#would Ella the harpy end up there too?

[1800-lemon-boy]

Friendly reminder that if/when Tyson eventually dies he will end up in Tartarus because he’s a cyclops.

<33

[twoidiotwriters1]

The Curse of Oenone (Leo Valdez xFem!Oc)

A/N: I'll take a break to focus on the actual book I'm writing, but don't worry, I promise the final book will be the best one of all. See you in August! -Danny Words: 2,203 Series' Masterlist Previous Chapter // Next Book Listen to: 'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For' -by U2

LXIII: Which Boss Do I Have to Fight to Get Some Validation Around Here?

She knows all the people in this room, but the way she thinks about them, and how they interact with her now that she's physically different, is kind of off.

"We talked to Apollo," Ara starts explaining. "He said Gaia reawakened the Python, keeping the Oracle of Delphi prisoner—that's why Rachel can't see anything now."

Ella the harpy, Tyson, and Rachel will leave with the Romans, they'll try to rewrite the Sibylline books, which is why Ara called for a meeting.

"But Gaia is permanently asleep now," Will reasons. "That means Dad can kill the Python now!"

Ara grimaces. "But your father angered Zeus. We might not see him a while, or worse—"

"Wait, if we stop getting prophecies, that's completely alright," Nyssa replies. She's the counselor for Cabin Nine because Jake refused to step back in. "We lost two great inventors already, and it's not like Hephaestus goes out of his way to have tons of kids, our numbers are thinning—"

"I'm perfectly aware of it, Nyssa, thank you." Ara silences the girl. "But we should be worried about Apollo."

"Why? No more prophecies means peace!" Percy argues.

Ara gives him a look. "No more prophecies means we'll face our future problems blindly, and trust me, there will be problems. We've been stripped of our advantage, and that's not all that worries me."

"What is?" Piper asks reluctantly.

"Zeus will punish Apollo for his delulus of greatness, and he has a special way of humiliating Apollo... I'm pretty sure he'll use it again."

Will's face loses color. "That's terrible news! We could be left powerless! Our whole cabin!"

"I'm aware of that too," Ara sighs. "If this doesn't end well, you might lose them forever..."

"Hold on, time out," Percy intervenes. "I'm lost."

Annabeth explains. "Zeus once punished Apollo by stripping him of his godly status. He turned into a mortal, and was forced to do a series of trials until Zeus considered he'd humbled him enough."

Jason looks concerned. "What could've happened if he'd failed those trials?"

"He would've died, most likely," Ara says. "None of his descendants would've kept their powers, maybe. Some traits at best, whatever they could've learned in training, but stuff like—"

"Magic healing, music powers, perfect aim, the light..." Will shudders. "All gone."

"Your job is important," Ara turns to Rachel and Ella. "The books have information concerning what's next, maybe it'll tell us if we need to prepare in case Apollo's absence causes another conflict in Olympus. We mustn't get too comfortable in our peace."

She scans the room and sees the campers' good mood dying before her eyes. Ara's expression turns guilty, but she keeps going.

"Keep your eyes open. Apollo might reach out to any of us, he could show up at camp and have no memory of who he is—Gods, he might not even look like himself at all! But balance is needed whether we like it or not, if you find him, bring him to me."

No one is happy with her lecture, but Ara ends the meeting and sends the group of Romans away. Nico approaches her and nudges her arm. "You didn't need us after all. You kept them under control the whole time."

She smiles a little. "I thought they would fight me more on it."

"You're too scary now, but don't worry," Jason grins. "You'll get used to being almighty."

Almighty raises her myth. 

What if that line was about her as much as it was about the sword? She's powerful nowadays, but hardly a myth. She would need to become history for that, and her death doesn't feel any closer.

"Ara?"

"Hmm?" She gives a start.

"I said, can you do me a favor now?" Nico asks, his eyes fixed on the Big House's entrance. "Stay near."

Ara is intrigued, she follows him out and sees what he'd been staring at from inside. "Hey, guys," Percy smiles at them. "Annabeth just told me some good news!"

"We're going to spend our senior year together," Annabeth beams, "here in New York. And after graduation—"

"College in New Rome!" Percy punches the air. "Four years with no monsters to fight, no battles, no stupid prophecies. Just me and Annabeth, getting our degrees, hanging out at cafés, enjoying California—"

"And after that..." Annabeth smiles sweetly at the boy. "Well, Reyna and Frank said we could live in New Rome as long as we like."

"That's great," Nico says, sounding genuine. "I'm staying too, here at Camp Half-Blood."

"What?" Ara looks at him with shock.

"Awesome!" Percy exclaims.

"So," Nico clears his throat, "since we're going to be spending at least a year seeing each other at camp, I think I should clear the air."

Percy hesitates. "What do you mean?"

"For a long time, I had a crush on you." Nico shrugs. "I just wanted you to know."

Percy looks at the boy blankly. "You—"

"Yeah. You're a great person. But I'm over that," he smiles a bit. "I'm happy for you guys."

"You... so you mean—"

"Right."

"Wait," Percy frowns. "So you mean—"

"Right. But it's cool. We're cool. I mean, I see now... you're cute, but you're not my type."

Ara snorts, not believing her ears.

"I'm not your type..." Percy blinks. "Wait. So—"

"This is gonna take a while," Ara guides Nico away with amusement.

The boy snickers. "See you around, Percy. Annabeth."

If that isn't surreal enough, Annabeth and Nico high-five, and then the boy openly smiles at Ara and pats her shoulder. Even if it's a closed smile, it's enough to bewild her. Nico makes his way down the porch steps and shouts at someone to wait for him. Will Solace, out of all people. Almost immediately, both boys glow in the same bright yellow light.

"Holy shit," Ara breathes.

"Huh," Lily says, coming out of nowhere. "Yeah, I can see it."

Ara jumps. "Gods, Lily, stop doing that!" She lowers her voice with confusion. "Did you see that, though?"

"What?" Annabeth grins at the girls. "Don't tell me you couldn't tell! I'm sure you were the first to find out!"

Ara looks at her smiling. "Yeah, what an idiot, right? But no, I meant..." She hesitates, it's still not her place to tell others what she just saw. "Nevermind. You know where Reyna is?"

"Talking to Piper by the lake," Lily responds. "Need me to come along?"

"Nah, it's fine, I gotta feed Pollo anyway," Ara shows her a lighthearted smile before walking away. "Go waste time with your elf."

"Don't call him that!"

"Don't forget Mom picks us up in an hour!" Percy shouts, coming out of his dazzled state.

"There you are!" Ara finds Reyna and Piper. "Ready to go?"

"Yes. Again, thank you for letting us stretch our stay."

"You're always welcome here," Piper says. "If you need to take a break, get away... you've got Frank now—he could assume more responsibility for a while. It might do you good to make some time for yourself, when nobody is going to be looking at you as praetor."

"Would I be expected to sing that odd song about how Grandma puts on her armor?"

"Not unless you really want to," Piper grins. "But we might have to ban you from capture the flag. I have a feeling you could go against the entire camp solo and still beat us."

"I'll consider the offer. Thank you." Reyna pauses. "I wonder... You two are children of Venus. I mean Aphrodite. Perhaps—perhaps you could explain something your mother said."

Piper and Ara share a look, and the younger girl crosses her arms. "Go ahead."

"Once in Charleston, Venus told me something. She said: You will not find love where you wish or where you hope. No demigod shall heal your heart. I—I have struggled with that for..."

The answer comes easily to Ara. "Don't have to be scared. Love is a vast concept and its fulfillment comes in many forms, rarely is it ever another human. Before Leo, love would come to me by helping people and not dating. It really is in the most random places."

"You are an incredible person," Piper adds. "And you have friends, sometimes that's even better than a partner."

"I can attest to that," Ara nods, then adds playfully. "But if you ever feel like giving dating a try, I'm available until my boyfriend comes back from the dead."

Reyna stares at her. "I can't tell if you're being serious."

"This is a special offer with a deadline," Ara retorts half-joking. "I find you frustratingly attractive."

Reyna laughs and Ara feels like she just accomplished a great deed. She perks up at the sound but then something hits her across the face. The girl groans and looks around in confusion. "What the..."

Ara looks down and it takes her a moment to understand what she's seeing. She picks up the item and Piper gasps. "Is that—?"

"Oh my gods," Ara's hands are shaking. "Oh, gods! What do I do?"

"What is that?" Reyna asks.

"That's Leo's!" Piper says. "It fell from the sky!"

Ara feels like maybe she should sit down before she opens it, but her impatience gets the best of her and she opens the scroll with trembling, clumsy fingers.

"Hey, guys!" Leo's tiny projection comes out of the scroll. Ara makes a bizarre noise with her throat and holds tighter onto it, unable to look away. Reyna and Piper get closer."Sorry to leave you like that. Bad news: I died. Good news: I got better! I had to help my bud Cal. We're taking Festus to—" 

The image glitches and Ara shakes the scroll impatiently. 

"Back as soon as—" 

More glitching and static.

"Cook tacos when—" 

More static. 

"¡Vaya con queso! Love ya!"

The scroll turns off and Ara gets angry. "That's it?!"

"Leo's alive!" Piper hugs her. "It worked!"

"Smart," Reyna hums approvingly. "Seems like our date will never come to be, Strategus."

Ara twists the scroll in her hands. "An entire freaking week where we both almost died and all he has to say is Vaya con queso?" She's fuming. "Well, good for his bud Cal! I hope they bring me a shirt from whatever stupid countries they visit on their super fun holiday away from everyone else!"

Piper steps back. "I should get Lily."

"I should leave," Reyna says promptly.

The girls hurry away while also spreading the news about Leo. Soon enough, Ara is surrounded by an eager crowd that wants to hear the message. Ara plays it back, glaring at the projection. 

Lily sees her expression and nudges Nico, both taking her away from the congratulating crowd that calls her boyfriend cool and intelligent before she can kill them.

Steam is practically coming out of Ara's ears. She's forgotten all about her duties, her hurt ego stops her from thinking clearly while she paces around her room.

"Look at the bright side, Queen B, he'll be back soon and you won't mope for months like with Percy!"

"Hey! It wasn't my fault!"

"No one's saying that," Annabeth replies, pinching the bridge of her nose.

Ara keeps throwing her tantrum. "This is the same boy that used to send me weekly scrolls to my apartment to tell me I looked pretty in a dream he had—and now I get nothing!"

"For all we know that 'Love ya!' in the end might've been just for you," Nico pokes fun at her.

"I'm gonna strangle you," Ara warns him.

"Dude, why are you angry? He broke the curse!" Lily insists. She had to catch up quickly with Annabeth's help to understand the full context of what was happening.

"I'm happy but I'm angry that he kicked me out of the ship like I was getting on the way, and now he's taking his sweet time to talk to me!" Ara glares at the pinboard in front of her, packed with pictures of the boy. "Ugh, look at this! Oh, you should've seen the way I cried for him—Ugh, I hate him!"

The group shares a roguish look. They know Ara can't handle big emotions, especially when it comes to Leo, so right now she's fighting to regulate herself. But if Leo doesn't get there fast, Ara's high will suffocate her until it knocks her down and leaves her unable to get out of bed.

"Birdy," Percy approaches and places a hand on her shoulder. "Leo's probably saving his romantic speech for when he sees you in person. He knows you love it when he makes a show out of it."

"The scroll was a perfect opportunity to show off," Ara argues with a pout, but she's calming down.

"Yeah, but he had no way of knowing you would be the one to get it and have it slap you across the face," Nico replies. "Besides, you know he worships the ground you walk on—What's the big deal?"

Ara takes a deep breath, gathering her thoughts. "The big deal is that the curse is broken," Her fingers skim the picture of him in the bunker's platform, smiling big while showing a thumbs up to the camera. "And he's traveling with a goddess whose sole purpose is to tempt men so they stay with her..."

"Hey, Calypso isn't like that," Percy tries to defend the girl's honor, but Annabeth pulls him back and shakes her head, now is not the time to try and reason with a frightened Ara.

"You're saying you don't trust Leo?" Lily questions with disbelief.

"I'm saying I have no way to contact him, and if something happens mid-journey, or Apollo shows up and I'm not here..." Ara scowls at the drawing of the Argo II in the middle of her pinboard. "Without the oracles here to guide us, anything can happen."

Next Book –>

Taglist.

@siriuslysirius1107 @ask-giggles1303 @im-planning-something-look @bandshirts-andbooks @coolninjapaper @thewaterlily @whenisthefall @1randomcomic @you-bloody-shank @sunflowergraves @owlalex44 @taylordaughter @typicalsolangelolover @writingmia @espressopatronum454 @slytherinnqueen @orbitingpolaris @obxstiles @ellipsisspelled @thepixiechicksh @ebony-reine-vibes

[stupidcowboykid]

HAZEL LEVESQUE DESERVES BETTER

both from the fandom and from canon!! we do not appreciate her enough yall. she has kickass powers that are so underutilized--imagine being able to summon gems and portal through space and manipulate people’s minds??? plus having the knowledge to wield daggers and swords and everything. and then imagine staying a good person with all of those powers. exactly. personally i would go mad with power. but our queen hazel doesnt which is so badass of her honestly. shes golden. shes also the coolest horse girl in existence and she’s literally a fictional character!! 

i mean hazel rocks (literally-- (im so funny)) and i mean her whole interactions with Ella (prophecy harpy) in SoN!!! the gang seeks out Ella once she freaks out over them mentioning Phineas (fuck him) and hazel uses their limited supply of nectar to heal her wounds and then treats Ella with such respect for the whole book. she even apologizes when she makes an insensitive comment that could have reminded Ella of her abuser?? and when so many people treat the harpies as inhuman and unworthy of respect (phineas and basically all of CHB... anybody remember the cleaning harpies?)

she’s got a will of steel too (get it, haha, steel....). she and frank may be stereotyped as the typical inoffensive agreeable sweethearts by both canon and fanon but literally her whole death is because she stood up to a monster --not even a monster or a god, but a primordial deity-- and knowingly sacrificed her life for her mom and to prevent gaeas plans from coming to fruition, even with no knowledge of the gods or what was going on (and doesn’t that remind you of a lovely scene in the very first percy jackson book? parallels, people). and obviously none of that takes away from the fact that she’s a genuinely kind and thoughtful person.

and personally, i thought HoH/BoO does everybody kind of dirty (get it?? dirt??) in terms of character development but Hazel doesnt deserve that in particular (i didn’t like the love triangle in particular). she doesnt deserve the other indignities rick forced onto her, like the description of her skin and hair and eyes, or how he characterizes her parents, or the whole weird character dynamic of the Seven, or the way everyone ostracized her brother for no reason (most of them had ADHD/dyslexia!! a lot of them had behavioral issues!!! ALL of them had trauma!!! why the FUCK would rick think they would purposefully ostracize somebody “different”or “weird” the way they did with nico--)

if you havent already checked the masterpost of rr crit please do here!  (https://housemartius.tumblr.com/post/620110311820853248/bad-representation-in-the-pjo-verse-a-masterpost)

if you made it to the end of this....thanks. you get me.

[crow-in-a-teapot]

i didn’t plan on this account becoming a riordanverse stan account, but hey, it happens, so here is my list of highlights from the tyrant’s tomb because the negativity that comes pouring after every trials of apollo book is exhausting to read through at this point and weighs on me heavily

(spoiler warning, obviously)

- jason quotes that make me feel emotions:

- like i thought those would be over after the burning maze, but no, i have to get upset about jason in this book too?

- please someone draw apollo as a cat i need it

- weird thought i just had, but ella the harpy and entrapta from she ra give me similar vibes, this quote is unrelated to that but i threw it in because it was funny

- i love lavinia so, so much

- frazel, ft. lavinia and apollo both yearning for a girlfriend

- idk why i highlighted this quote about her having camouflage hair

- the absolute chaos of this one quote, like, what is happening? no one knows.

- add hazel using 1930s slang to your fanfics guys, because it’s now canon

- this interaction.. frank straight up catches apollo talking to his arrow, and, bless him, doesn’t even question him about it, just goes ‘okay’ 

- frank with buzzcut..

