#your fade-out is a tiny philosophy but no less true for that

[sophiaphile]

"Your Fade-out is a Tiny Philosophy But No Less True for That" by Chad Bennett

[bright-and-burning]

Your Fade-out is a Tiny Philosophy But No Less True for That by Chad Bennett

[minorhorrors]

Chad Bennett, Your Fade-out is a Tiny Philosophy But No Less True for That

[ID in alt]

[bigskydreaming]

One of the biggest problems with refusing to give much acknowledgment to young Dick Grayson as having been very traumatized rather than just ‘cheered up within a couple of months after coming to the Manor, all on his own, cuz Dick’s just like that, now on with the cute Bruce and young Dick Feels with the occasional light angst of a nightmare’.....

Is fandom is really missing out on a ton of opportunities to actually explore the idea of Good Dad Bruce Wayne that so many people try to instead superimpose on his shittier moments.

Because yeah, there’s a lot of cute headcanons and fics out there about how adorable Dick was as a kid and he and Bruce being so close and Bruce being like the ideal parent and guardian to Dick.....

But like....its easy to be or at least come across as an ideal parent and guardian....when your kid is this happy, plucky, cart-wheeling spirited boy always running around full of light and laughter.

And that’s not who Dick was, when he first came to the Manor!

He was a traumatized eight to ten year old, who’d had his whole world ripped away and replaced entirely with an unfamiliar one he didn’t want.

So many people cite the line about how he didn’t want Bruce to replace his dad and that’s why Bruce waited so long to adopt him....but follow that thread back to its source.

You think grieving, has-every-reason-in-the-world-not-to-trust-strange-adults, tiny little spitfire Dick Grayson was graceful about accepting Bruce’s attempts at comfort at first, when all he wanted was his parents back, when he likely didn’t want hugs from this weird rich guy he didn’t understand, because all he wanted were hugs from his mom and dad?

Everyone’s so quick to point out adult Dick Grayson’s poor coping mechanisms and repression and tendencies to self-isolate and attempt to deal with his various traumas in less than ideal ways.....

You think those behaviors all just popped into existence for the first time on his eighteenth birthday? That he didn’t do similar things with his very early traumas, because those tendencies had already formed or were in the process of forming because of those very traumas?

My point is...

Dick Grayson was not an easy child when he first came to the Manor.

He couldn’t have been. No one could, in his shoes, and anyone who appeared otherwise would just be faking.

And hey, doesn’t that sound an awful lot like Dick Grayson behavior too?

So, the pun-slinging, mischievous, fun-loving sprite that Dick Grayson was as Robin and in his and Bruce’s most heart warming canon stories....

Was either a total cover-up job plastered over all of Dick’s trauma from the very start, meaning none of it ever got addressed or was something he ever moved past to any degree....

Or else, that happy, laughing young Dick Grayson was who he BECAME. After an actual hard, angsty, angry, occasionally self-isolating, irrational and otherwise Dick Grayson-esque road to recovery.

BECAUSE OF BRUCE.

THAT’S what this fandom is missing more than anything, if you ask me. Actual looks at the HARD early times with Dick and Bruce, where this young, inexperienced, totally in over his head Bruce Wayne who’s fast realizing he doesn’t have as much insight into this grieving child as he naively first assumed...

FIGURES IT OUT.

Day by day.

BY DOING THE WORK.

By being there for this kid through all the ups and downs. By refusing to be pushed away and shut out no matter how many times and how many ways Dick tried. By passing every test put before him by the untrusting kid betrayed by the system nominally there to protect him, who needed PROOF that there were still good people out there, still good adults, and that Bruce was one of them, that Dick could trust him, count on him, HE WASN’T GOING TO LEAVE HIM, no matter if Dick tried giving him reason to because he figured it was going to happen anyway and he wanted to get it over with.

Nothing frustrates me more - and you all know a lot frustrates me, lmao - than this implicit INSISTENCE so many people have that a young, traumatized orphan was the magic nightlight that came into Bruce’s life and transformed its drab darkness into a Disney scene as he smiled again for the first time since his parents died, at the sound of laughter....from this...young...traumatized...freshly orphaned and mistreated kid.

