#when eod rolls around tho harley and aurene are BACK baby !

[antariies]

thinking about aurene again. she and harley have a much closer relationship than what’s shown in canon—the two are basically dad and daughter. and thanks to harley’s influence, his aurene speaks more casually and musically, jokes around more often, and loves to try new food despite not needing to eat anymore.

their closeness is a double-edged sword, however! in his efforts to give her the most loving and normal childhood he could, harley ended up coddling her too much. she’s still reliant on him after she ascends, and it comes back to bite her in the ass when he gets shot by bangar and has to step away for the rest of ibs. his absence is something neither of them anticipated or prepared for and now dragon’s watch is arguing over what to do without the commander and they’re looking to her for Elder Dragon Wisdom and she’s like “I DUNNO!!!! 😰 just because i can see every possible future doesn’t mean i know what to do with that information!! this is so hard i want my dadddd 😭” she’s immature and sorely ill-equipped to handle a civil war.

it feels so unfair. of course she’s not ready for this, she’s never had to be before! one second she was a teenager burning herself out with brazen heroics in lws4 and now she’s the elder dragon of prismatic light. aurene thought she would at least get a few years to ease into it. she and harley also both operate on different timescales compared to everyone else bc their senses of time are warped; harley’s due to being a chrono and aurene’s due to being an immortal dragon. who was Raised by that chrono. both of them are very ‘big picture’ thinkers!

so when aurene suddenly finds herself having to make these big decisions, she calls her dad consults her champion. harley’s advice is to use her future vision to compare potential timelines, see which one has the best ending, and reverse engineer it from there. on paper it sounds pretty good, but by the time she finishes comparing and actually chooses a future, she comes back to dragon’s watch like “OKAY, you guys need to convince smodur to—“ “aurene, smodur got sniped two weeks ago 🤨 he’s dead.”

she takes too long deliberating and makes bad calls that get people killed AND jormag is in her head. she might as well be down for the count as far as the fighting is concerned. @hawkepockets’s prem ikaros is there to fill in for harley for the rest of ibs, but it’s just a horrible time for everyone involved :-]