- MEG! AND! UNICORNS!

- rick riordan, as an ex-teacher, asking for gold, diamonds and rare spices

- don :(

- me, bringing up thalia and reyna being in a qpr for the hundredth time

- reyna.. aro ace queen..

- meg and apollo are the most wholesome-

- god-in-the-box

- fun facts with apollo

- THE FRIGGING ARROW OF DODONA.. IM OBSESSED.. EVERY BOOK THERE’S AT LEAST ONE MOMENT WHERE I HAVE TO HOLD BACK ACTUAL LAUGHTER

- We all need a hand

On our shoulder sometimes so

We can chew through steel

- the harpocrates scenes made me feel so much

- don’t drive and scroll, this has been a public safety announcement

- your obligatory reminder that apollo is, in fact, bi

-  i love the amount of pop culture references in the toa, it's definitely in character for everyone, also, even if you start getting hung up on the fact that the thing that they're referencing isn't out yet or doesn't exist yet, like hamilton, like i’ve seen a ton of people do on this site, a lot of the references are made in narration, and if you read a lot of the introductions to the book it's obvious that Apollo is writing all of this after the situation takes place (like years or months later), so it makes sense that he'd put in those references

- artemis had such a cool alt phase

- tyson

- I didn’t do it.

Explosion? I don’t know her.

Probably Greg’s fault.

- im so UPSET that i got spoiled for frank dying but then not dying because i was genuinely scared for him for a minute and then REMEMBERED i got spoiled for it and couldn’t feel the full impact and happiness from him coming back, anyway, frank zhang the icon

- a good way to end this thread i think, anyway, for the tower of nero, terrified to even open it ( i got a beautiful hardback for christmas and haven’ touched it yet)

[buoyantsaturn]

A World Alone (10/10)

summary: Nico was ready to propose - now he just needed to figure out how. He convinces Will to celebrate Hanukkah for the first time in years. The problem is, Nico doesn't know anything about Hanukkah.

word count: 1,864

read on ao3

Nico woke up to the feeling of Will draped across his back, pressing kisses all over the only side of Nico’s face he could reach. When he seemed to notice that Nico was finally awake, Will said, “Good morning, my future husband.” 

Nico tried to tuck his face into his pillow to hide the smile growing on his lips. “I haven’t even gotten used to fiance yet,” Nico grumbled, finding Will’s hand in the tangle of blankets around his waist and covering it with his own, “and you’re already skipping ahead to husband.”

“I’m just trying to get into the habit,” Will told him, trailing his lips down to Nico’s neck until they stopped to rest just above the collar of Nico’s shirt. “I mean, you never know when one of us might get tired of planning a wedding and decide to run to the courthouse instead.” 

Oh, Nico liked the sound of that. He started to roll back, at least as far as he could until Will got in his way, and turned his head to meet Will’s eyes. “Oh, that’s an option?” At Will’s grin, he turned over entirely and twisted their legs together beneath the bed sheets. “Then good morning, my husband.” 

Will’s arm tightened around him, pulling Nico even closer until their noses brushed together. “See, wouldn’t you rather get used to that?”

Nico hummed. “I can see the appeal. But I’m having a bit of a hard time picturing you with a courthouse wedding.” 

“It wouldn’t be my first choice, I’ll admit to that,” Will replied, “but it’ll be perfect either way. You know why?” 

Nico rolled his eyes. “Because you’ll be marrying--”

“I’ll be marrying you!” Will exclaimed with a blinding smile. “We can do whatever you want, whether it’s just us at the courthouse, or a small ceremony with our friends, or something huge with, like, two thousand people. I mean, I’ll need to meet a lot more people if that’s the case, but--”

“I think I’d like something small,” Nico told him, his fingers tracing the outline of the sun tattooed over Will’s heart. “If that’s okay.” 

“As long as you can promise me one thing,” Will said, and Nico hummed questioningly. “Small wedding, big reception.” 

Nico hesitated before replying, “How big is big?”

“How small is small?” Will shot back. “I’m thinking, maybe ten or fifteen people at the wedding, maybe a hundred people at the reception.” 

“Do we even know a hundred people?” Nico asked, his nose scrunching up with the question.

Will paused to think about it. “We...must, right? I mean, a hundred isn’t that many.” 

Nico’s face cracked into a smile once more. “Okay, we can figure out numbers later, once we establish how many people we actually know. For now, we should probably get ready to leave.”

Will got that sappy smile back on his face again that had Nico simultaneously melting at the sight and bracing himself for what was about to come next. “Back to the place where I fell in love with you,” Will said dreamily, then gasped when he got an idea. “We should get married at camp! It’s huge, always has great weather, a magical border that can keep out monsters - since there’s no doubt that it’ll be mostly demigods in attendance. It’ll be perfect.”

“We can think about it,” Nico told him, “for the reception. I’m still leaning toward the courthouse.” 

Will wore his Hanukkah sweater to camp despite the fact that Hanukkah had ended almost a week earlier. He insisted on wearing it as proof of how much Nico had spoiled him that month.

When they arrived at camp - driving there, because Will didn’t want to risk spending most of their stay in the infirmary with a half-conscious Nico - they dropped their bags off in the Hades cabin before crossing the green to cabin three. 

Percy and Annabeth were already inside, as well as Grover, Leo, and Rachel. As soon as Nico stepped through the door, Percy was on him, dragging him into a hug and taking him a few steps off to the side. He set his hands on Nico’s shoulders, practically bouncing on his toes as he whispered, “Did you do it? Did you, did you, did you?” 

Nico rolled his eyes, smiling fondly as he said, “Yeah, I did it.”

“Hell yeah!” Percy exclaimed and lifted Nico off his feet with the strength of his hug. “I’m so happy for you, dude!” 

When Percy finally set him back on his feet, Nico frowned, looking almost offended. “Woah, I never said that he said yes.” 

Percy looked like he was about to panic, but before he could say anything, Will slipped an arm around Nico’s waist and said, “He’s messing with you, Perce.” 

Percy’s eyes flickered between them. “So…”

Nico’s lips curved up into a smile. “We’re getting married.” 

“Dibs on best man!” Percy shouted, loud enough for the others in the cabin to hear. 

Nico’s eyes rolled on their own accord, and he shoved at Percy’s arm. “You got to help pick the ring, give somebody else a role.” 

“He spent a whole week buttering me up,” Will was telling everyone while Nico tried to hide his embarrassment in the corner of the room away from everybody else. A few others had arrived by then - Thalia and Reyna, Tyson and Ella, and Lou Ellen and Cecil. Hazel and Frank were expected to arrive the next day for Christmas Eve, and Piper had decided to spend the holiday with Shel’s family, so at most they were expecting an Iris Message from her at some point. “Obviously, I would’ve said yes either way, but it was sweet nonetheless.” 

“Aw, you hear that, Neeks?” Leo teased, drawing everyone’s attention across the room to Nico. “He thinks you’re sweet!” 

Nico’s arms tightened across his chest, and he pointed his glare at the wall. He was sure his face was already pink to begin with from the way that Will had been talking about him, but having everyone’s attention on him made it so much worse. They were definitely going to have a small wedding. 

“Can we see the ring?” Rachel asked, pulling everyone’s attention back to Will. Nico was going to have to thank her for that later. When Nico glanced back at the group, Rachel shot him a wink. 

Much later in the night, after the general excitement over the engagement announcement had faded to the background, Nico sat down beside Will on the couch and sunk into his side. Will draped an arm around his shoulders and pressed a kiss to the side of his head, whispering, “I didn’t embarrass you too much, did I?” 

“I’m mortified, and the wedding is off,” Nico grumbled into Will’s shoulder.

“You don’t mean that.” 

“I’m mortified, and the wedding will be at the courthouse,” Nico corrected. 

“Alright, I’ll take it.” Will kissed his temple once more. “I’m sorry. I won’t embarrass you anymore this weekend.” 

“No, you will,” Nico told him. “Once Hazel gets here tomorrow, you’ll do it all over again. But it’s okay, I forgive you in advance.” 

Will rubbed his arm a few times, quickly, like he was trying to warm him up. “Are you having fun otherwise?”

“Yeah, it’s been okay. I still want to catch up with Reyna since I haven’t seen her in…” 

Nico trailed off, his head tilting in confusion as his eyes followed Thalia across the room. She was suddenly decked out in fairy lights, wrapped in a garland and even wearing a tree-topper star on her head.

“Uh,” he started up again, “what’s going on?” 

Will laughed. “You know, because she used to be a pine tree.”

Nico shot up, spinning back toward Will and looking absolutely bewildered. “That wasn’t a joke?”

Seeing as they were back at camp, they did have to abide by the usual lights out rules if they wanted to avoid being attacked by harpies - not that any of them couldn’t manage to take down a harpy on their own at this point in their lives - so as the night wore on, they all went their separate ways to their different cabins. 

Nico and Will counted themselves lucky to have the Hades cabin to themselves, at least until Hazel and Frank were scheduled to arrive the next day. Unlike Cecil, neither of them had to try to cram into an open space in one of the other cabins with younger siblings. Nico and Will, on the other hand - just like Reyna and Thalia - had plenty of space to spread out. 

(Unlike Reyna and Thalia, Nico and Will didn’t take a vow to be single forever, and would therefore not be taking advantage of the extra space to spread out.)

When Nico came out of the bathroom after brushing his teeth, he found Will standing beside the bed, pulling back the sheets, dressed head-to-toe in a monochromatic brown. 

“I thought you promised that thing would never leave the apartment!” Nico exclaimed with a gasp, causing Will to jump and turn toward him, his Chewbacca onesie on full display. 

Will pointed an accusing finger at him. “And I thought you promised to leave all card games at home.” 

Nico spluttered. “I didn’t bring them!” 

In the dim light of the cabin, Will found Nico’s backpack on the ground and lifted it up. The main pocket was mostly unzipped, and the single lit torch on the wall gave off just enough light for Nico to see the few packs of games resting inside. Nico winced at the sight. 

“Okay, new deal: nothing leaves this cabin,” Nico said, then added, “except when we go home.” 

“Deal,” Will said, and climbed into bed. The only two beds in the cabin were pushed up against opposite walls, so Will had to crawl across the queen size mattress in order to make room for his fiance.

Nico stood beside the bed, arms crossing with a hmph. “I’m not sleeping next to you in that thing.” 

Will grinned up at him as he laid back against his pillow. “But it’s so cozy, and weirdly furry.” 

Nico stood his ground. Will simply shrugged back.

“Alright, suit yourself.” He pulled the blanket up to his shoulders and settled in, sighing contentedly and shutting his eyes. A few moments later, just as Nico was starting to reconsider the risks of brushing up against Chewbacca fur in his sleep, Will groaned and shoved the blankets away. “Okay, never mind, I’m sweating.” In a few quick movements, he had unzipped the onesie and stripped down to his underwear, then practically kicked the thing off the foot of the bed. 

Nico rolled his eyes at the overdramatics. “Here, maybe this will help,” he said, and reached down to press his cold fingers to the side of Will’s neck. 

He cringed at the feeling, nearly crushing Nico’s hand between his cheek and his shoulder with the force of his movement. “Dear gods, you’re freezing,” Will exclaimed. “Get in here!” He grabbed Nico by the arms and pulled him down to the bed before covering them both with the blanket and holding Nico close to warm him up.

thanks for reading!!

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[theusurpersdog]

Floppy Ears

A Dance with Dragons is the most important arc Daenerys has had since she hatched her dragons at the end of A Game of Thrones, and is a huge turning point for the trajectory of her character. And while GRRM’s books have always been incredibly detailed and focused on character, this book and A Feast for Crows is when he really mastered that style. Those two things combined make Daenerys’ ten chapters incredibly dense, and full of very important details. If I were to write it all out in one post, it would be just ridiculously long (and considering the length of my other posts, that’s really saying something. . .). To try and keep these posts from turning into books, I’m going to split my analysis of Dany in A Dance with Dragons into three separate posts; one dealing with the political aspects of her arc, the next a look at the outside forces that influence Dany’s decision making, and the last will center on the personal struggle that defines her arc. Here is the first, where I breakdown the political merits of Queen Daenerys Targaryen. . .

Holding Court

Running parallel to all of the symbolic choices and struggles Daenerys makes in A Dance with Dragons is the practical decisions she makes as Queen of Meereen. GRRM is famous for his quote about “Aragorn’s tax policy”, and it is clear that he tries to answer that question in this book. We get chapter after chapter that gives Daenerys a new political trial, and get to see and examine how she decides to move passed it. The first three books gave us small moments to look at and decide how Daenerys would rule Westeros, but A Dance with Dragons gives us definitive examples of how she would. This book asks would Daenerys be a good queen? and also gives us the answer: No.

Whenever Daenerys has to face the Meereenese as their queen, she thinks to herself that she is putting on her “floppy ears”, in reference to something Brown Ben Plumm tells her:

"Man wants to be the king o' the rabbits, he best wear a pair o' floppy ears."

This quote works so well to summarize Dany’s time in Meereen for a couple different reasons. The first is that it perfectly describes how Daenerys feels about being queen; she hates the rich Meereenese, former slavers who plot behind her back and have traditions that Dany hates, and she could never view herself as one of them. Dany feels as if she must pretend to be a part of them. But it also gets at a deeper truth of Daenerys’ arc - she is just pretending to be a queen; it doesn’t come naturally to her. She has to don her “floppy ears” to be a queen, and start pretending. She has to face many impossible choices in this book, and her anger is righteous in many circumstances, but that doesn’t change the fact that she is not a good queen, and in fact hardly even wants to be one. I’ll get into it more when I breakdown the personal part of Dany’s A Dance with Dragons arc (this meta focusing on the political), but to be queen of Meereen, Dany has to fight against her own nature. The way GRRM plotted this book so expertly, all of the political struggles Daenerys faces are reflections of her own personal struggles with staying in Meereen, each problem designed to get at a different part of Dany’s psyche and push her closer to the choice she ultimately makes in Daenerys IX and X.

When Daenerys holds court in Meereen, she is faced with many grievances that she must have an answer to, many from the noble class that she despises. What I find most interesting about these, is that Daenerys has something in common with all of the men she refuses to help. These are the stories she hears:

A rich woman came, whose husband and sons had died defending the city walls. During the sack she had fled to her brother in fear. When she returned, she found her house had been turned into a brothel.

A boy came, younger than Dany, slight and scarred, dresses up in a frayed grey tokar trailing silver fringe. His voice broke when he told of how two of his father’s household slaves had risen up the night the gate broke. One had slain his father, the other his elder brother. Both had raped his mother before killing her as well. The boy had escaped with no more than the scar upon his face, but one of the murderers was still living in his father’s house, and the other had joined the queen’s soldiers as one of the Mother’s Men.

The parallels Dany shares to these people are quite clear. The first woman she hears fled her house when the city was sacked, just as Rhaella fled the Red Keep when she was pregnant with Dany; yet Dany refuses to give the Meereenese woman her home back, even though Dany herself is determined to retake King’s Landing in her family’s name.

Daenerys also parallels the son in the second story, who has to see the men who raped and murdered his mother live in his house and work for the queen (Dany). This sounds very much like Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch being rewarded for killing Elia Martell. Dany turns the son away, and continues to let the murdering rapist serve her; yet, when she thinks of how the same thing happened to her family, Dany refers to the men as “dogs” and is disgusted by Robert Baratheon for allowing it.

The most interesting decision Daenerys makes, though, is how she responds to this story:

Grazdan zo Galare asked that he be granted a portion of their earnings. “They owe their skill to me,” he insisted. “I plucked them from the auction bloc and gave them to the loom.”

Dany listened quietly, her face still. When he was done. She said, “What was the name of the old weaver?”

“The slave?” Grazdan shifted his weight, frowning. “She was . . . Elza, it might have been. Or Ella. It was six years ago she died. I have owned so many slaves, Your Grace.”