I’m sorry.

What?

Like, this is what it all traces back to. This is where the idea that Dick is never traumatized himself, or at least never enough so that it prevents him from doing what he’s really there to do, which is brighten everyone else’s life....

BECAUSE SO MANY PEOPLE ACT LIKE HE SOMEHOW MANAGED TO DO THAT FOR BRUCE, EVEN IN THE RELATIVE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH OF HIS FAR MORE RECENT TRAUMA.

NO.

That is not how that worked, lmao!

That was never going to be an option for how that worked!

When you think that a recently traumatized orphan is the magic cure-all for the FIFTEEN YEARS PAST trauma of a grown adult....

SOMETHING IS NOT CLICKING THERE.

So much of fandom has it completely backwards, I maintain, and so much of what we complain about and criticize about Dick’s writing in both canon and fanon is all just ripple effects emanating out from that.

Because Dick did not brighten Bruce’s life by just being his bubbly, cheerful, adorable sunshine-y self.

Dick brightened Bruce’s life by giving Bruce a reason to CARE about having brightness in it as much as he was surrounded by darkness.

Because Bruce had spent the last fifteen years neglecting to prioritize including any brightness in his own life, for his own sake, because as far as he and his immutable survivor’s guilt were concerned, he didn’t need it, perhaps didn’t deserve it.

BUT HE REFUSED TO LET THAT BE TRUE FOR THIS KID TOO.

He may not have been willing to fight to keep his own life and outlook bright and cheery all these years, but this kid who’d endured so much tragedy in so short a time, was so lost, was so quickly fading away into scraps of nothing compared to the bright, vibrant, larger than life figure Bruce had only briefly caught a glimpse of that night at the circus BEFORE tragedy struck and the world started piling on the darkness and trying to douse that kid’s light....

Bruce was going to fight like hell to keep that from happening, to keep that child he’d only seen for the briefest of times from turning cold and aloof and bitter.

Because maybe the problem had always been that when it came to himself, he didn’t remember what it had been like before his parents died, what he’d been like. He couldn’t see, couldn’t imagine, what he was supposed to look like when he was happy, what that even was...couldn’t picture it to even have a goal that the always goal-oriented Bruce Wayne could strive towards.

But a happy, bright, beaming Dick Grayson.....

Bruce knew what that looked like. He’d seen it once, the night they first met. HE KNEW WHAT WAS POSSIBLE FOR DICK, what he could be, because he knew and remembered seeing Dick be that before...and there was a clear picture for that, a goal, something that could be aimed for, something to keep aiming for even when it seemed impossible to reach at times.

But it wasn’t impossible. Not for Dick. No matter how hard it got at times, no matter how much Dick pushed him away or tried to drown himself in darkness and shut off all feelings, armor up all his vulnerable parts where the world might sneak in and hurt him.....Bruce wasn’t going to quit because that happier Dick Grayson was out there, was still a possibility. He’d seen it, captured it in his mind, held it up in his memories as proof of purpose whenever he started to doubt himself, or Dick’s ability to recover, or his ability to be the one to help Dick recover...

But if not him, who else was going to do whatever it took to be whatever Dick needed? As far as Bruce could tell, especially in takes where the system already had its shot at doing right by Dick and demonstrated an appalling lack of giving a fuck before Bruce stepped into the ring.....nobody else but Bruce seemed to remember that happier, brighter Dick Grayson. Nobody else seemed as invested in preserving THAT version of him, keeping it alive, fanning the last dying sparks of that bright spirit as long as it took to reignite back into a blazing bonfire that would become a beacon of brightness for Bruce himself, and a whole city and at times even a whole world.

So when you can’t trust anyone else to do a job right, you do it yourself. That’s ALWAYS been Bruce’s philosophy. Hell, its the whole nature of his control freak tendencies.

So that’s what Bruce did. And nobody does stubborn like him, not even Dick Grayson, and eventually, even the angry, bitter, untrusting and totally traumatized version of himself Dick had every possibility of turning into, instead gave way to Bruce’s far more determined refusal to let that happen, and Dick was like, well fuck it, guess I’ll be happy again if you’re gonna be like that about it.

