and turned slightly toward her sisters head stone. With a small smile she whispered, “Happy Birthday, Missy.”

——

[vankoya]

All I Want...

➢ A Christmas drabble series based on this list!

Genre | An Oath for Sinners AU.

Pairing | Min Yoongi / Feminine Reader.

Conspectus | Christmas is not a holiday that Min Yoongi deems overly important. Since his friends and family passed on centuries ago, he has quite simply treated that day in December like any other day. 

But this year, things are different. This year, he would not mind celebrating if it meant he could spend the entire day with her. A concept that he upholds, even after she has gifted him with the torture of Mariah Carey in a single CD.

I don’t want a lot for Christmas��

Yoongi heaves a deep, and frankly, unnecessary sigh, as he is quite literally not required to expel or inhale air in the first place. The perks of having a heart that ceased beating more than three centuries ago, he supposes. Nonetheless, the sigh gusts out of him and sits in the still, stale atmosphere of his office; mingling with Mariah Carey’s voice that drifts out of the speakers upon the coffee table, singing All I Want for Christmas is You.

For the sixth time in a row.

Yoongi is not entirely sure why he is still listening to the repetitive Christmas playlist, curated by none other than his favourite lady. The CD case cover was similarly handmade by her; an array of Christmas stickers positioned neatly on a square piece of stiff paper, with gold lettering spelling out ‘Yoongi’s Christmas Playlist’ on the plastic. A silky red ribbon had tied the whole gift together. When she had left it in his hands with a quick peck upon the cheek before leaving their recent meeting together, Yoongi had felt cascades of fondness come crashing down on his pathetic, immortal being. For such a glamorous, lavish, and modestly materialistic woman as her, a present as personal as this was oddly refreshing, thoughtful, and adorable, all at once.

The vampire thought this, at least, until All I Want for Christmas is You played its third consecutive run, and he perked to attention in his leather desk chair like a hound on a scent. No track list was provided on the CD package, and thus, Yoongi, completely unsuspecting, was lured into the torturous clutches that is Mariah Carey singing the same Christmas song over and over, seemingly never-ending. Yet, despite that by the third repeat, Yoongi had caught onto the dreadful trend in song selection, he found that he could not will himself to turn off the stereo and cease Mariah’s high notes once and for all.

Was he feebly clutching to a thread of hope that a different song would appear on the track list? Was he so hopelessly enamoured by this girl, who he has known for little under a year now, that he could not destroy one of the most precious gifts she has given him?

No. Definitely scratch that last thought.

There is just one thing I need…

Amidst Yoongi’s inner turmoil, his phone starts to ring while Mariah belts out the chorus again. The number that appears on the glass screen draws a smile upon his lips, despite that it belongs to the current reason behind his suffering. He answers the call with a quick swipe of his thumb.

“I must ask,” he says before she can get a word in, “is this a confession of love, or is it the worst kind of joke you could think of?”

Her delighted laughter filters through the receiver, and Yoongi feels a thousand things that he should not. “I’ll leave that one up to you,” she teases through the giggles. “Hey, so. I wanted to, um, ask you about– Well, something.”

“Go on, sweets,” he encourages, leaning back in his chair with a warm smile at the way she fumbles on her words. Over their time together, he has come to learn that it is an unbearably endearing nervous habit.

“Okay, well– Okay,” She stops, and then starts again. Yoongi remains silent all the while, corners of his lips patiently tilted, letting her get her thoughts together at her own pace. “It’s Christmas in two days. On Friday.”

Yoongi chuckles; notices how the ever-growing weight on his chest budges, almost imperceptibly, with something akin to hope. “Is it, now?”

“Oh, shush you. Due to sudden circumstances, I can’t go visit my family anymore,” she hums quietly, and Yoongi can hear the repetitive scratch of a nib on paper through the device. Another nervous habit; bleeding a pen dry of its ink by doodling nonsensical things, and then tracing over the lines again and again until they appear more black than blue. “Heeyeon is going to be out of town with her family, and I’m going to be kind of, well, alone. So I was just, y’know, perhaps wondering–“

“Would you like to spend Christmas together?” Yoongi interrupts, a smidgen too eager. He internally prays that she does not catch it, but her sudden silence, the way he can hear her lips stickily part in a surprised gape through the receiver, implies otherwise. Quickly, he composes himself, running a hand through his tousled black hair and saying, “I mean, I don’t think I’ve spent Christmas with anyone for years. Not that I place much importance in such a holiday. But it would be lovely to have your company. I wouldn’t mind, sweets. Stay the night.”

“I’m– Oh, that would be splendid!” She says without a single attempt to conceal the utter glee in her voice. Yoongi can imagine her elated grin right now. Rosy lips curved like a sickle, glimmering with an expensive gloss. He feels as though he has died again. “And stay the night?” She continues, dropping her tone a notch, sounding like liquid sex. “Does that call for festive lingerie?”

While the allusion causes knots to tighten in Yoongi’s abdomen, he finds that he could not care for turning this into such a business-like occasion. Certainly, he adores making her sob while he is inside of her, he truly does. But, in spite of his complete inhumanness, Yoongi yearns for mundanity. He wants to take her out for a roast dinner at some low-key restaurant, where the golden lights glow on her skin like honey. He wants to not let her step foot inside of his home until she has had some kind of sweet dessert, whether it be sugar-coated gingerbread that makes her lashes flutter with pleasure, or sticky date pudding drizzled with warm caramel sauce that he has to wipe from her chin. He wants her bundled in a thick, woollen rug on the end of his leather couch, a wine glass balanced precariously between her fingertips, pinot noir staining her lips and turning her eyes into molasses, looking all tempting and cosy. He wants simple, he wants normal, he wants–

“How… How about we get something nice to eat, light the fire at home, and get stupid drunk on red wine instead?” Yoongi suggests, his free hand covering his squeezed shut eyes as though he needs to hide his embarrassment from the empty office. “Wait, unless you want to have–“

“No no, that sounds perfect,” she swiftly cuts in. Yoongi is not one to take having his speech severed without a hefty helping of aggravation, but damn it all, he would let that girl hack his sentences to pieces and he would hardly blink an eye. He only realises that he has kept to his silence when she prompts, “Ah, I’m sure you’re busy right now, so if that’s that, I’ll see you on Friday for wining and dining?”

Yoongi’s hand slides away from his face to limply dangle over the edge of the wooden armrest. He stares up at the white ceiling, slightly dumbfounded at how effortless asking her was. How easily she accepted. “Of course. I’ll message you the details. I can’t wait.”

“Me too,” she whispers, that gorgeous smile still evident in her tone, before ending the call.

Something overwhelms Yoongi, after that. Something monstrous. Something that makes him back the CD to the first track, twist the volume knob all the way up, and spend the next three hours in his office signing off on documents while Mariah belts out that same song, the persistent jingle reverberating off the walls in an agony that Yoongi willingly suffers through. Even when Namjoon comes storming into the office, begging him to turn off the godawful music, Yoongi ignores him and continues to sign, and sign. A particular smile stuck on his mind, as repetitive as the track list as it flashes on the backs of his eyelids with every blink, in the thousand and one forms that he has witnessed its glory over the past year.

All I want for Christmas is you…

Note | If it was not hinted properly throughout the story, this takes place roughly ten months after the pair have met!

All Rights Reserved © Vankoya. No translations, reposting and/or modifying of the material is allowed without my direct permission.