“Let us say Elza. Here is our ruling. From the girls, you shall have nothing. It was Elza who taught them weaving, not you. From you, the girls shall have a new loom, the finest coin can buy. That is for forgetting the name of the old woman.”

Through these grievances, GRRM is giving us the chance to judge Daenerys based on her own morality. There is plenty of debate about what exactly it means that Dany forgets Hazzea’s name in her last chapter, but the above passage tells us what that means to Dany herself. When she sees that behavior in someone else, she is appalled; she goes out of her way to punish Grazdan specifically for forgetting the slave’s name. Judging Daenerys by her own standards, she has failed Hazzea.

Besides these stories painting Dany as a hypocrite (since she is doing everything that she turns the Meereenese away for), they also start to teach Dany a lesson about being a queen; it is really hard. Dany never realizes how these stories connect to her, but she does begin to understand how impossible it is to make some decisions. When she turns down the son whose mother was raped and house stolen, this is what she thinks:

I am queen over a city built on dust and death. Dany had no choice but to deny him. She had declared a blanket pardon for all crimes committed during the sack. Nor would she punish slaves for rising up against their masters.

And after the boy lunges to attack her, but trips on his tokar and is led away, Dany realizes that that the Harpy has gained another Son.

And while Dany never consciously thinks back on the decisions she’s made and how similar they are to Robert Baratheon’s, on a subconscious level she does soften towards him. When she watches the pit fighter gored by a boar, she thinks of him:

A terrible creature and a terrible death. For a heartbeat she felt almost sorry for the Usurper.

Dany from the first three books would never give even that much thought to Robert Baratheon.

The last decision Daenerys makes while holding court that day, is when she is presented with Hazzea’s bones. While Drogon had never killed a person before, we learn that it is a growing problem that he’s killing people’s livestock:

Her dragons had grown too large to be content with rats and cats and dogs. The more they eat, the larger they will grow, Ser Barristan had warned her, and the larger they grow, the more they’ll eat. Drogon especially ranged far afield and could easily devour a sheep a day.

Since Drogon is stealing and eating so many people’s sheep, and Daenerys doesn’t want to sit and speak to all of them, she agrees to give them all the value of their sheep:

The pronouncement was received in sullen silence. You would think they might be happier, Dany thought. They have what they came for. Is there no way to please these people?

This quote says a lot about Daenerys. In her mind, the people should be happy because she’s willing to give them back what they lost, failing to consider how much trouble it would be for them to gather up the bones of their dead animals, bring them to Dany’s pyramid, and wait all day for just the chance to be heard by her. Dany thinks many of them lie about Drogon to try and get money or sheep, and thinks they should just be happy she’s giving them anything at all.

It’s also one of the first times that Daenerys’ thoughts drift to how much she hates the Meereenese. I think most people just assume that Daenerys’ hatred of the city is limited to the Nobles and former Slavers who disgust her, but that isn’t true; she thinks that she hates the former slavers more often because she is forced to interact with them more often, but when Dany is around the freedman and lower classes she doesn’t like them either:

Daenerys was sick unto death of Zhak and Merreq; she was sick of all the Meereenese, great and small alike.

Dany tries very hard to make her rule of Meereen work, and from a broad political perspective even manages to achieve that, but her own personal bias against the city make it impossible to sustain the peace she creates. While a lot of Dany’s fights are over important things, the small battles she chooses are very telling; she hates the way the Meereenese style their hair and has her advisors shave their head because of it, hates the local food and delicacies, and takes a hard stand against the fighting pits (I’ll get into that more later). In the big picture, these little battles Dany chooses to fight are meaningless and just serve to alienate her from the people, but she does it anyway. Because she hates Meereen; not just the slavery or the toxic elements of the culture, but everything.

All of these decisions Daenerys makes while holding court occur in the first chapter, because there is a huge gap where she doesn’t hear the people’s complaints. It isn’t clear exactly how long she goes between hearing the people, but Daario tells her that the people don’t believe she is real, which implies quite a long time. And when Daario tells her she should, she replies:

“No. On the morrow I will be a woman wed, and Hizdahr will be king. Let him hold court. These are his people.”

The only reason she does hold court is because Daario said she would and Dany doesn’t want to disappoint him. But just the thought exhausts her:

The prospect of wrestling with Meereen once more left her feeling weary.

Daenerys really does throw herself into being queen - marrying Hizdahr proves that - but she still can’t bring herself to do the day to day tasks of a queen.

Choices

Seeing the decisions Daenerys makes when holding court gives us a window into how she handles small issues within the city, but there is also several times when Dany has to make very important choices that could affect thousands of lives. Most of these choices have no good answer, only the lesser of two evils, and Dany has to weigh what is most important to her knowing that people are going to be hurt by her decision either way.

But while that is mostly the case, there is one issue in which it isn’t: the fighting pits. Compared to the other choices she is forced to make in this book, it seems like Daenerys should not be bothered by allowing the fighting pits to reopen, considering the loss of life is *relatively* small and only by those who choose to fight. Yet, it is the issue Daenerys takes the hardest stand against, and completely refuses to do it herself, waiting until Hizdahr is King and letting him do it instead:

A queen must listen to her people, Dany reminded herself. “After the wedding Hizdahr will be king. Let him reopen the fighting pits if he wishes. I want no part of it.” Let the blood be on his hands, not mine.

Before I get into why Dany refusing to do this was a bad choice, I want to clarify something; there actually is plenty of good reasons not to open the pits. As we see through Tyrion’s eyes, slaves are still being brought in to fight, and we see that again when Hizdahr tells Dany that the dwarves are unaware they will have to fight wild animals with wooden swords. The pits shouldn’t have been reopened until Dany had a system in place that assured those kinds of abuses couldn’t occur.

But Dany isn’t thinking of any of that when she refuses to open the pits. To her, they represent everything wrong with Meereen; watching men die as sport is grotesque to her. That’s a perfectly reasonable thing to believe, and I don’t begrudge her for holding that position, but no one else in the city agrees with her. The pit fighters themselves are coming to Dany, begging to fight again:

"Before, I fight for master. You say, fight for you. I say, fight for me." The huge man thumped his chest with a fist as big as a ham. "For gold. For glory."

And not only is the fighting pits a part of the culture, but it’s also a part of the Ghiscari religion; the fights are viewed as sacrifices to the gods. Daenerys is already viewed as an outsider in the city, and refusing to allow this part of their culture is just another thing that turns the Ghiscari against her, especially because Dany never offers a reason for why she won’t open the pits; we see her argue Hizdahr’s points for him, to mock how often he comes to her, but she never actually makes a case against him. And even in her own thoughts, we never fully understand why the fighting pits bother her so much. When she has to watch the fights, the blood and killing of it all makes her nauseous, but she wasn’t bothered by that when Strong Belwas fought for her in front of the gates, and in the very same chapter isn’t bothered by Drogon’s violence.

The fighting pits is the one thing Dany absolutely refuses to concede. Even when she agrees to marry Hizdahr, close the gates to the refugees from Astapor, and let Yunkai restart their slave trade, she won’t open the pits and never does, letting the responsibility go to Hizdahr. And when she finally decides to leave Meereen, it is after watching Barsena die fighting. It seems like a small thing for Dany to be so hung up, and even she realizes that:

Better a few should die in the pit then thousands on the gates. This is the price of peace.

But she can’t go through with it. This is one of the biggest mistakes Dany makes as queen of Meereen. And she makes it for personal reasons; even though she could offer Hizdahr and other supporters of the fighting pits valid political reasons not to open them, she never does, because she doesn’t care about them. She refuses to open the pits because it is too Meereenese for her tastes.

Another major choice Daenerys has to make is how to deal with Astapor and Yunkai, which have fallen to disaster since she left them. The two cities represent two opposite decisions Dany made in the past; she attacked and burned Astapor, but peacefully moved past Yunkai after they agreed to free their slaves. Yet both have problems that are impossible to solve, and force Dany into choices she doesn’t want to make.

Yunkai has gone back to slavery since Dany marched passed, and since she left their military intact is threatening to march on Meereen; the Yunkai’i have blocked off the bay and plan on starving the city out. But Daenerys doesn’t have enough food to support the city, and without the power of her dragons can’t compete with Yunkai’s army. The only way Dany can save Meereen from Yunkai is to allow them to resume their slave trade, which goes against everything she wanted to stand for. The whole reason Dany decided to stay in Meereen was guilt and the realization that the people she left behind were going to get hurt, and she didn’t want to leave another city behind. And having to let the Yunkai’i go back to slaving is a harsh reminder of that. But it is her only choice to keep Meereen free, and it was the right choice. If she tried to fight Yunkai, she would have lost and then all three cities of Slaver’s Bay would return to slavery. But it is a choice that takes a piece of her, and makes her feel like everything she fought for was pointless.

Looked at it in isolation, the situation with Yunkai seems to suggest that Dany’s mistake was passing the city without military force, and Dany herself would agree with that:

She was coming to regret leaving the Yellow City untaken after defeating its army in the field. The Wise Masters had returned to slaving as soon as she moved on, and were busy raising levies, hiring sellswords, and making alliances against her.

But then Daenerys has to face what has become of Astapor, which she did attack with force, and it’s even worse:

Cleon the self-styled Great was no better, however. The Butcher King had restored slavery to Astapor, the only change being that the former slaves were now the masters and the former masters were now the slaves.

At first, Dany is untroubled by the fall of Astapor, because they are no threat to her and even march against her enemies. Then the first rider appears:

"He came out of the morning mists, a rider on a pale horse, dying. His mare was staggering as she approached the city gates, her sides pink with blood and lather, her eyes rolling with terror. Her rider called out, 'She is burning, she is burning,' and fell from the saddle”

Soon, hundreds and thousands of people fleeing Astapor arrive outside the gates of Meereen, begging to be let inside the walls. Daenerys’ first instinct is to help them, and she tries her best to do so:

“I will not turn away from them,” she said stubbornly. “A queen must know the sufferings of her people.”

“Go if you wish, ser. I will not detain you. I will not detain any of you.” Dany vaulted down from the horse. “I cannot heal them, but I can show them that their mother cares.”

Dany is willing to ride out amongst those suffering from the bloody flux, because she sees herself as their mother and every part of her wants to be able to help them. She even intended on letting them in the gates. But then Daario brings news of the Yunkish armies gathering in the hills, and again Dany is forced to make an awful, but right, choice:

She wanted to scream, to gnash her teeth and tear her clothes and beat upon the floor. Instead she said, “Close the gates. Will you make me say it thrice?” They were her children, but she could not help them now.

Even though this is an awful call to have to make, it is the right one. Leaving the gates open long enough to let everyone from Astapor in would have left Meereen exposed to Yunkai’s attack, and Meereen barely has enough food to feed their own people and wouldn’t have been able to sustain thousands more. Most importantly, though, is that the people from Astapor are carrying the Bloody Flux, which is basically an even more contagious version of dysentery; men who Daenerys had sent into the Astapori camps to help feed them all caught the flux and most died from it. If she had let them into Meereen, the whole city could have been wiped out.

In the end, I think Daenerys made the right choices when it came to Astapor and Yunkai (even though the decisions she made were far from perfect or even good). But, why did she have to make those hard choices at all? Ruling a city was never going to be easy, but the unrest in both Astapor and Yunkai, though she approached them with two entirely different strategies, is making a clear point: Daenerys never should have left them. Meereen is the only city of Slaver’s Bay that is able to keep the slaves freed, and it is also the only city where Daenerys stayed. No matter how radical the change is (like Astapor), or subtle (Yunkai), someone needs to stay and make sure the change stays in place. So, while Daenerys ultimately made the right choices to keep her own city safe, she is the one who left Astapor and Yunkai in positions to fall apart.

The biggest problem Daenerys faces inside Meereen is the threat from the Sons of the Harpy, a shadow-group of murderers who target freedmen. This is also the best ruling Daenerys does as queen, rarely making a poor choice and mostly making the best one. Trying to ease the tensions between the Nobles and the Freedmen is an almost impossible task, though, because of the long history of Meereen’s slave trade; and the sacking of the city only served to make it worse. The freed slaves are entirely justified in their hatred of their former masters, but since the slaves were given immunity for crimes they committed during the sack, the masters are even more horrible to the freedmen than they would have been otherwise. Since noble women were raped, property was defaced or stolen, and people were murdered, tensions in Meereen are running higher than ever as Daenerys tries to stop the killing.

The first steps she takes against the Harpy is to mix her City Guard, which was previously all Unsullied, to equal parts freedmen and Shavepates (former nobles who have taken to Dany’s cause), so that the Sons of the Harpy would have to kill their own; and to pay for these men, she enacts a “blood tax” that charges the nobles whenever the Harpy kills someone.

Even though these are good ideas, the killings don’t stop, and Daenerys has to try something else; eventually she decides on taking young hostages from the noble families, under threat of death if the killings continue. When she is actually faced with having to kill her hostages, though, she cannot go through with it; and that was the right decision. If she had killed them, it would have only served to give the noble families another excuse to fight against her rule and would have been used as evidence of her cruelty. By sparing them and befriending them, Daenerys is actually building bonds and relationships with the next generation of noble families that can only benefit her in the future.

But Daenerys can’t wait years to see the killings stop, and needs a solution to stop the Harpy immediately. The only thing that could do that is a permanent tie between Daenerys, who represents (in the eyes of the former masters) the former slaves, and a noble family; and the best way to do that is a marriage to Hizdahr zo Loraq, who has the Green Grace’s approval and has offered to marry Daenerys. She knows that marrying Hizdahr is her only choice:

“My people are bleeding. Dying. A queen belongs not to herself, but to the realm. Marriage or carnage, those are my choices. A wedding or a war.”

She resists this decision for a long time, and then tells Hizdahr that she won’t marry him unless Meereen goes 90 days with no murders. The reason she resists the marriage are obvious; it is the ultimate act of giving up her own agency for Meereen. Once she commits to marrying Hizdahr, she is losing the chance to choose who she loves, or to make a marriage alliance in Westeros. The idea of giving up herself in this way is devastating to Dany, and she’s only willing to make the choice when she’s absolutely sure that it will work, and that she has no other choice. But she does marry Hizdahr, because she knows that as a queen, she should put her people first:

“A queen loves where she must, not where she will."

Her decision to marry Hizdahr is the one true attempt Daenerys makes to be a part of the Meereenese culture, and the way she blends Meereenese wedding traditions with her own – accepting the harmless and replacing the offensive – is a great example of how Daenerys could move forward in Meereen peacefully.

Now that I’ve explained what Dany did right fighting the Sons of the Harpy, she does make some morally wrong calls. The killings make Daenerys justifiably angry, but the way she handles that anger is letting the Shavepate torture suspects and their kids:

Mercy, thought Dany. They will have the dragon’s mercy. “Skahaz, I have changed my mind. Question the man sharply.”

“I could. Or I could question the daughters sharply whilst the father looks on. That will wring some names from him.”

“Do as you think best, but bring me names.” Her fury was a fire in her belly.

It is one thing to torture someone you only suspect of being involved in a crime, but it is even worse to torture girls just to get at their father. And while this is the only instance we hear of Daenerys allowing the torture of people she knows are innocent to try and get confessions, it’s made clear that the Shavepate is torturing a lot of people:

“I do not doubt that Skahaz would soon have me confessing. A day with him, and I will be one of the Harpy’s Sons. Two days, and I will be the Harpy. Three, and it will turn out I slew your father too, back in the Sunset Kingdoms when I was yet a boy. Then he will impale me on a stake and you can watch me die. . . but afterward the killings will go on.”

“I do not trust these confessions. You’ve brought me too many of them, all of them worthless.”

The first quote is from Hizdahr, showing that the Shavepate has a reputation amongst the noble families of being especially brutal. Dany allowing that kind of behavior gives the nobles real reasons to hide behind when they don’t support her. And the second quote is from Dany herself, showing that Hizdahr’s perspective wasn’t biased, and the Shavepate truly is getting false confessions from people; which more than suggests his methods are particularly brutal.