I mean, lol, not really, but you get my point.

Dick didn’t save Bruce.

BRUCE SAVED DICK.

And not by just opening up his home to him. Not by just being someone who nominally, casually, as though that’s all there was to it was just ‘there for him while Dick grieved and recovered’ like it was as simple as that.

There was nothing simple about it. There couldn’t have been. Because there’s nothing simple about that much grief, that much trauma, that much upheaval, that many reasons to give up on the world and refuse to let anyone in or ever really trust anyone again.

Y’know. Like happened for Bruce, over a course of fifteen years, because this stuff is a JOURNEY not an anecdote like ‘well that happened but then they got over it and became superheroes, the end.’

No. Putting a roof over his head and food on his plate and even giving him a mask and a cape, those were just actions. Those were just pieces. Those were just thumbnails of the big picture.

None of those saved Dick. Made him the man, the hero he became.

BRUCE DID THE WORK.

Its that simple, and its also that complex. It was a process. It was a journey. It was a long hard road full of pitfalls and self doubt and second guessing and frustration. It was a million reasons to give up or turn back and only one reason to keep going, but one reason was all he needed. To save this one child. Not just by catching a bad guy or punching a Rogue. But to save him FULLY. His spirit as much as his body.

There’s a saying that goes something like “save one child, you save them all.”

Because the thing is, no matter how much Bruce might want to at times, he couldn’t do that for every single orphan out there. BE THERE, to the extent needed to actually bring Dick back from where his traumas had taken him. 

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t do that for this one, for whatever reason Bruce latched on to him as the one he just couldn’t shake, couldn’t stand to see this way, HAD to do something, anything, everything to stop that. Maybe because Dick did remind him so much of himself in that one crucial moment. Maybe because he felt guilty for not doing more sooner, when he found out what CPS had actually done instead of helping him. Maybe for reasons Bruce himself could never explain, so he just grabbed at any explanation he could think of for why he felt such a bone-deep certainty that this kid, this one specifically, needed him in specific.

Doesn’t matter. But what matters is you can’t save every traumatized child, but you save one kid, you save them all.

Because every single child matters as much as all children, to the right pair of eyes.

And you save one child by proving to them they’re worth saving, proving you want to save them, make them believe it....

That child grows up caring about proving to other children they’re worth saving, proving they want to save them, make them believe it. And on and on it goes.

You raise heroes by being their heroes. You save their world by being their world.

And being a hero, saving the world, that’s HARD FUCKING WORK.

You work and you work and you work at it.

And then you work some more.

And through all the times you feel like giving up, you willfully just refuse to and you KEEP. DOING. THE. WORK.

And if you do it long enough, do it well enough, do it so thoroughly and consistently and fully that in time you forget that its work at all, that its not just a fundamental part of you, a basic fact of your being, a reason you exist and breathe and get up in the morning....

Maybe eventually, hopefully, there comes a morning where you look up and realize somewhere along the way, that kid you saved has become a hero. Maybe he’s saving the world now himself.

And then you get back to work.

THAT. Is how you get Good Dad Bruce Wayne.

And I’m here for all the Good Dad Bruce being that, proving all that to Jason, saving him that way. And the same with Tim, and Cass, and Damian, and Steph, and Duke and Harper and Cullen and Colin and whoever you want to throw in the mix.

Its just.

That has to start with Dick.

It just has to.

Because a happy, cheerful, pun-loving, wise-cracking Robin like Dick Grayson was even after all the tragedy he’d endured so early in his life....

As well as THROUGH all the tragedy he endured as Robin...

That doesn’t just HAPPEN.

Kids aren’t just LIKE that.

You don’t get to expect them to just BE like that, all on their own. To just bounce back to their factory settings after enough time filling their grief quota.

Even a kid like Dick, hell, especially a kid like Dick, needs HELP to get to that point after where they’ve been, what they’ve been through. Needs a REASON to get to that point, a reason to try, to care, to get back up and fly again. Needs guidance, a road map. A guiding light through the darkness, a lighthouse that pierces through the fog.