Furthering the divide between the Nobles and Freedman, Daenerys forces the Nobles into labor, digging fields to plant trees. Xaro Xhoan Daxos notices this when he enters the city, and uses it against Dany when she refuses to let the other cities have slaves, since the men forced to work for Dany are asking to be made slaves again.

Besides marrying Hizdahr, the biggest choice Dany has to make for the good of Meereen is chaining her dragons. Locking them away is a huge sacrifice for Daenerys, since she sees them as her children, and it leaves her at a political disadvantage when negotiating with Yunkai and Qarth (since the dragons are her only real advantage). Without them, Dany is worried she won’t even be able to hold Meereen:

Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros?

And she knows that she could destroy her enemies with them:

She was the blood of the dragon. She could kill the Sons of the Harpy, and the sons of the sons, and the sons of the sons of the sons.

But Dany also knows that however useful dragons are for killing enemies, they can’t bring peace to the city:

But a dragon could not feed a hungry child nor help a dying woman’s pain.

On the surface, Daenerys chaining her dragons seems like a very good thing she did; but again, just like with the disasters of Astapor and Yunkai, Daenerys helps create a problem, waits until it hits a fever pitch, and then makes the right choice at the end. All the way back in A Storm of Swords, Daenerys was already having fears about her dragons:

"Did any of them try to burn their way free?" That was the thing that frightened Dany the most.

Also in that book, Drogon gets upset and bites Irri hard enough to make her bleed. So, even before A Dance with Dragons starts, there is plenty of warning signs about what her dragons are capable of. And once the book starts, and some time has passed for the dragons to grow even larger, it’s clear the dragons have only become more unruly:

Her dragons were growing wild of late. Rhaegal had snapped at Irri, and Viserion had set Reznak’s tokar ablaze the last time the seneschal had called. I have left them too much to themselves, but where am I to find the time for them?

And Drogon has been out hunting, killing many people’s livestock:

Her dragons had grown too large to be content with rats and cats and dogs. The more they eat, the larger they will grow, Ser Barristan had warned her, and the larger they grow, the more they’ll eat. Drogon especially ranged far afield and could easily devour a sheep a day.

In my meta about Daenerys’ personal arc, I’ll discuss more of how she could let the dragons get so far out of hand before intervening, but right now I just want to draw attention to how bad a decision that was politically. Even before Hazzea is killed, Drogon burning the sheep is starting to become a problem between Daenerys and her people; as she noticed when she agreed to pay the people off, it doesn’t make them happy. And it’s especially bad that Daenerys is starting to lose their support, because they are all she has; since the nobles don’t support her, Daenerys depends on the freedmen and lower classes to keep her crown.

But the biggest issue with Daenerys allowing Drogon to roam the hillsides, is how obvious it was that an incident like Hazzea was inevitably going to happen. Once Hazzea is killed, Daenerys’ rule depends on the silence of a grieving father; because, if her murder ever got out, the city of Meereen would abandon Daenerys. It also puts her in a position where she has to take advantage of one of her people:

Dany chose to pay the blood price. No one could tell her the worth of a daughter, so she set it at one hundred times the worth of a lamb. “I would give Hazzea back to you if I could,” she told the father, “but some things are beyond the power of even a queen. Her bones shall be laid to rest in the Temple of the Graces, and a hundred candles shall burn day and night in her memory. Come back to me each year upon her nameday, and your other children shall not want . . . but this tale must never pass your lips again.”

“Men will ask,” the grieving father had said. “They will ask me where Hazzea is and how she died.”

“She died of a snakebite,” Reznak mo Reznak insisted. “A ravening wolf carried her off. A sudden sickness took her. Tell them what you will, but never speak of dragons.”

Daenerys rule rests on the good will and/or fear of a grieving father. All because she put her dragons before her people.

Tokars

The choices Daenerys has to make with Astapor and Yunkai, where she has to leave people to be enslaved or die because she can’t save everyone, start to break Dany’s will and it gets harder and harder for her to keep giving parts of herself to Meereen. But those are not the reasons that Daenerys decides to abandon the city at the end of A Dance with Dragons; I touched upon it earlier, but the real reason her rule in Meereen is unsustainable is that Daenerys doesn’t want to be a queen. She holds onto the idealized version she had, of being a mother to her people and feeling as if she belongs; but the actual day to day responsibilities of being a Queen, of representing even the people she doesn’t like, and making hard choices, is not for her. She is still a young girl, and often times foolish in the way she carries herself.

I want to preface this next section by saying this: if it seems like I’m being hard on Dany, that’s because I am. She, more than any other character in A Song of Ice and Fire, should be held to a higher standard; because she wields more power than anyone else. Cersei as Queen Mother and Jon as Lord Commander come the closest, but Cersei’s power is tied to Tommen and easily taken by Margaery, and Jon’s power is limited to the very small number of men in the Night’s Watch. Daenerys controls an entire city, and has three dragons to do whatever she wants with. And Dany intentionally sought her power out, completely out of self-interest; while her time in Slaver’s Bay evolves into a humanitarian effort, it began as her trying to gather an army to take back her family’s throne – not to better the lives of the smallfolk, but because she feels Westeros belongs to her. She went looking for power, and managed to get it; enough so that people live and die based on her choices. Because more lives are at stake, Daenerys should be held to a higher standard. Keep that in mind while reading. . .

From the first chapter, Daenerys’ immaturity is on display:

If he proposes again that I wed King Cleon, I’ll throw a slipper at his head.

She finds holding court very boring, and it’s hard for her to keep her “floppy ears” on:

The slippers the Butcher King had sent her had grown too uncomfortable. Dany kicked them off and sat with one foot tucked beneath her and the other swinging back and forth. It was not a very regal pose, but she was tired of being regal. The crown had given her a headache, and her buttocks had gone to sleep.

But while holding court, she manages to keep her discontent mostly to herself. Meeting with Xaro Xhoan Daxos, she is less diplomatic:

She took a cherry from the bowl on the table and threw it at his nose

His jeweled nose made a tempting target. This time Dany threw an apricot at him.

I cannot stress enough how immature this is; the Queen of Meereen throwing fruit at one of the Thirteen of Qarth. However annoying she finds Xaro, a queen should carry herself with more self-control.

The tokar, a traditional Meereenese garb worn by the nobility, is the way GRRM symbolizes Daenerys’ lack of patience with Meereen and queenship. This is how she describes the tokar:

The garment was a clumsy thing, a long loose shapeless sheet that had to be wound around her hips and under an arm and over a shoulder, its dangling fringes carefully layered and displayed. Wound too loose, it was like to fall off; wound too tight, it would tangle, trip, and bind. Even wound properly, the tokar required its wearer to hold it in place with the left hand. Walking in a tokar demanded small, mincing steps and exquisite balance, lest one tread upon those heavy trailing fringes. It was not a garment meant for any man who had to work. The tokar was a master's garment, a sign of wealth and power.

Daenerys is right that it is a garment for the wealthy, because the design of the tokar makes it impossible for practical use, so her hatred isn’t entirely unjustified. But the tokar also represents the tightwire Dany has to walk as queen; one step out of line, and the tokar could fall off, and she would lose her floppy ears. And that’s why she hates it: all of her attention goes to keeping it on, and it limits her freedom. The tokar is everything she hates about Meereen. Knowing the tokar represents Dany’s complicated relationship with Meereen, it’s fascinating to see the details GRRM has woven into her chapters:

With Jhiqui's help, she wound the tokar about herself correctly on her third attempt.

Meereen being the third city she conquered in Slaver’s Bay, the symbolism is pretty clear. The idea that she gets her third attempt correct also reinforces a point I’ve been trying to make through this post; for all of her missteps, Daenerys actually manages to achieve peace in Meereen. But in the end, she throws it away (but I’ll get into that more later).

When Hazzea’s father lingers in her court after she has dismissed everyone, it angers Dany:

As Dany stood, her tokar began to slip. She caught it and tugged it back in place. "You with the sack," she called, "did you wish to speak with us? You may approach."

The tokar is the physical manifestation of Dany’s “floppy ears”, and when she lets her queenly façade slip, so does her garment. But it’s very important that while the tokar sometimes slips, Dany never lets it fall. Like the mistakes she makes as queen, she can fix her dress before it all comes crashing down. She can, and did, make the peace in Meereen work, even if she came dangerously close to failing; Daenerys learned to walk the tightwire of Meereen. The only way the tokar will fall is if she chooses to take it off.

And that’s exactly what she does. After marrying Hizdahr, she agrees to attend the fighting pits with him, and that’s when she hits her breaking point. Through all the sacrifices she has to make, keeping the fighting pits closed is the one thing she never had to give in to. So, when she is faced with seeing her last stand fall to the Meereenese, she is looking for reasons to walk. Then Barsena begins her fight:

The boar buried his snout in Barsena’s belly and began rooting out her entrails. The smell was more than the queen could stand. The heat, the flies, the shouts from the crowd. . . I cannot breathe.

I think people focus too much on Drogon’s shocking return in the fighting pits, and forget what Dany was doing before he arrived. Practically speaking, Drogon returns because he smells meat and blood and wants to kill; but symbolically speaking, Drogon returns at the moment Daenerys stopped pretending in Meereen. And previously when Daenerys was faced with the choice of saving her dragons or saving her people, she was willing to chain the dragons. But this time, Daenerys is willing to let people die to save Drogon:

Drogon raised his head, blood dripping from his teeth. The hero leapt onto his back and drove the iron spearpoint down at the base of the dragon’s long scaled neck.

Dany and Drogon screamed as one.

Ser Barristan held her tightly. “Look away, Your Grace.”

“Let me go!” Dany twisted from his grasp. The world seemed to slow as she cleared the parapet.

In total, Drogon killed 214 people and wounded three times as many before he finally leaves with Dany. Politically speaking, this is a disaster for Daenerys. The Yunkish envoys were caught in the fire and killed, as well as many highborn nobles and even freedmen. Where Daenerys was able to cover up Hazzea’s death, there is no hiding what Drogon has done in Daznak’s Pit. And that’s why in her absence, Meereen completely collapses and war begins.

But Daenerys was never going to go back to the city as their queen. When she is in the Dothraki Sea, she tries to convince herself to go back, even walking toward the city, but even before Drogon arrived in the Pit, Daenerys gave up on the peace she had worked so hard to make. The tokar is her “floppy ears”, the thing that allows her to be a queen of the rabbits; to take it off, Daenerys is saying she has no interest in doing that anymore.

Like I said at the beginning, Daenerys’ A Dance with Dragons arc splits into two halves – the personal and the political. If Daenerys X is the personal reckoning she has with herself to embrace Fire & Blood, Daenerys IX (the chapter in Daznak’s Pit) is the political falling out she has with Meereen. The only reason she can have her moment on the Dothraki Sea is because she has already given up on the one thing holding her back from her family’s legacy. It is only fitting that the last thing she does before Drogon appears, is take off the only thing tying her to Meereen:

She lifted her veil and let it flutter away. She took her tokar off as well. The pearls rattled softly against one another as she unwound the silk.

“Khaleesi?” Irri asked. “What are you doing?”

“Taking off my floppy ears.”

[hellswolfie]

HOO The Son of Neptune

So recently i’ve done a “review” of The Lost Hero and so i decided to do it again for the Son of Neptune because it feels good to vent somewhere ^^ 

also, once again, just because i criticize it, it doesn’t mean i didn’t like this book. In fact I actually liked it way more than The Lost Hero (the lack of Jiper will do that to you ^^)

Anyway lets go !

THINGS I DIDNT LIKE : 

- Hazel’s Big Secret. Dont get me wrong, i love her and her backstory is really interesting, but like...The Girl Who Has A Big Secret That She Hides Because If People Knew Surely They Would Hate Her Forever....its so rebondant with Piper’s story in the last book. So yeah, i admit, it made me roll my eyes a few times. 

- The age difference between Hazel and Frank. Knowing tumblr, im probably not the only one thinking this ^^ but yeah, while a 13 years old with a 16 years old is not the end of the world, it still made me extremely uncomfy at times, especially when Frank was rambling on how hot Hazel was like please stop X( and the fact that absolutely no one in the book thinks there is anything wrong or even weird with that like seriously ??

- Percy losing the Achille Curse. Yeah, i get that he had to lose it at some point, because if he was invulnerable all the time it would be too easy, but I just wish it could have been explored more, you know ? Like it was completely cast away with a plot convenience and never thought about again, while in The Last Olympian, everyone was saying how horrible and how much a curse it was, like im sure there were so many interesting things to do with it...

- The fact that they are all just too Good. Not in the sense that they’re badasses and all of that, but like how every time, the heroes always make the right moral decision. Im putting it there because thats the scene with Ella that did it for me...When they all decide instantly they wont capture her, even tho the Blind Guy would have told them everything they needed to know TO SAVE THE WORLD if they did, and that none of them ever really liked harpies in the first place...Like none of them even CONSIDER it !! Even Frank who is supposed to be the one willing to make hard decision for the greater good !! I dont know it just really irked me. I love charaters having to bend their morals or making difficult decision and mystakes, thats always what make them interesting !

- Percy already considering New Rome as his Family. It just...doesnt make sense. He spent what ? One day here ? Two at most ? And some of them wanted him dead ??? Why would he ever thought of them as his family as much as Camp Half Blood that fast ????  I know its maybe a little thing, but it shows that once again, having all the character and relationship development happen in the course of a few days make them rushed !

THINGS I LIKED  :

- Percy Jackson. I literaly had to stop reading when I saw his name in the first page because it made me too excited and i was smiling like an idiot while reading his chapters. I really hadnt realised how much i missed him until this moment !! Hes still so badass and kind and brave and smart and i love him so much !!! and seeing him in other people’s POV ?? AMAZING !!! everyone thinks hes a snack and thats what he deserves ^^ (and the scene where everyone waas omg its Ares bow before him and he was just like fuck this guy was Epic XD)

- Frank : a baby ^^ but seriously i really really like him. He has a lot of potential here, with how smart and strategic he can be (also his capacities as a leader), and i loved to see a perspective from a child of Ares who is  just too nice for his own good, it was really intersting (i would love for him to meet Clarisse lol). And his grandma ? A Queen. 

 - Hazel. Yes this time, i liked of all the trio. I admit i was a bit hard on her at first because i kept thinking “if you wanted a child of Hades to be one of the Seven, why not Nico ??” because yes i really wanted to see more Nico and to have him be a main :( but anyway, i rapidly warmed up to her, she s so fucking badass and brave and she deserves the best ever <3 Also she has the best Horse lol (if we dont count Blackjack because hes a pegasus of course).

- Reyna : a Badass Queen. Jiper is gonna hurt her so much, i can smell it from here, and thats just one more reason to hate this couple...But really shes such a good leader, strong and firm but willing to listen and compromise. I love her !!

- Nico. I love him so much and he deserves to be more present !! Also now hes a prisonner like can someone other than Hazel be worried about that please ??? And seeing him as a big brother was so sweet !!

- Percabeth. Well we didnt see much but the little glimpses we had...Percy only remembering Annabeths name...swoon

- Frazel. Like i said earlier i really didnt like their age difference but their dynamic is really great. They have so much respect and admiration for one another, and it didnt feel forced at all, it feels good to have a couple like that from time to time ^^

- New Rome. I really loved getting to explore this. The other aspects of the Gods, their way of living...It was really really interesting to see. It brings a whole new and fesh perspective on the mythologie and what does it mean to be a halfblood and i loved it. 

- The scene where Percy calls his mum. It was such a great emotional scene to me. Like in the mids off al the crazy stuff with saving the world and fighting monsters, Percy calling his mum is the scene that really reminds the reader that yeah, hes really badass and all but hes also a sixteen years old who disappeared for months and who needs his mum. It really humanizes him and brings the reader back to “reality” in such a raw way and yeah...Almost bought tears to my eyes...

Ok I think that was it. Feel free to discuss it (respectfully of course) ^^. 