You don’t get to expect them to just make it there on their own if they just spend enough time stumbling around in the dark, getting even more banged up as they trip and fall and crash into things with no idea what to look out for or a clue they might be headed down an even more dangerous path.

Saving people is hard work. There are no shortcuts. And it never stops.

Bruce Wayne knew that when Dick was younger. He proved it, time and time again.

Dick Grayson the hero IS the proof of that.

You only actually get Bad Dad Bruce Wayne...when he forgets to do the work. Stops doing it, stops trying. Maybe thinks he doesn’t have to do the work anymore, or at least not do as much of it. Thinks maybe he’s done now, its all up to Dick now.

No. Taking a kid in, raising them, making yourself their world until they feel safe and comfortable enough to look beyond you to see what else is out there again....that’s a job you don’t ever get to stop doing, once you willingly start. There is no clocking out. You don’t go home at the end of the day and not expect to see them there, because its their home too and if they feel otherwise or aren’t sure of that, that just means you have more work to do.

So you want to nip Bad Dad Bruce Wayne in the bud?

And not just in terms of Dick, but all or any of his children?

You still have to START with Dick and KEEP BRUCE DOING THE WORK with Dick. Putting in the time, the effort, the care, not taking him for granted, and never letting there reach a point where Bruce thinks Dick’s old enough that Bruce doesn’t need to do that anymore.

Because a Bruce that stops doing the work with Dick is a Bruce that’s going to stop doing the work with all his other kids in due time as well.

Especially since the more you treat Dick Grayson’s early years with Bruce like they were all carefree and trauma proof, just laughter and puns and Saturday morning cartoons....

The more it begs the question....

If Bruce can’t even make it work with a kid that ‘makes it that easy’....how the FUCK do you think he can make it work with all the kids you guys all so much more easily regard as more traumatized, more difficult, harder to reach or get through to?

Like....the more you accept Bruce had to do actual WORK to help Dick heal, the more Jason and all the others benefit by extension....because it makes Bruce that much more intuitive by the time he gets to them, that much more aware of his own actions and choices and impact.

This fandom wants more Good Dad Bruce Wayne content so bad, well guess what, I actually do too.

But if you want Bruce to never forget to keep doing the work, to keep caring, to keep making an effort and making a point to BE there for his kids...

Then as content creators....it doesn’t work if you forget to make Bruce do that  work, make those efforts.

And not just for some of his kids, but ALL of them.

Because if you can justify him not needing to do the work with one of them, you’re only kidding yourself if you think your version of his character could never justify giving up on doing the work for any of the others too.

[xenowlsome]

Pick an oc and do all the even numbers!

Asdhbasjdnjihqsd thank you for enabling me

(I’m doing this for Teru btw)

Does your OC collect anything? What do they collect?

She doesn’t, but she would collect fancy weaponry if she had the money for it. Or more realistically, embroidered daenggi (a type of Korean hair ribbon)

What kind of clothing does your OC wear?

Shinobi uniform mostly; very thick, very big knit sweaters in her free time because Kiri is damp and cold. (She does not have a preference re: masculine versus feminine clothing, but she would rather go barefoot than wear shoes that are even mildly uncomfortable (since this includes high heels it sometimes becomes a problem)

What’s your OC’s favorite animal? Least favorite?

Teru likes cats (and her “grandparents” have one so she’s in luck) and Kiri’s giant otters (picture Amazonian giant otters but with thicker fur) and like most people in Joson she distrusts dogs, but otherwise has no particular feelings

What is your OC’s theme song?

I have a whole playlist for particular story points but two songs that are like, Teru Mood™ are

Or (which is more like her childhood’s genin team song but anyway)

What foods does your OC like to eat? What are their least favorite foods?

She’s not picky bc in Kiri you eat what you get but she loves bibimbap bc that was the best treat for her as a kid

What does your OC smell like?