[lesdemonium]

I’d Be the Choiceless Hope Chapter 3

Ship: Geraskier Word count: 9,430 Chapter: 3/16

Summary:  

“Such a nice, beautiful sound,” the fae crooned. “If only he were this way always.”

Julian’s mother stood up. She claimed she was prepared to stop the fae, to protect her baby, but in Julian’s darkest moments he doubted this part of the story. His mother loved him, of that he had no doubt, but she had been young and weary, and even years later, she couldn’t quite get the twinge of exhaustion out of her eyes when she recalled Julian’s infancy. Even if she had been keen on protecting him, the fae was too close, too fast, too set on his plan.

“A gift, for the new mother,” the fae continued. He leaned a hand in to stroke Julian’s cheek. “I give you the gift of obedience.”

As a baby, Jaskier was visited by a fae, who gifted Jaskier’s mother with Jaskier’s obedience. As Jaskier grew older, the “gift” became more of a curse.

Additional tags: AngstAngst with a Happy EndingHeavy AngstUnrequited LoveNot Actually Unrequited LoveAlternate Universe - Canon DivergenceCanon EraNot Canon CompliantCursed Jaskier | DandelionAlternate Universe - Ella Enchanted FusionCurse of ObedienceRape/Non-con ElementsImplied/Referenced Rape/Non-conJaskier | Dandelion Whump

read on ao3 - read chapter 1 on ao3

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Being away from Geralt was harder than Jaskier ever anticipated. The safety, of course, was hard to replicate. Jaskier found his life was far easier when people stayed far away from him, though he did try his hardest to change the people’s tune on Geralt so that would happen less often . Let it be known that Jaskier was not a selfish friend--he truly tried to remedy Geralt’s reputation, even though there were many times that the witcher and any company he kept being completely unapproachable would have been exceedingly helpful to Jaskier. While Jaskier craved it, Geralt didn’t deserve it.

Truly, though, being away from Geralt was excruciating because Jaskier missed him .

It hit him as he was passing through Posada. He didn’t often make the return to Posada--it was kind of a shithole and even as he had started writing his amazing ballads, the crowds simply were not up to Jaskier’s standards. He figured it had been a while since he graced the lovely town with his skill, though, and so he had tried again to see if the crowds were more amiable. They were not. But, as he had already made it there and didn’t much feel like camping or traveling alone at night, Jaskier had gotten a room.

He and Geralt had parted ways months earlier, as Geralt went to Kaer Morhen for the winter. Even if Jaskier was not in much of an admitting mood, he had to confess that he was absently looking for Geralt. It was spring, surely Geralt would have left the keep, or was preparing to disembark. Jaskier wasn’t exactly sure where Kaer Morhen was or the route Geralt took to leave, but he reasoned that Posada had to be at least a decent guess.

Jaskier wanted to claim that he was absently searching for the witcher due to the protection he offered. Though he lied to everyone else, Jaskier did not much enjoy lying to himself. He was actively searching for the witcher because the past few months without him had been long and terrible and though Geralt had never been much for conversation, he was amazing for company. Also, Geralt’s particular brand of humor had been washing off on Jaskier and apparently it only seemed to work for persons who were large and brooding and vaguely terrifying.

Geralt was not in Posada, nor was he in Vengerberg, Aldersberg, or Rivia, but he was in Carreras. How Geralt beat him was anyone’s guess, but Jaskier found he was quite delighted to have found his witcher again.

“Geralt! Long time. I trust your winter was delightful. Full of witchery-like grunts and grimaces. I wonder, is there a witcher-to-common book in that reportedly extensive library of yours?” Jaskier greeted, arms wide in excitement (though Geralt eyed them warily like Jaskier was trying for a hug, and Jaskier would never mortify himself with that sort of expectation).

“Lambert and Eskel are more talkative. Not as talkative as you ,” Geralt answered with a huff as he continued walking, hauling the head of whatever beast he had just slain. Jaskier wanted to ask after the creature, but found himself far more interested in this snippet of his personal life Geralt was sharing with him.

“Ah, so it’s just you, then? Figures I should attempt to become the barker of a witcher who refuses to share gory details with me to his own benefit!” Jaskier knocked his shoulder into Geralt’s as he fell into step beside Geralt. To Jaskier’s great delight, he saw the corner of Geralt’s mouth tip up, just a smidge. Maybe Geralt had missed him, too.

“No. Vesemir talks less than me, now.”

Jaskier hummed. “So, Lambert, Eskel, and Vesemir, they are…?” Jaskier trailed off, hoping Geralt would continue his information binge--and wasn’t that truly distressing, that this was what Jaskier would refer to as a binge --enough to fill in the blanks.

“Vesemir trained us. Lambert and Eskel are my brothers,” Geralt answered.

Jaskier was dying to ask more. He didn’t know where to begin. Before the words had finished leaving Geralt’s mouth, he had formed hundreds of questions on the training of witchers alone . Geralt had to speak to the alderman, though, and to interrupt him on his quest to get his coin would leave Jaskier with a cranky witcher on his hands, and less information than he would like. Besides, a barrage of questions had never helped him get anywhere with Geralt. Sometimes he could confuse Geralt into answering one or two just to get Jaskier to stop, but Jaskier had a suspicion Geralt was becoming immune to his charms.

“Geralt, what is next on our docket?” Jaskier asked as they walked away from the alderman, Geralt’s pockets significantly heavier, due in no small part to Jaskier’s wheedling and dramatizing about the creature--which he still did not know the name of. “Perhaps a vampire? A harpy? One of those disgusting eight-legged creatures with a face that looks like every nightmare ever had pressed together?”

“A brothel,” Geralt answered.

“Right. A… a brothel.” Jaskier frowned, his eyebrows furrowed. “And then what, my good sir? The nightmare creatures?”

Geralt shrugged. “I imagine then a good fuck. I don’t usually find nightmare creatures inside brothels.”

Jaskier groaned. Had the witcher not been practically speed-walking his way away from Jaskier, he would have shoved the witcher. Not that it would have done much good anyway, but Jaskier would have felt better. Like he had made his frustration known.

“Geralt, I hope you aren’t being evasive on purpose. I know you’ve missed me--or at the very least, missed the way I can talk you into some extra coin--and I won’t have you trying to avoid me and leave when I’m caught unawares.” Jaskier huffed, crossing his arms in frustration. “I am going to get myself a room at an inn. If you try to leave without me after you have relieved your carnal urges, I will write you a scathing song. You’ve seen how much good I can do when I’m singing your praises. Do not underestimate my ability to destroy your reputation through song.”

Geralt rolled his eyes, but Jaskier liked to imagine he saw a flicker of fear in them. Jaskier would never do such a thing, but he’d certainly be heartbroken. It wouldn’t be the first time, but, like a sane person, he tried to avoid obvious heartbreak darkening his door.

The crowd, as he performed at the tavern that night, was much better than the one in Posada. They shouted out requests, laughed at his jokes, and stomped their feet more-or-less in time. Jaskier’s case was full of coins by the time the tavern door swung open and Jaskier was fully distracted by the witcher striding inside.

Jaskier had traveled with Geralt long enough to recognize displeasure on his face. It was hard to tell from his otherwise gruff and unhappy expressions, but Jaskier could read it in the tilt of his lips and the tension of his forehead. The witcher took a seat in the far back of the tavern, at one of the few open tables left, and though Geralt’s back remained to Jaskier, his head was tilted as if he was actually listening.

A moment later, Jaskier came back to himself. It would not do well for him to lose his audience, not when they were so enamored with him, and he had to put food in his belly somehow. Though every part of him longed to join Geralt, to inquire after what went wrong--because clearly something had, or Geralt would have remained in the brothel--Jaskier continued his performance. It wasn’t long, he had certainly done longer performances elsewhere, but it was long enough to keep the audience’s favor. Often, it was best to leave early, lest they lose interest.

Geralt was still at the table when Jaskier slid onto the bench across from him, but now he had an ale before him. And two empty ones besides.

“I expected you to be buried beneath a beautiful working girl for the better part of the night, and possibly into the early morning. No one there to your liking? Have you decided listening to my dulcet tones is a better way to satisfy your hunger?” Jaskier asked, winking.

“They stank. Every one of them.”

Jaskier raised an eyebrow. “Do they not have baths there? Perhaps that could have been your foreplay. You do so love a warm bath.”

Geralt’s head began to shake before Jaskier finished speaking. He took a drink of his ale, spending enough time on it that Jaskier wasn’t certain Geralt was going to offer the information Jaskier was so clearly missing. “Not like that,” Geralt finally answered. “Fear. Every one of them smelled like fear. Strongly.”

He shrugged, as if this was nothing, and Jaskier’s heart ached for him. He hadn’t realized the witcher could perceive that, though, at this point, Jaskier had been certain there were few surprises left. Evidently, he did not know as much about witcher physiology as he thought he did. He would have to do more to press Geralt about this, but perhaps not at a point when Geralt looked so… sick of himself.

“Perhaps if you gave it another go? Maybe they were caught off guard?” Jaskier asked, and again, Geralt was shaking his head before Jaskier finished speaking.

“I will not lie with someone terrified I’m going to rip their throat out,” he answered. Hard to argue with logic like that. “It’s fine. I’ll try again in another town.”

There was very little Jaskier could do to fix this. As much as people were beginning to welcome the witcher, Jaskier couldn't fix everyone’s perceptions of him. And if Geralt really could smell fear on them, well, there wasn’t much Jaskier could do about that, even if he did change the public perception of witchers. It would take a long time before the automatic fear response went away. It was baffling, though. Jaskier couldn’t imagine how anyone could look at Geralt and not want to bed him.

“Well. Save your coin tonight, friend. I already have a room, and you are welcome to join me!” Jaskier announced cheerily.

Geralt snorted into his drink. “I’ll get my own room, bard.”

“Ah, yes, well, that is the thing. There is a rather large chance I have purchased the last remaining room.” Jaskier grimaced at Geralt. “I’m afraid it was less an offer of loneliness, but rather an offer of necessity.”

Geralt grimaced right back. “You needn’t sacrifice your room. I’ll find other lodgings.”

“No,” Jaskier insisted, shaking his head. “Geralt, really. Share my room. I will endeavor to give you space when we sleep, but you know I cannot help what I do while I am unconscious. Hence why I will fund this particular stay in a real bed that I know you will hold over my head for the length of our travels tomorrow. But I must insist that you stay here, and not only because I am still afraid you will leave despite my warnings of a scathing song.”

Geralt snorted again, and finished the last of his ale. “Fine, Jaskier. Only if you stop talking , though.” He pushed back from the table and stood up, looking expectantly at Jaskier.

“You know I can make no such promise,” Jaskier answered, though he grinned as he stood up.

Though this night undoubtedly was terrible for Geralt, it was shaping up to be exactly what Jaskier wanted. Even if sharing a bed rarely went well for them, as Jaskier had a tendency of wrapping himself around Geralt in his sleep, much like a snake would to squeeze the life out of their meal. Still, Geralt followed after Jaskier, and they oscillated between idle chit-chat and companionable silence as they both staged their belongings in the room and undressed for bed.

“Geralt,” Jaskier started, sitting on the bed as Geralt continued the long, arduous process of removing his armor.

“Jaskier?” Geralt answered.

“You can smell fear on people?”

Geralt paused for a moment, his hand stilling over his armor as he placed it carefully away. He nodded, and said, “Yes. It smells… sickly sweet. Like rotting fruit.”

Jaskier nodded back, mulling this over for a moment. “Have you ever smelled it on me?”

Geralt shrugged, returning to removing his armor, though he was now more methodical than he had been. Like he was trying to keep his hands busy. Curious.

“At times,” he answered. “When a beast gets too close to you, or when that drunk swiped a knife at you.” Jaskier shuddered at the memory, and just barely caught Geralt’s smile before it disappeared.

“Never with you, though, right?” Jaskier said this urgently, and Geralt turned to look at him, an eyebrow raised. Whatever he found on Jaskier’s face made him hum, and he turned to abandon the last piece of armor.

“Once. When you asked about the fae. But it was… faint. I don’t think it had anything to do with me.”

“It didn’t,” Jaskier answered immediately, then winced. It was important to Jaskier that Geralt knew Jaskier didn’t fear him, but he didn’t want Geralt to press on why Jaskier had been a touch afraid during that conversation. It wasn’t time, Jaskier didn’t have the words, and he just prayed to every god out there with a silent Please. Please let him not ask.

Geralt turned to Jaskier, an eyebrow raised, but he didn’t ask. Only looked at Jaskier. They both stayed there for a moment, watching each other, and as Jaskier stood from his seat on the bed, Geralt’s gaze turned guarded.

“So you’ve never smelled fear of you on me?” Jaskier clarified.

Geralt’s eyes narrowed, and his head shake was slow. He didn’t understand where Jaskier was going with this. Jaskier wasn’t surprised.

“So it’s possible for humans to look at you, and never feel fear because of you. It’s possible for someone to look at you and only see how amazing you are.” He paused, and looked at Geralt. His features took on a wounded quality, but he didn’t turn away from Jaskier, nor say anything. Instead, amber eyes stayed locked on Jaskier’s, and though he looked skeptical, this felt like permission to continue. Jaskier took a few steps forward, until he was just before Geralt. Jaskier could lean forward and kiss him, if he wanted. He so desperately did, but he wasn’t sure yet if Geralt would.

“You are not a monster, Geralt of Rivia. And even if it takes a hundred songs, I will make sure that one day you will have forgotten about the time when you had to sniff out fear before taking someone to bed.”

Geralt glanced down at his lips. It was just the briefest of glances, but Jaskier saw it. He shuffled closer, and tentatively put his hands on Geralt’s chest. Geralt hesitated only a moment, before taking Jaskier’s hips, and the corner of his mouth quirked.

“Bold words,” Geralt said. He wanted to say so much more, Jaskier could tell, but the words evaded him. Jaskier smiled.

“I am not afraid of you. And I won’t be the last.” Jaskier said the words softly, seriously, like a promise.

It was a promise. Jaskier had already seen a shift in the witcher’s treatment. Surely if he kept going, wrote more songs, he’d be able to keep Geralt as safe as Geralt had unwittingly kept Jaskier. Geralt deserved better, deserved more, deserved anything and everything the world could offer him. If Jaskier could do anything to change Geralt’s life, Jaskier would do it without question.

“Can I kiss you?” Jaskier asked, breathless. He didn’t mean to ask it, but with Geralt so close, touching Jaskier, and allowing himself to be touched by Jaskier, how could the bard resist?

Geralt answered by closing the distance between them. The kiss started off slow, exploratory, as if Geralt was waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the stench of fear to overtake him. Jaskier could say, with certainty, that this didn’t happen. Jaskier allowed himself to be kissed at Geralt’s pace, as he slid his hands up to cup Geralt’s neck.

Soon, the kiss turned hungry.

Jaskier’s heart hammered in his chest as Geralt backed him up against the bed. Jaskier pulled away only to clamber onto the mattress, tugging Geralt with him until Geralt hovered over Jaskier. Geralt pushed Jaskier’s doublet and shirt out of the way, but made no move to remove them, and Jaskier untucked Geralt’s shirt as bruises were sucked and bit into his neck.

“Should’ve known you’d be bitey,” Jaskier teased, and he couldn’t remember the last time sex had made him this breathless this early. He thumbed at the fasteners on Geralt’s pants until they were undone, then pushed his trousers down. It wasn’t an elegant move, nor an elegant angle as Jaskier pressed his hand inside and against Geralt’s hardening cock, but Geralt replied with a groan that spoke of want .

“Does it bother you?” Geralt asked, trailing down to leave similar bite marks along Jaskier’s collarbone.

“Not in the slightest.”

Geralt’s laugh was breathy against Jaskier’s skin, and quickly descended into a bitten off moan as Jaskier finally, awkwardly, got a hand around Geralt’s cock. His touch was light, his only goal presently was to get the witcher hard for him, and to Jaskier’s delight, that didn’t take long. Geralt pressed his face against Jaskier’s neck, and Jaskier could have sworn Geralt smelled him, and something about it had Geralt’s cock twitching in Jaskier’s hand.

“Take your pants off,” Geralt ordered.

Jaskier’s body complied, but his blood went ice cold. Geralt must have noticed this, because he pulled back and met Jaskier’s eyes. Tried to, anyway. Jaskier couldn’t look at him, just kept his eyes trained on his trousers and smallclothes, which he now kicked to the side, off the bed.

“Jaskier?” Geralt asked, a hand on Jaskier’s jaw, forcing Jaskier to look at him. Amber, even now, with his pupils blown wide with desire.

Of course Geralt, with his enhanced senses, would notice. Jaskier flushed and offered him a half-hearted shrug and a shaky laugh. “I don’t like being bossed. That’s all. It’s fine. Are we going to do this, or not?” he answered, with all the bravado he could.

Geralt watched him for a moment, his eyes narrowed, but if he thought Jaskier would reveal more to him, he was incredibly wrong. Finally, he pressed forward to kiss Jaskier again, licking into his mouth. As he distracted Jaskier with the kiss, which quickly turned filthy , Geralt kicked his own clothes off and ground down against Jaskier’s hips in a move that had them both panting, open mouthed against each other.

“Fuck, Geralt,” Jaskier breathed.

He held Geralt’s hip, his fingers pressing into the flesh of his ass. Geralt pressed their bodies close, rutting up against Jaskier’s hip and pressing his own abdomen against Jaskier’s cock. It wasn’t quite enough pressure, but his brain didn’t seem to care, as the motion drew a chorus of moans and many renditions of Yes, please, Geralt from his mouth. As Geralt moved, Jaskier captured both of their cocks in his hand, pressing them together and the new pressure, the new friction, had them both biting off swears into each other’s mouths. They weren’t kissing so much anymore as panting, heavily, against the other’s lips.

“Jaskier,” Geralt moaned, turning and pressing his face into Jaskier’s neck again.

Jaskier lost himself as he came, though Geralt kept moving, and in a distant way Jaskier felt the oversensitive twinge of his cock as the witcher rutted against him. He came back to his body just as Geralt’s found his release, and Geralt caught his lips in a bruising kiss that had Jaskier tugging at Geralt’s hair brutally.

The fervor left slowly, and Geralt rolled off him and to the side as Jaskier followed, unwilling to sever this connection just yet. Geralt made a sound that Jaskier chose to interpret as a happy grunt, or at the very least a satisfied grunt, and Jaskier could understand. He was feeling pretty satisfied himself.

“You don’t like to be bossed?” Geralt asked, pulling away. He held his head up by his hand, his elbow pressed into the bed, and looked down at Jaskier curiously.

Jaskier had approximately zero interest in having this conversation as Geralt stared into his soul , so he pushed himself up to sitting. He shrugged off his doublet, tossing it to the side with far more nonchalance than he normally would have. The bed was warm and he had every interest in staying where it was warm, thank you. He left his shirt on, though. It was a ridiculous look, he was well aware, but there was something comforting in it. Or maybe he just didn’t want to be fully bared while he carefully talked around Geralt’s question.

“No, I don’t,” he answered, shrugging. “I don’t like people telling me what to do or ordering me about. Obviously I wanted to remove my pants, or I wouldn’t have done it--” Geralt’s breath in was audible, and Jaskier feared he heard the lie, so Jaskier barrelled on “--but I don’t like being told to.”

Geralt was quiet for long enough that Jaskier finally turned to look at him. He looked at Jaskier as if Jaskier was a puzzle he couldn’t quite figure out. Jaskier couldn’t blame him. After a moment, though, he held a hand out to Jaskier, which Jaskier gladly took, and slotted himself against the witcher’s body.

“I will remember that,” Geralt promised, and Jaskier’s heart fluttered in his chest. “For… next time?”

Jaskier grinned and nodded. “For next time.”

read chapter 4

[itsshortfurball20]

Percy Jackson, The Avenger

Summary: Percy has an encounter with Nick Fury. A year later, he’s being called on to help protect the world… again. He’s not alone in this Avengers Initiative. A genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist; a super soldier; a green scientist; a Norse god; and two secret agents. What could go wrong?

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This chapter has 4,205 words

6 – The Shaquille O’Neal of Lying

There were certain things Percy could live without. Quests, over-arrogant and dramatic gods and goddesses, pranks from the Hermes cabin that left him covered in peanut butter and harpy feathers... but the one thing Percy probably hated most was demigod dreams.

As soon as Percy had fallen asleep, he found himself in the last place he wanted to be—Loki’s cell. The green glass prison formed around the son of Poseidon. Across the cell from where Percy stood, Loki was sitting on the small cot. He was staring at the camera that the others had watched him from earlier.

Loki finally shifted his gaze from the camera to Percy. “What a pleasant surprise,” he said in a tone that made Percy know that this wasn’t pleasant nor a surprise. Loki spread his arms wide, gesturing to the small cell around them. “Welcome.”

Percy crossed his arms in front of him. All of a sudden, he was glad that he had fallen asleep in his clothes, instead of standing in front of Loki in his PJs. “What do you want, Loki?”

“I want to offer you a proposal.”

“Uh, sorry, but I already have a girlfriend.”

“A business proposal,” Loki stressed. “I know you want to avoid this upcoming fight. You’re not prepared. You haven’t practiced or so much as swung a sword in three years. You’re hopelessly outmatched for what’s coming. But, if you agree to work with me, then you won’t have anything to worry.”

Percy remained unmoved. “I assume this proposal isn’t free.”

“Listen carefully, for I will only offer this once,” Loki stated. “If you agree to work with me, you will lend me your forces, your armies, then I will make you powerful. You can have mortals kneeling at your feet, and all you have to do is give me command of Olympus’ armies. Together, we could control those pathetic mortals.”

The son of Poseidon remained silent for a couple seconds. His hands drifted down towards his pockets. Percy curled his hand around Riptide, ready to pull his sword out in case things went south. “I think you’re forgetting what I am. Sure, I’m the son of Poseidon, god of the sea and earthquakes, but I’m also the son of Sally Jackson. Half human, half god. You, on the other hand, are a mixture of vegetables and Ares’ sweat—nothing but plain nastiness.”

Loki’s smug smile melted away as he sneered. “You’re a fool. Letting unlimited power go for what? A family that has used you as a pawn before? For a world that would shun you if they knew what you truly were?” Percy’s hands tightened into a fist as Loki kept talking. “Join me, Perseus. Together, we can show those mortals what real power is.”

“I’d rather die protecting my family than live knowing I betrayed them.”

Loki rushed him. Percy pulled out Riptide and held the sharp blade carefully against Loki’s neck. The Norse god froze. Loki carefully eyed the blade, before raising his hands. He gave a small laugh. “Fine. When the Chitauri come, you’ll fail, and you’ll realize that you should’ve accepted my offer while you had the chance. You will die knowing that you had the chance to save yourself but threw it away.”

The edges of Percy’s vision started fading, the green cell disappearing. Just before Percy’s dream took him elsewhere, he whispered, “Go to Tartarus.”

Loki’s face disappeared and suddenly he found himself in a different place.

Space, to be exact.

A gasp escaped Percy’s mouth as he floated around. Living in Manhattan, Percy had never seen many stars. Instead, city lights lit up the night. There had been a couple times when he’d gotten the chance to get out of the city and see the stars, but none of those times could ever compete with what he was seeing now.

Hundreds upon thousands of stars surrounded Percy, larger and brighter than he had ever seen. Percy was struck by the beauty of it all. He couldn’t help but think of Bob, the titan who sacrificed himself to help Annabeth and him escape Tartarus. Bob, whose last request was to say hello to the stars.

A loud roar came from behind him. It took the demigod a couple seconds to turn around—having to move like he was swimming without water—before he could see the cause of the noise. High above him was a large spaceship, something straight out of Star Wars. Flying in and out of the ship were the equivalent of alien whales. Huge, swimming, aliens that vaguely resembled whales. In space. Oh gods.

One of the space whales let a big roar or scream. A sick feeling settled in Percy’s—not like the time he had gotten on the Cyclone after eating one too many hotdogs despite Annabeth’s warnings (that hadn’t been a pleasant experience for either of them, nor the dude that sat in front of them). That was a different sick from what Percy was feeling now. His neck was tingling, and his stomach was twisting in knots. These had to be the Chitauri that Thor had mentioned. The thought of having these creatures invade Earth, his home, didn’t sit well with the Greek demigod. Loki had to be stopped.

The dream changed again, and Percy finally found himself in a place he recognized; a large loft overlooking half of Manhattan, paint supplies scattered around on the coffee table, and a big mural on one wall that featured the cabins of Camp Half-Blood. He was in Rachel Dare’s apartment.

Rachel herself was sitting on one of the leather couches, probably an old gift from her father when she had first moved into the loft. A sketchbook sat in her lap. Percy could sense that she was frustrated with something, most likely with the picture not coming out right. The demigod had seen some of her art blocks before and they were never fun to be around.

Percy wondered if she was working on a piece for college or for one of her clients. The demigod could still remember the big fight that had occurred between Rachel and her father that had led to her taking on clients to help pay for her college after her father dropped the pay. In the months that had followed, Rachel had made a decent amount of money. Percy had seen the amount some people paid for a small painting, and it made him wish he knew how to draw past stick figures.

Out of nowhere, Rachel jerked up. Percy reached out for her when he noticed that her eyes had turned green. The son of Poseidon reeled back a little, watching as green mist started swirling around them. Rachel’s mouth opened and the haunting voice that belonged to the oracle started speaking.

It comes from day as dark as night,

After evil's rule, the final fight,

They're gone, they're broke, they come together,

Charged to protect, earthly tether,

Rolling Stone, purple reign,

All must end in blazing pain.

As soon as the prophecy was done, the green glow surrounding Rachel faded and she started swaying. Percy rushed forward to help her, but she fell safely back into her couch. Her sketchbook fell off her lap and onto the floor, landing upwards and revealing what had been plaguing Rachel.

The sketch showed a tall building that Percy didn’t completely recognize, but he would know the surrounding skyline of New York anywhere. High above the city, in the sky, was a huge hole where Percy recognized the Chitauri flooding though. Just as his blood turned to ice, the dream started fading away, pulling him back to the real world.

Percy shot up in his bed, heart racing. He scrambled out of bed, reaching for a golden drachma and heading into the bathroom to make an IM. Percy turned on the shower and let the water flow through the light. He tossed the drachma through the water, asking Fleecy to patch him through to Rachel’s home.

Rachel’s distressed face appeared a moment later. “Percy!” She cried. “Why are you—”

”I had a dream about you last night.” Percy interrupted Rachel, cutting her off. She frowned.

“Please tell meet wasn’t one of those sexy kinds of—”

“No!” Percy shouted. “No, not that kind of dream. Although I’m not sure this is much better.”

“Percy, anything is better than you cheating on Annabeth.”

“You gave a prophecy.”

Rachel’s face turned serious. “What about?”

“I think it’s about the upcoming battle with Loki.” He paused. “I also saw the sketch you drew.”

“I was actually just about to call Chiron. Show him the sketch.” She turned around to pick up her sketchbook. “I just drew this last night. It wasn’t until this morning that I recognized the building.” Rachael held up the sketch. “That’s STARK Tower. I don’t know what those things are, but it’s obviously not good. What was the prophecy?”

Percy recited the prophecy. Rachel wrote it down in the corner of the sketch, like an artist’s signature. When Percy was finished, she sat there for a moment silent. “Blazing pain? They’re broke? This doesn’t sound like a typical prophecy.”

“What are you thinking?”

Rachel frowned. “I’m not sure. I might talk it over with Ella, see if there’s anything similar to this. Something I don’t understand, ‘the final fight’? What do you think that means?”

“I don’t know.” Percy shrugged. “Most times, the meaning isn’t clear until it’s happened. The only line I’m worried about is the last one.”

“I can see why. Make sure to stay away from any fire that might cause blazing pain.” Rachel sighed. “I’m going to call Ella, compare some thoughts, ideas.”

“Got it.” Percy gave her a wave. “See you later.”

“Later,” Rachel said before waving through the rainbow, leaving Percy standing alone in the bathroom. His mind wandered to his dream conversation with Loki, and the sick feeling he’d felt earlier returned as he came to the conclusion that prophecies were worse than dreams.

\~*~/

Percy didn’t know if he was allowed in any part of the ship that wasn’t the main area and his own room, not even one of the small supply closets in the halls. Fury didn’t seem to be the sharing type. That didn’t stop the demigod from wandering the huge ship.

After talking with Rachel, Percy had found the urge to escape the confines of his room. He started walking through the vast halls, trying to let go of his thoughts for a little while. It wasn’t too long in that he’d gotten lost. Percy was sure that he’d passed the same section of doors three times now.

“Mr. Jackson.”

Fury stalked towards Percy, clearly angry and annoyed with the demigod.

“Hey Pirate,” Percy gave him a wave. “Just checking out your man-o-war. Got a bit lost. Do you have maps to hand out?”

The director sighed. “Cut the pirate lingo and come with me.”

“Aye.”

Fury didn’t even bother with a glare at Percy’s remark. Percy followed Fury through the halls as the director led him past the residential hall and the main area and eventually into a conference room, complete with a fake plant in an attempt to try and make the room look cozier.

“What’s happening?” Percy asked.

“Please take a seat, Mr. Jackson.” Fury pulled out a chair and took a seat, gesturing to one of the empty chairs around the long table. “I just have a couple questions I’d like to ask you.”

“What kind of questions?”

“SHIELD does their homework, and we do it well. But even we can’t figure out everything sometimes. We just want a little help to make sense of some things.”

Percy hesitated a second before he pulled a chair out. “What do you want to know?”

“We’ll start easy. What’s the extent of your training?”

The son of Poseidon shifted in his seat. “Uh, I can fight with a sword?” It came out more of a question, unsure if that was what Fury was looking for. “I started when I was twelve. Um, I have control over water.”

“What all can do you with water?” Fury interrupted. “I know your father is Poseidon, but just how does that work? Do you have hydrokinesis?”

“Yeah,” Percy nodded. “I can also breathe underwater and even talk to sea animals. Horses too.”

Fury frowned slightly. “Horses?”

“My dad created them out of sea foam to try and win and be the patron god of Athens. But then Athena went and invented olives and for some reason they liked that better.”

“Mr. Jackson—”

“Just call me Percy.” The demigod told the director. “My father isn’t Mr. Jackson but hearing that just sounds weird.”

“Okay, Percy, I’m curious. This is the second time I’ve seen you wear that shirt.” He pointed at Percy’s CAMP HALF-BLOOD t-shirt. “What is Camp Half-Blood?”

Percy suddenly felt uncomfortable sitting in his chair. “Nothing really. Just a camp that I’ve gone to.”

Fury leaned forward, resting his arms on the table. “Percy, I’m interested in helping everyone, keeping the world safe and protected. I need you to tell me the truth. If you want, you don’t have to answer, but if Camp Half-Blood provides a danger to anyone, I need to know.”

“No one at Camp is a danger,” Percy assured. “It’s just a safe haven for demigods; a place for them to train and not have to worry about monsters hunting them down. If you’re worried about us trying to take over the mortal world or something, don’t.”

“Okay,” Fury leaned back but kept his hands on the table. “Okay. I just want to make sure. Can we continue?” At Percy’s nod, he asked, “What are the locations to the entrances of the underworld?”

“I’m sorry?” Percy said. “You want to know what now?”

“You heard me.”

“Pass.”

Fury sighed. “Fine. I suppose you won’t tell me the location of Olympus either?”

“Gods no,” Percy snorted. “I may not be the brightest, but I don’t want a death wish. My uncle would gladly kill me before that ever happened.”

“Just needed to ask.” Fury told Percy. “As I said before, you don’t have to answer questions you don’t want to. But,” he added. “it would be better for all of us if you were more forthcoming.