“Blood”, says Kisame not of anything specific normally? It’s not like shinobi use perfume when the mission doesn’t require it probably

What are your OC’s greatest fears? Weaknesses? Strengths?

Fears: disappointing someone, being betrayed, losing control of her life

Weaknesses: arrogant and perfectionistic at the same time, oversensitive to criticism, does not value her life or others’, holds grudges

Strengths: responsible, calm under pressure, direct, orderly, pragmatic

If they came from their world to ours (if not already in our’s) how would they react? What would they do?

She’d be so hyped about guns... and not so hyped about surveillance (but also, it seems like a good challenge)

What kind of student were they/would they be in high school?

The quiet studious straight-A student who would rat you out to the teacher; or if we’re going with her canon backstory, basically in the local delinquent gang

What is their outlook on life? What is their philosophy / what do they think in general about living?

She uh... kind of meh about life because it has never been particularly kind to her. She’s ready to sacrifice her life for the village, even when it was not perhaps the only course of action.

Who is the most important person in their life? Why? Who is the least important to them (that still has an impact and why?)

The most important right now is probably Mei because in the absence of true faith in her village, faith in her is the only thing Teru has left. The least important but still impacting is Raizō Ōmiya, a frequent bully in their academy days and accidentally the father of one of Teru’s students.

What kind of nervous habits do they have? Do they stim? Do they have any kinds of addictions?

She’s very rigidly policing her outward behavior I think whatever habits she might have had, she had trained out of herself. She smokes and drinks occasionally, but usually while in company and no more than is socially acceptable.

Do they want to get married? Why or why not? Would they ever want kids? Do they have kids? Why?

Teru does not intend to get married because honestly, what for? Nor does she want to have children (despite some pressure that all shinobi experience). Her own childhood was bad enough and she’s not about to be responsible for someone else’s.

If they could have one thing in the world, what would it be?

The first impulse would be to have her parents back.

What social groups and activities does your character attend? What role do they like to play? What role do they actually play, usually?

She has very few friends (basically only two at the start of The Story). She’s usually the follower, not the leader, but she will expect that people would defer to her on certain subjects/matters.

What does your character want most? What do they need really badly, compulsively? What are they willing to do, to sacrifice, to obtain?

Approval, I should think, in things small and large. (That’s me, projecting my rejection sensitive dysphoria right here).

What would your character do with a million dollars?

(she’d make tiny paper shuriken out of the banknotes)

Your character is getting ready for a night out. Where are they going? What do they wear? Who will they be with?

If it’s outside a mission, it’s some seedy pub (there’s no other kind of establishments in Kiri), she’s with Mei and she’s wearing the same sweater she wore to get water in the morning. If it’s on a mission, the scale could be from some really fancy bar spying on some foreign diplomat to a roadside tavern posing as a peasant.

Does your character have any scars? Where did they get them from?

Teru has fewer scars than most of her peers because her job is less front-line. Some cuts on hands and shins, usual for shinobi. Among old scars that didn’t fade are the one from the Academy graduation exam (on her throat) and a big one on her stomach from the 3rd Shinobi World War (that she basically had to fix herself while on the battlefield because Kiri doesn’t have a medical devision).

How does your character react/ accept criticism?

Not too well, really. If it’s from her superiors or trusted friends, she’d grit her teeth and bear it (but may or may not take it to heart). Others get an arrogant glare and passive-aggressive remarks.

Your character is given a voodoo doll of themself. What do they do with it? Do they see if it actually works?

Try and drown it to see what happens

(Don’t worry, she can hold her breath for a long time)

What were their parents like? How has that affected how they are as an adult?

Her parents already had a kid and didn’t particularly want the second one because the political/ideological situation in Kirigakure was changing for the worse. They were executed when Teru was around two and she is still affected by their death emotionally as well as socially.

If your character was presented with imminent and unavoidable death/fatality, how would they react? Would they try to avoid death anyways? Would they try to make their last days count?

She’d proceed as usual, except possibly warning those closest to her (though equally possibly not, to spare their feelings).