“One more question and I request that you answer this one, please.” Fury said, throwing in the please as an afterthought. “Is there anything that might warrant watching? Any threats?”

Percy thought for a second. There were several things he could mention, monsters for starters, but those weren’t the big problems. “Watch out for titans and giants. Most of them are still in Tartarus, the monster prison,” Percy explained. “but they just reform and come back. I don’t know how soon they would though after the wars.”

“What wars?”

Percy opened his mouth to start explaining about the war against Kronos and the one with Gaea, but a loud beeping noise stopped him. Fury seemed to tense as he pulled a phone out of his pocket. With a quick glance, he scowled. “Stark,” the director muttered with distaste before leaving the room.

Jumping up to join him, Percy followed Fury through the halls and into a lab were Tony and Bruce were sitting. Fury stormed into the room, Percy following just a couple steps behind. Tony and Bruce looked up as they entered. Fury stood in front of Tony who seemed to be watching a computer intently and not looking at Fury. “What are you doing, Mr. Stark?” The director asked.

“Uh...kind of been wondering the same thing about you.” Tony rebutted.

“You're supposed to be locating the Tesseract.”

“We are,” Bruce interjected. “The model's locked and we're sweeping for the signature now. When we get a hit, we'll have the location within half a mile.”

“And you'll get your cube back, no muss, no fuss,” Tony promised. Percy watched the billionaire frown as the computer beeped. “What is PHASE 2?”

There was a loud thud behind Percy. Steve had set down a large gun on the table, looking pissed. “PHASE 2 is SHIELD uses the cube to make weapons. Sorry, the computer was moving a little slow.”

Fury turned towards the captain. “Rogers, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract. This does not mean that we're...”

“I’m sorry, Nick.” Tony interrupted Fury, turning the computer around to show what seemed to be plans on building weapons. “What, were you lying?”

“And earlier you told me you wanted to help people.” Percy scoffed.

Right at that moment, Thor and Natasha walked into the lab. Banner turned to Natasha. “Did you know about this?”

“You wanna think about removing yourself from this environment, doctor?”

“I was in Calcutta; I was pretty well removed.”

“Loki's manipulating you,” Natasha told him.

“And you've been doing what exactly?”

“You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you.”

“Yes, and I'm not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy.” Banner grabbed the computer and pointed to the weapon on the screen. “I'd like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction.”

“Because of them.” Fury pointed at Thor and Percy. Percy’s eyebrows raised in shock.

“Wait, what?” Percy asked at the same time Thor asked, “Me?”

Fury sighed. “Last year, not only did earth have a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town, but also learned about the existence of immortal gods whose affairs have started countless wars since forever. We learned that, not only are we alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned.”

“My people want nothing but peace with your planet,” Thor said.

Percy stepped forward. “Mortals have gone for centuries without knowing about the existence of the Greek gods living among you and you’ve been fine. We take care of our problems.”

“But you're not the only people out there, are you? And, you're not the only threat. The world's filling up with people who can't be matched, they can't be controlled.”

“Like you controlled the cube?” Steve asked, clearly not believing Fury.

“Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies,” Thor informed Fury. “It is the signal to all the realms that the earth is ready for a higher form of war.”

Steve frowned. “A higher form?”

“You forced our hand. We had to come up with something.” Fury tried to explain, but by that time it had all descended into chaos.

Tony argued, “Nuclear deterrent. Cause that always calms everything right down.”

“Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark?”

“I’m sure if he still made—” Steve started saying before he was interrupted by Tony.

“—Wait! Wait! Hold on! How is—”

“—weapons, Stark would be neck—”

“—this now about me?”

“—deep… I’m sorry, isn’t everything?”

“I thought humans were more evolved than this,” Thor commented.

Percy whirled on Thor. “Oh, I’m sorry, but out of all of us, who’s the one blowing up other planets?

“Did you always give your champions such mistrust?” Thor questioned Fury, ignoring Percy’s remark.

Everyone started shouting over one another. At one point, it got too hard to tell who was saying what.

“You understand that—”

“I can’t believe—”

“Are you boys really that naive? SHIELD monitors potential threats.”

“Captain America is on threat watch?”

“We all are.”

“Just a little concern, Doctor.”

“You're on that list?”

“Stark, just one more word…”

“Threatened. I feel threatened.” Tony shouted loud enough for everyone to hear.

”Cool it, tin can.” Percy shot. “They just said that everyone in this room is on that list, including you.”

“My suit isn’t tin, it’s a titanium-gold alloy.”

“You speak of control, yet you court chaos.” Thor’s voice boomed.

“It’s his M.O., isn’t it? I mean, what are we, a team?” Bruce started ranting. “No, no, no. We’re a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We’re… we’re a time-bomb.”

“You need to step away.” Fury told Banner.

Tony threw his hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Why shouldn’t the guy let off a little steam?”

“You know damn well why!” Steve pushed Tony’s hand away. “Back off!”

The two squared each other, turning face-to-face. There was a fire building in Steve’s eyes as everyone else turned to watch the showdown. “Oh, I’m starting to want you to make me.”

“Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?” Steve asked him.

Without missing a beat, Tony replied, “Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.”

Percy’s eyes bounced between the two fighting men. It was like watching a tennis match, serving the ball back and forth to each other.

“I know guys with none of that worth ten of you.” Steve took a small step forward. “Yeah, I’ve seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You’re not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you.”

“I think I would just cut the wire.”

Steve let out a small chuckle. “Always a way out… you know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero.”

“A hero? Like you?” Tony scoffed. “You’re a laboratory experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle!”

Immediately there was a change in the air as the room grew tenser. Steve’s face grew tighter and his jaw clenched. “Put on the suit, let’s go a few rounds.”

Thor laughed. “You people are so petty… and tiny.”

“As opposed to looking like a hippie surfer.”

“Yeah, this is a tee…” Banner muttered.

“Agent Romanoff,” Fury started to order. “would you escort Dr. Banner back to his...”

“Where?” Banner asked. “You rented my room.”

“The cell was just in case...”

“In case you needed to kill me, but you can't! I know! I tried!”

Everyone turned to Banner at his confession. The doctor took a second to regain some of his breath. “I got low. I didn't see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it out! So I moved on. I focused on helping other people. I was good, until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk!”

Banner was getting more and more upset. He looked at Romanoff, who for the first time that Percy had seen, actually looked unnerved. “You wanna know my secret, Agent Romanoff?” Banner asked the redhead. “You wanna know how I stay calm?”

Percy reached for Riptide as soon as the Doctor grabbed the scepter. Out of the corner of his eye, the demigod noticed Fury and Natasha reaching for their guns. “Let’s not do anything rash now,” Percy spoke. “Put the scepter down and we can all go home happy and in one piece.”

Banner looked down and noticed he was holding a glowing scepter. His grip loosened, but he didn’t drop it. Shocked, the doctor stared at the scepter in his hands.

The computer beeped, breaking the moment. Banner quickly put the scepter back on the table and made his way over to the computer. “Sorry, kids. You don’t get to see my party trick after all.”

“Located the Tesseract?”

“I can get there faster.”

“Look, all of us…”

“The Tesseract belongs on Asgard,” Thor said. “No human is a match for it.”

“That’s fine,” Percy agreed. “As long as no one else on your planet tries to use it to take our planet.”

Tony turned to leave, but Steve held out one of his hands to stop him. “You’re not going alone.”

“You gonna stop me?” Tony argued.

“Put on the suit, let's find out.”

“I'm not afraid to hit an old man.”

“This is stupid!” Percy shouted. Everyone turned towards him. “Look, none of us by ourselves can defeat Loki and whatever army he’s bringing. We can only do this if we work together.” Percy took a second to scan his eyes over the group. “I don’t care if you guys think that the others are lame, I don’t. You can butt heads later. All I care about is making sure that New York City is still standing tomorrow.”

Everyone was quiet. Steve’s head hung a little, like he was ashamed. Tony just stared at Percy, looking away when Percy made eye contact.

At that moment, Banner, who had been looking at the monitors, gasped and said “Oh, my god!”

The ship shook violently, and a big burst of fire came up from the vent underneath, throwing everyone in different directions. Percy landed hard on his back just a couple feet from where he had been standing originally. He was left winded, desperately gasping for air. The room was filled with smoke. Percy heard Steve from somewhere in the room yelling, “Put on the suit!”

The demigod pulled himself up just in time to see Tony and Steve run out of the room. Fury and Thor were still getting back up. Percy ran a quick scan of the room, not finding Natasha or Bruce.

“Styx,” Percy swore as he headed for the door.

7

[rickriordanmistakes]

The Way Nectar Heals

I don’t know about you guys, but when I think of nectar healing, I think that it needs to be consumed first. What always nagged at me was, how sick does the person have to be that nectar gets poured on the wound, instead of just drinking the drink? Does that make sense?

The first time nectar is mentioned, someone was drinking it. Percy was drinking it on his first day of Camp Half-Blood (when he survives the fight with the Minotaur), and he was drinking it on his last day (when he got bitten by Luke’s scorpion):

I recoiled at the taste, because I was expecting apple juice. It was not that at all. It was chocolate-chip cookies. Liquid cookies. And not just any cookies—my mom’s homemade blue chocolate-chip cookies, buttery and hot chips. Drinking it, my whole body felt warm and good, full of energy. My grief did not go away, but I felt as if my mom had just brushed her hand against my cheek, given me a cookie the way she used to when I was small, and told me everything was going to be okay. (The Lightning Thief, page 60)

I woke with a drinking straw in my mouth. I was sipping something that tasted like liquid chocolate-chip cookies. Nectar. (The Lightning Thief, page 370)

The next bunch of times, we have people drinking the nectar.

The Sea of Monsters (Page 44), when Percy is fighting the Colchis bulls. 

My ankle felt like it was filled with acid, but she gave me some Olympian nectar to drink from her canteen, and I immediately started to feel better.

The Battle of the Labyrinth (Page 72), when Clarisse was healing Chris’s insanity.

I listened for her to come charging out and yell at me, but instead she just kept talking to Chris in a sad pleading voice, trying to get him to drink the nectar.

The Battle of the Labyrinth (Page 207), when Percy survives the blast of Mount St. Helens and ends up on Ogygia.

A bronze spoon hovered over me and liquid was dribbled into my mouth. The drink soothed my throat and left a warm chocolatey aftertaste. Nectar of the gods.

The Battle of the Labyrinth (Page 215), when Percy is on Ogygia, healing from the blast.

I would sit in the meadow, sipping nectar, and I would try to concentrate on the flowers or the clouds or the reflections on the lake, but I was really staring at Calypso as she worked, the way she brushed her hair over her shoulder, and the little strand that fell in her face whenever she knelt to dig in the garden.

The Battle of the Labyrinth (Page 332), when Nico expends too much energy on raising the dead during the battle.

I rolled him over as gently as I could and put my hand against his chest. His heart was beating faintly. “Get some nectar!” I yelled.

One of the Ares campers hobbled over and handed me a canteen. I trickled some of the magic drink into Nico’s mouth. He coughed and spluttered, but his eyelids fluttered open.

And then we have the change by The Demigod Files on page 186 of the e-book, when Percy is wounded from the claws of a daemon.

“Nectar,” he said. “I’m pouring nectar on it.”

He uncorked a bottle of the godly drink and trickled it across my shoulder. This was dangerous—just a sip of the stuff is all most demigods can stand—but immediately the pain eased.

This is also seen in The Last Olympian on pages 196-197, when Annabeth takes the poisoned dagger for Percy.

“ . . . Just lie still. Somebody hand me some nectar.”

I grabbed a canteen. Will cleaned out the wound with the godly drink while I held Annabeth’s hand.

What an interesting change! Now let’s check out Heroes of Olympus.

The Lost Hero (Page 541 of the e-book), when Jason gets knocked unconscious by the Cyclopes.

Piper managed to trickle a little nectar into his mouth, and he groaned.

The Demigod Diaries (Page 33 of the e-book), when Thalia’s hands were grabbed by the drapes in Halcyon’s house.

Finally I found my bottle of nectar. The drink of the gods could heal wounds, but the bottle was almost empty. I poured the rest over Thalia’s hands. The steam dissipated. The blisters faded.

The Son of Neptune (Page 171 of the e-book), when Hazel runs to get to the muster, but trips and scrapes her hands.

He pulled a flask of nectar from his aviator jacket and poured a little on Hazel’s hands. Immediately the cuts started to heal.

The Son of Neptune (Page 287-288 of the e-book), when Gwen is speared by the game.

The whole legion fell silent as the healers worked — trying to get the gauze and powdered unicorn horn under Gwen’s armor to stop the bleeding, trying to force some nectar into her mouth

The Son of Neptune (Page 577 of the e-book), when Hazel heals Ella the harpy’s back from the weed wacker.

Then Hazel tried, and Ella let her pour some nectar on her back. The wound began to close.

The Mark of Athena (Page 187 of the e-book), when the Seven give Jason godly food to heal him from the hit to his head with a brick.

Even with the nectar and ambrosia they’d manage to force-feed him, Piper couldn’t be sure he would be okay when he woke up.

The Blood of Olympus (Page 77 of the e-book), when Jason gets stabbed in the back.

Piper pulled out a flask of nectar and gave Jason a sip.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that there were four times in the whole series where nectar was used to heal, but not by consuming it. What was so different about those other wounds that nectar was used as an antiseptic, and not as a kind of medicine?

[duckscrabble]

A little Sunday Drabble

I might do more with this, I might not! Post-Cinderella Cinderella retelling from the POV of one of the Ugly Stepsisters, with my own flair. Potentially steampunk moving forward.

___________________________________

               A heavy blanket of snow draped over the countryside, the fluffy white shroud turning to muddy mush at her feet. Every other step sent a fresh wave of pain up her hip and into the base of her spine. What used to be a dull ache was now a shrieking bolt of lightning, exacerbated by the long journey on foot. She paused for a moment, moving to the side of the road, and leaned up against a tree as she reached her fingers down beneath her skirts.

               The leather straps that held her wooden leg to her thigh had begun to dig in, greedily staking their claim in her swollen flesh. She quietly cursed the infernal thing as she lowered herself down, letting out a sharp sigh as her rump landed in a slushy, muddy puddle beneath the tree. Her fingers worked to unhook the straps, allowing her leg to get some rest. Most people were smart enough to travel by carriage or horseback when they were on their way to the palace. She wasn’t most people, unfortunately; riding a horse was nearly impossible, now, especially when she hadn’t been very good at it before, and she had no money to pay for passage. Some people, pity reflected in their eyes for her halting, limping steps, had offered her a ride. She was too proud to take them up on it.

               Now, she wished she had. That had always been the family curse, though—that pride had been the undoing of countless ancestors, brought low by their own ambitions and refusal to ask for help. There were some things she was trying to change, but… well. Old habits die hard, and all that.

                “Don’t even know that she’ll see me,” she muttered to herself, idly massaging life back into the angry red stump of her leg. She and her step-sister hadn’t exactly had the most amicable of partings. Not to mention the years of… She grimaced, leaning her head back against the rough bark of the tree, not caring if her fine, fair hair got caught.

               Cinderella. They’d spent years calling her that, laughing at her and forcing her to do all the dirty work in the house. Then, somehow, the girl had gone off and won herself a prince. Who would have thought it? The girl had spent years languishing by the hearth, silently tolerating their abuse—and Ana remembered, more than a few times, that she herself had been exceptionally cruel to the girl, just to try and get a rise out of her. To get her to say something. To get her to fight back, for once in her pathetic life. She never did. Ana eventually grew bored with her, writing her off until the night that she asked the three of them if she could go to the royal ball. All three of them, even Drizella, had laughed at her.

               Little cinder girl wants to go dance with the prince? Ana had said, mocking her by rubbing false tears away from her dry eyes. Ohh, boo hoo. Why don’t you spit-shine the hearth again? No one will ever waste their time on a miserable little nothing like you.

               She’d thought that would be the end of it.

               Well. More fool her. When the prince had come knocking days after the disaster of a ball where an oddly familiar stranger had stolen the entirety of the prince’s attention, Ana’s mother had shown her true colors. Drizella, bless her simple heart, had been the first to get the knife and begin carving, blade slicing through flesh, tendon, and bone as she openly wept beneath her mother’s unwavering glare. Ana had refused, and her mother, ever benevolent, had offered her a choice: Ana could cut off her own toe and shove her foot into that slipper, or Mother Dearest would do it for her—with a rusty saw blade.

               Ana had yielded, in the end. Grimly, she had mutilated herself, all so her mother could live vicariously through her offspring and enjoy the life that marriage to royalty would bring. All for nothing, really. Cinderella had shown up just before the disgusted prince had turned and walked away, and her foot had fit perfectly, first try. The prince said nothing to the two girls as blood pooled around their feet, instead marching away with his bride and demanding that their entire family be exiled for trying to hide her away from him. Cinderella had not met Ana’s eyes when she walked away. She never said a word as she let the door close behind her, separating their broken family once and for all.

Ana held onto that slight for years after their banishment to the barren land beyond the woods. Not a day went by that she didn’t curse her stepsister for ruining them, for taking everything away in an instant—for leaving them to rot under her mother’s thumb. For not taking them with her when she escaped.

               And then Ana realized who truly deserved the full force of her anger: her mother.

               Lady Tremaine, she had called herself. A title worth about as much as the moral compass of the woman holding it. They were no more noble than the average family—except for when she had married Cinderella’s father, anyway. Despite their exile, she clung to the title like a screeching harpy, demanding even her children call her lady.

               Ana had put up with her for far longer than she should have. Her self-mutilated foot had begun to rot. Eventually, the gangrene spread up her leg, and her mother showed the first and only shred of mercy by taking her to a local surgeon and paying them to cut the limb off before sepsis claimed her. But Driz…

Driz hadn’t been so lucky.

               It was not worth the coin to save both daughters. Ana and her mother had screamed at one another, the first all-out fight Ana had ever dared to have with the woman—and, eventually, Lady Tremaine had won out. Drizella, she claimed, had no chance to ever win a husband. She was too plain, too dull, and, after her sawed-off toe, after their banishment to this grey hell beyond the wood, Driz had taken to sitting in one corner of their miserable little cottage, gently rocking herself as she tried to stifle her heartbroken sobbing, stricken by fever and the smell of rotting flesh. Every day, she cried until her mother terrified her into falling silent.

Ana, on the other hand, was sharp and… well, not necessarily beautiful, but she would do in a pinch. The choice was clear. So, Ana had gotten her wooden leg, and Driz had gotten a small plot of land on a hill overlooking the woods, remembered only by a simple marker that Ana had hand-carved for her sister out of a stone she’d pulled from the sputtering stream nearby.

               It wasn’t long afterward that Ana had finally left her mother to rot in the cottage. One last fight had split them for good—especially since Ana had wound up slapping the old woman to the floor. She could still see the twisted rage on her mother’s wizened face, still hear the furious wildcat yowling of her voice as she had slammed the door behind her.

               She had no one and nothing, and Ana had never felt more free.

               Snowmelt dripped onto her head, and she grumbled as she pushed herself up, ignoring the way the cold slush had seeped through her skirts. After a few fumbling attempts, she got the leather straps back around her leg, and continued to walk.

               Really, though, she thought as she hobbled along the side of the road, empty for as far as her keen grey eyes could see, it wasn’t all mother’s fault. Much as she wanted to hate the woman—much as she did hate her, rather—she couldn’t blame her for ruthlessly pursuing what scraps were available to her as an unmarried woman with two daughters. Women had nothing save for what they scratched and clawed to get, usually from the hands of another unwitting woman. Men and money ruled the world, and Lady Tremaine had neither. Was it any wonder, then, that she had turned so cold?

               Well. Ana knew one woman, at least, who had some shred of authority in the world. A year or two ago—Ana had lost count, days slipping into one another in the murk of her mind—the king had died, and his son had now inherited the throne. Prince Charming, they used to call him. He’d lost a bit of that charm in the transition, a thick black beard beginning to grow in to mark his becoming King Ferdinand.

               She didn’t care about him, though. All Ana cared about was the woman who ruled beside him, who was also the woman with whom she so desperately needed to make amends: Queen Consort Ella.

[casimania]

It feels so weird to see a lot of Douchifer and some Lucella, Piercifer and Dan/Lucifer/Ella fics with like, tons of Chloe bashing with her either being disproportionately punished or acting all over the place so she can get removed from the story becuase she's too bad. Or Deckerstar were Dan is suddenly a super bad dad just to get some Trixie and Lucifer bonding and to get him 100% replaced by Lucifer as the only or main father figure in Trixie's life. The one I can sort of get behind is Pierce suddenly being over the top Bad cause he's technically supposed to be the season's villain, like make it all more high stakes I guess. Even if the point wasn't "Chloe leaves Marcus because he was mean to her or Trixie or suddenly revealed himself as super Evil or Trixie or Penelope don't like him as much as Lucifer" but that when she finds herself between two men she has feelings for, and one is Pierce who hurt her but is trying to make it up in the usual normal way she craves and makes her feel wanted which she also craves vs Lucifer seemingly being all over the place and with unclear feelings with her and makes her feel unsteady and unsure, she has a moment of clarity where she goes "I can't marry a man just because I want some stability, I love Lucifer and want to be with him and work through our issues deep down, and even if that wasn't the case it's not an excuse to marry a man I don't know well and don't have the right feelings for". That was the tragedy in what was happening, Chloe was walking into a mistake for very human reasons that happen all the time irl and are sometimes obvious from the outside but ppl going through them don't see it (and Chloe came from dealing with Dan and Lucifer who, as much as I love them, fucked her over a lot. It makes one cling to the wrong things). It was actually something I liked, seeing her involved with someone who first manipulated their relationship for his gains, and then convinced himself he truly loved her and acted exactly in the way she though she needed and wanted... But in the end she faced her true feelings and set her foot down and siad "No". I would have loved it both as a "No, I love Lucifer more" and as a "No, regardless of my feelings for Lucifer, I don't love you enough for this". Like yes you go, finally Chloe taking a little of control this season.

... Ok I went off topic a little but basically it always baffles me to see fics where they just treat in weird ways people who come or could come between the main ship in the fic. I usually notice immediately in fandoms when it's a trend, but when I first dived into Lucifer fics I basically lived in Chloe/Dan/Lucifer town which was very positive and nice and then through them found people who liked different combinations and wrote about them and didn't pull weird things with characters. It's usually one of the first things I find and try to avoid in fics with new fandoms, m/m ship were the possible female love interest being suddenly an unpleasant harpy or f/m ship were the other possible make love interest is suddenly a jealous asshole or almost abusive (this happens a little less, probs cause a lot of ppl fantasize being fought over by two handsome and wonderful men who treat you well but deep down you only love one??) and stuff like that.

I don't mind it hugely and will never bring it up with a writer because it's their fic but dang sometimes you like more than one character and want to see a fic where their behavior isn't off jsut because of a ship. And I get that some people write both of those scenarios they have complicated feelings over how the characters act in a show and want to explore it but it still weird to see. You know like, these two people are together because of their love and meshing well together and caring for each other, not because the other options where horrible people or bad at sex or uglier 🤷🏻

[dotshiiki]

CoL, chpt 18

XVIII: PERCY

The Jackson-Blofis apartment wasn't spacious to begin with. Now, with nearly twenty people crowded into the living room, it seemed five times more cramped than usual.

None of the friends Percy had invited over for Christmas seemed to mind, though.

His mom and stepdad had pushed all the furniture to the walls so that their guests could sprawl on the floor, passing cookies, chips, and seven-layer bean dip around.

They were all here—Percy's closest friends, the ones who had voluntarily trudged through Tartarus with him, or travelled cross-country to get them out of the pit. Others who hadn't been directly involved, but were part of his weird extended family all the same.

On the couch, Jason and Frank were deep in conversation with Paul, looking for all the world like a triad of high school teachers. Piper, Calypso, and Rachel sat in a cross-legged circle around the two-foot plastic tree they were decorating. Hazel, Tyson, and Ella played patty-cake with Percy's half-sister Joy. Thalia, Reyna, and Annabeth were having a discussion (Percy couldn't hear what the topic was, but he caught his name occasionally). Grover and Nico were locked in a debate on—of all things—reincarnation versus rebirth.

Percy himself was competing with Leo and Will to see who could build the tallest tower out of tortilla chips. He was losing at the moment—his stacks kept falling apart and he'd already started over from scratch several times.

Annabeth detached herself from Thalia and Reyna and came over to observe Percy's pathetic tortilla tower.

'You need a stronger foundation,' she said.

'How would you do it?'

She thought for a moment, then smeared bean dip across his chip base as a coagulant. He stacked a couple of chips card-house-style, and they held firm this time.

'Hey, no fair getting help from the architect of Olympus!' Leo complained. His tower was almost a foot tall. Percy had no idea how he'd managed it.

Will sneezed. Both his and Leo's chips went flying into the branches of the mini Christmas tree.

'Hey!' Leo and Piper cried simultaneously.

'Sorry!'

Piper brushed chips out of her tree. It was practically dripping with tinsel and overloaded with shiny baubles.

Leo raised his eyebrows. 'For a daughter of Aphrodite,' he commented, 'you're not doing a great job dressing that thing up, Pipes.'

'Don't call me that,' Piper snapped. 'And what would you know about accessorising, Mechanic-man?'

'I like it,' Calypso said. 'It's colourful.' She glared at Leo, who raised his hands immediately in surrender.

'It does need more white space,' Rachel mused. 'We could do a better job with a bigger tree.'

'Does it look like a bigger tree would fit in here?' Piper spread her arms and smacked Jason's calves, proving her point.

'Well, if it's a bigger tree you need, why don't you dress Thalia up?' Will joked.

Thalia flipped him a gesture that made Grover shoot her an accusing look and reach over to cover the eyes of the two-year-old in Hazel's lap. Reyna grabbed Thalia's offending hand and laced her fingers in it. Thalia grinned ruefully.

'Sorry, Paul,' she said to Percy's stepfather.

Paul accepted this with a shrug. 'I don't think Joy's old enough to understand what that means. Then again, I'd rather she not copy that particular hand signal in public.'

'And I gave up being a tree for Lent,' Thalia shot at Will. 'Oh wait, it wasn't for Lent—it was to save your sorry ass.'

'THALIA!'

Percy laughed. Gaining back six years and resigning as a Hunter certainly hadn't made much of a dent in Thalia's feisty personality.

Joy wriggled against Grover's hands, which were clamped over her ears this time. 'Tree!' she shouted gleefully, and stomped right through the collapsed chip towers and bean dip to Piper, Rachel, and Calypso's trussed up masterpiece.

Annabeth snatched up the plate of blue chocolate chip cookies—only one was left—before Joy could trample it, too. Percy beat Leo to the last cookie and stuck his tongue out at his friend before popping it into his mouth.

'Real generous host you are,' Leo grumbled.

'Hey, all's fair in love and blue cookies!' Percy grinned. 'I'll get more,' he promised, taking the plate from Annabeth. He kissed her on the cheek and got up, brushing crumbs out of his lap.

His mom was bent over the oven when he entered the kitchen.

'You should come join us,' Percy said.

'I will,' said his mom. 'Once this last batch is done.' She eyed the empty plate he set on the kitchen counter. 'Looks like they're a hit.'

'Your cooking's famous,' Percy assured her. 'Thanks for letting us have the party here.'

'You know your friends are always welcome,' said his mom. 'And Paul and I love having you home. Especially after you've been on a quest.' She shook her head. 'Every year I think maybe this will be the year that you stop scaring me with your adventures, but it never ends, does it?'

Percy shrugged. 'We can always hope. I'm sorry I made you worry again, Mom.'

His mom made a little pffft noise and waved her hand dismissively. 'It wasn't your fault. And you're here now. You've always come back.' She reached up to muss his hair. 'Every time, you come back.'

He shifted guiltily, remembering the disastrous Iris-message a few weeks back, when he hadn't a clue who his family was. He was so sick of the way stuff kept coming up—it wasn't just his life it disrupted. There were his friends and family, too, who always got caught in the crossfire of his unpredictable life. He'd hurt so many people over the years, intentionally or not.

His mind flitted to Jessica. He hadn't really thought of her since their catastrophic date, which now felt like something from another life. He wondered how she was getting on with her goal of living a life uncomplicated by the gods. Maybe he should have invited her here as a sort of apology. Then again, given her distaste for her mythological heritage, hanging out with a group of first-generation demigods—not to mention a satyr, a Cyclops, and a harpy—probably wasn't her idea of fun.

'Do you think your life would have been better without all this mythological shit—er, I mean—stuff? If you didn't know it existed?'

'That's a tough question, honey. Do I ever wish things had been simpler? Yes, of course. And I won't deny that the mythological shit,' she winked at him, 'is complicated. But it's easy to blame the gods when really, that's just life. Life's complicated. You don't have to be a demigod for things to keep happening to you.'

He remembered then that her life had been pretty crappy even before she'd ended up a pregnant single mom with a child who had a big target painted on him. Still, could her life have been better if she hadn't met Poseidon, if her path had taken her straight to Paul and Joy without the detours around a delinquent son and an abusive husband?

'I wouldn't give any of it up,' his mom said firmly. 'No matter how hard or painful it was, meeting your dad gave me one of the best things in my life—you. And I wouldn't trade you for anything. Nothing worth having is easy, Percy.'

Percy knew she was right. If there was one thing he knew from all the battles he'd fought, it was that they made him appreciate what he had so much more. The friends he'd made—so loyal that they'd voluntarily descended into a land beyond hell just for him. Those friendships had been forged in quests and tempered by trials into a bond as powerful as the celestial bronze of Riptide. Their last trudge through Tartarus had only strengthened it further.

And he thought of Annabeth. He could hear her laugh rising above the chatter in the next room. He'd known forever that he wanted to build something permanent with her. Now, more than ever, he wanted to seal the deal. His eyes landed on the thin, gold band on his mom's ring finger. If his memories ever got stolen again, he wanted official proof that could remind him of what Annabeth meant to him.

His mom seemed to read his mind. 'I think if you don't pop the question, she might very well ask you.'

'We haven't really talked about it. I mean, we're only sophomores, and I don't even know if I'll make it to graduation, with all the stuff that keeps happening—'

'But you'll get there,' his mom promised. 'You know, when you were a kid, I used to tell you that you could do anything. And you survived everything your world threw at you, you passed high school, and you found a whole family sitting out there.' She waved her hand towards the living room. 'Look at how far you've come, Percy.'

Again, she was right. The future stretched out in his imagination: college graduation, Annabeth in a wedding dress, babies with black hair and grey eyes.

Percy wasn't Rachel; his visions didn't predict anything. But he could work towards making them come true.

The oven timer went off with a ding! His mom pulled out the cookie tray and refilled the empty plate.

'Nothing's impossible, Percy,' she said.

Percy looked down at the full plate. It was his mom's enduring, edible reminder that little miracles could and did happen.

'Cookies can be blue,' he said with a grin.

'Exactly.'

And together, bearing the full plate of blue cookies, Percy and his mom made their way back into the circle of love and family in the next room.

THE END

And that’s a wrap! The end of this massive project that got way out of hand. I actually wrote this epilogue twice. The first version involved Percy and Sally and a long angsty conversation, but it refused to come together and I realised ... well, I needed everyone together for the final curtain call. So here they are. Thank you for sticking with this story. I hope you've enjoyed the ride. I certainly have. And with that, I have to say one more enormous thank you to my betas, @supernaturally-percyjackson and @preciouschildrenofolympus or their help in whipping this monster of a fic into shape. They were an amazing team to have and I am so grateful for all the feedback they've given to help make this story better! 

Also, if you haven't yet, go check out @preciouschildrenofolympus‘s amazing art for the story here and here!

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