[poemsforcowboys]

What a Feeling // Freddie Mercury

2  3  4  5 

Pairing: Freddie Mercury and Katy Newton (OC) 

Summary: Before she moved from London to New York at the age of thirteen, Katy Newton had always been friends with Brian May. He was the only one she knew who encouraged her creative side, especially her designs for fashion and makeup. So much so, that Katy is hired as Queen's newest stylist. But what she doesn't expect is her knew found friend, Freddie Mercury. Will their casual flirts lead to anything of substance? Or will their relationship just become another lost love as they both make their journey towards self acceptance. 

Warnings: there will be smut eventually but not in this chapter, bisexuality (?), feels 

CHAPTER ONE 

"Kathryn, dear get up, it's nearly noon!" at the sound of her mother's shrill voice, the barely conscious mess of dark blue hair groaned into her pillow. It wasn't even late for christ's sake. And, this was one of the only times she could really sleep in anymore, her job at a thrift store in the upper west side had weird hours, but it was the only time she would be getting paid to help sew and repair fabrics, something she loved to do and only wanted to improve with. The new job wasn't providing her with enough money to keep up with the rent in her old apartment, so she had reluctantly moved back in with her parents and younger brother.

"Kathryn!" her mother yelled again, but this time with a different tone, could she be excited? Positivity was not something Mrs. Newton was the best at, as it was not something she valued highly.

"Come look at the telly! Kathryn!" Katy huffed, that's what she'd rather be called, and told her mother this many times, it was a decision she made when she realized she wanted to be known for her art. A vital part of her that was ignored by her family, and only one of many including her new hair color and fashion sense.

"What is it, Mum?" Katy's British accent had disappeared for the most part, but sometimes made an appearance, especially when she was around her family. Her older brother Daniel and her parents had been able to maintain their accents through their move from Hampton, London, England to New York City in 1960. Unlike them, Katy was only thirteen and had just begun to make friends in her hometown.

She begrudgingly called back and rolled out of her bed, accidentally stepping on one of the many crumpled sketches on her floor. What she wanted to be doing in her twenties was thrive through her designs and cosmetology skills, but her parents had made their disappointment clear many times. They resented her for going down this path especially it being one of an artist, they were both lawyers, even now still encouraging her to go to law school and offering to pay for it.

She gave herself one quick glance to her mirror in the corner of her room, wanting to make sure the makeup she wore last night hadn't turned her into something like a rabid animal. Katy had brown eyes, and to her, they were nothing more than that. Often she'd wear bright eyeshadow, maybe a deep red or an electric blue, always intending on looking like nothing less than art. She was only about 5 feet, making her the punchline to many jokes, and some of the fashion statements she wanted to make more difficult to pull off.

"Kathryn! It's Brian! On the telly!"

Katy actually turned her head this time, and went quickly to their small living room to see what her mother was talking about.

Katy did not have many friends when she was growing up in London, and to say that was an understatement. She was shy and often seen as a loner, except for when she was with Brian May. He had stuck by her as many of his own friends thought she was odd or awkward, he never thought that. He was polite to her father and looked up to Daniel, Katy's own mum had made jokes about wanting them to marry and always wanted to insinuate something that as twelve year olds, Brian and Katy just couldn't understand. When she moved to New York, it was even harder to establish any relationships she thought would last, which is why she turned to art. There was nothing she loved more than to sketch the people of New York City, the only difference between her art and reality was they were wearing outfits she had designed to enhance their natural beauty. So, she didn't have many friends but she did have art, and living in New York City made that easier for her to cultivate, and harder for her parents to control. It was all too often that she would sneak onto the fire escape and leave to dance or just have a smoke, she was nothing like her family and they all knew this.

But Brian always loved her, he always accepted her for the individual she was, and he was devastated she found out she was moving.

It indeed was that same Brian who was playing guitar and performing on stage and live television for what looked like thousands of people. Katy instantly recognized him, then smiled at the sight of his new hairdo, on her faded small screen he looked like a poodle and it reminded her, and her mother as she could tell, of when he would get scared of Katy's tiny dog Finn, whenever he came over to play.

It wasn't just Brian's face on their 1972 Sony Trinitron Television, but he was playing guitar with three other men in front of a huge crowd.

She watched each one of them perform and nodded her head to the beat, Brian was killing it and she knew her mother secretly completely agreed, her foot tapping the whole time. Katy's gaze rested for an extra moment on the lead singer, he was clad in a yellow striped sweater and black polka dot sequin jacket, one that she quite rather liked the fit of.

"Kathryn! They're touring America!" the credits began to roll on the screen, listing the various dates of their 1974 American tour dates over an image of her one true friend in her life doing what he loved. "Do you still talk to Brian? You should invite him for dinner, your father would like that, and the drummer can come too?" her mother never joked like this, but Brian always had a special place in her heart for being so kind to her daughter, even when she wasn't.

"Oh Kathryn if you don't go, I will" she remarked when her daughter just continued to stare at the screen, the picture changed to one of the blond drummer.

Katy couldn't help but agree with her, maybe not about the dinner, but she had missed her old friend. They had always kept in touch, the telephone definitely made that easier, but neither of them ever had the money or the time to reconnect in person. Of course, Brian had told her a little about the band he was in, but he was always humble and promised to tell her more when they met in person.

The tickets for their New York show were pricey to say the least, Katy tried a few box offices and a few friends before finally realizing Brian should just meet her somewhere in the city instead. Not knowing how exactly to reach him, she called his mother, Ruth who still lived in that same Hampton neighborhood in London, and, who was more than happy to give her a way to reconnect with Brian.

She pressed her ear nervously to her pink rotary phone as she held it and played with the chord, twirling it around her fingers and walking around her room, for all she knew his agent could answer. On one of the last rings, she finally hear some rustling and a connection.

"'ello?" Now that she thought about it, Katy couldn't remember the last time she had actually had the time to catch up with her friend, but despite this she recognized his voice instantly.

"Brain!" She laughed into the phone, relieved to be hearing his voice and not a stranger's.

"Shady Katy?" he questioned back, on the other end of Katy's line, he was just as excited that this call was from her and not a stranger.

"I've missed you! Are you still studying astrophysics?"

"Not exactly" he laughed "I'm assuming mum gave you this number?"

"She did, and she told me to give you a kiss too"

He groaned, as did she when first prodded by Ruth earlier.

"I'm sorry about that, you know how it is" Katy nodded and laughed, she did.

The two caught up as if nothing had changed except their situation, and that may have been true, although it felt like it had been forever for the both of them since they actually hugged for the last time. Eventually the conversation digressed to Queen's - Katy now knew that as the band that sent her modest friend into riches - tour of America, specifically their New York shows.

"I would love to come Bri, I really would, but I don't have the money right now, what if we meet for drinks?" Brian just laughed, he was rolling his eyes, unsure of how naive his closest childhood friend was truly being.

"Don't worry about that, Katy Shady Lady," she huffed at the dumb nickname, "are you at least free on that night? Oh and, have you made any friends yet?" confused as to how Brian could be free on the night of one of his shows, she answered anyways with a yes to both questions. Besides Brian, and since her transition to New York, she had gained one more close friend, a film student from one of her philosophy classes at school. Jo was always the first to see and most excited by the clothing Katy designed, often volunteering to model. As if anyone could detest anyway, she was beautiful and easily could've made it as an actress in Hollywood as opposed to behind the scenes - what she wanted - she appreciated Katy in a way that even Brian couldn't, she knew her for the new her and encouraged it.

"So it's settled?" Brian asked, tugging her along the joke that she still did not understand.

"What? Where would you like to go for dinner? I mean we could visit my parents but they-" "Katy, I'm sending you three tickets in the mail, make sure that night stays free, yeah?"

She nodded and smiled before realizing he could not see her, and finally accepted his proposition, after having to make sure he was certain he could do that. Sometimes she forgot how wonderful true friends could be, she was just worried she had to find one more to go with her to the concert now.

-

Jo had not stopped talking about how excited she was for the show that night. Actually, she hadn't been able to stop talking about it since Katy invited her, three weeks ago.

"Joey, stop moving for one second before I poke your eye out" she was attempting to coat her friend's brown with a hint of green eyes in a gold liner she had made herself.

"Okay fine but when I'm in Love with My Car comes on you're gonna need to give me a second" her friend looked up at her, her eyes now looking more beautiful than ever, as Katy's record player spinned in her dimly lit room. She didn't own any of their records them but Jo did, and brought her collection over to listen to as they got ready for the concert.

"So, who did you decide to bring tonight?" she ignored Jo's previous statement, mostly because she didn't know the song, and continued to apply glitter to her eyes and eyebrows, grateful that Jo let her experiment so much with her looks. Katy had also let her choose the third person to bring, as she had many more friends than Katy did and she honestly didn't quite care, whoever she chose always ended up being someone unique.

"Oh, um," Jo blushed and looked away, it wasn't usual that Katy saw her like this, flustered.

"Well, her name is Michelle, you know Michelle, and um, she's in my film class, she's really pretty and offered to be in my next video, she's really nice, you're going to love her, I promise" Katy just smiled, she could tell Jo was nervous but anyone Jo liked, Katy would be more than happy to meet.

"Done!" she took Jo over to her mirror to show her the final look. She was beautiful, as always of course, Katy couldn't help but stare. She was much taller, with curly brown hair and the ability to pull off any look. Tonight it was a white long gown that made her into a goddess, one of Katy's earlier and simpler pieces, the city was going to be too cold for anything too experimental.

She then quickly did her own makeup, light green eyeshadow tonight and big wings, something reminiscent of the 1950s but with more spunk,

"A 50s housewife gone wrong" she remarked to Jo. That was basically her brand, nostalgia with a burst of New Age.

"I love it" Jo smiled, admiring her friend's brave and bold approaches.

They met Michelle at the venue, it wasn't exactly Madison Square Garden, but it was much bigger than Katy expected. Michelle was taller than Jo, lean and tan with curly hair and bright eyes, when she spotted them, she ran up to Jo and smiled, kissing her on the cheek and grabbing her hand. Katy watched them, Jo laughing, introducing the two most important people in her life to each other. She never explicitly said anything to Katy about her love life, but they both knew Katy knew, only Jo did not realize how happy and intrigued it made Katy feel to know, and to fully accept.

"Brian and I want to see each other before the show, is that okay?"

"Is that okay" Jo laughed "of course it's fucking okay I've been waiting to meet Roger Taylor for my entire goddamn life" Michelle nodded her head in agreement, she complimented Jo's dress, and Katy's work. It was clear she was hiding her excitement in order to appear calm, something Jo could see right through. They put their backstage passes on and suddenly felt like they were being treated differently. Katy couldn't tell if a fan with long blonde hair was staring at her in jealousy or something else, she ignored it as she waited for Jo to figure out where exactly they were going.

"This way!" she motioned for her two friends to follow her, Jo was fine with always have to be the one to ask the questions, it was a task she had learned to love.

It was as if they went through one door and their whole perspectives changed. Suddenly they were backstage, people running around them, some holding water, cameras, extra drumsticks, Katy didn't know where to look until Michelle just pointed. All the way in the back corner, was a van with the Queen logo poorly drawn and even more poorly taped to the door. A wave of excitement overcame Katy as she quickly made her way over, with her friends unsurely trailing behind.

She knocked on the door, nervous at the sudden realization that a different bandmate might answer. She heard yelling from inside the tiny silver van. Some of it was definitely music, but she didn't think the sound of glass breaking and a sudden "DEAKY LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE" were from any record. Just then, she saw someone else peak through the blinds on the truck window right next to the door. She thought it could be Brian, the man was wearing aviators and only peaked his eyes through so she really couldn't tell, but he didn't seem to recognize her, and actually looked slightly annoyed to see her.

Suddenly, the door swung open, and Katy was face to face with her childhood friend, she hadn't seen him in over a decade. She ran into her best friend's arms and heard a faint squeal she knew could only belong to Jo from behind her.

Brian, also enveloped in this hug, was trying to ignore the loud complaining of his bandmate who was audible although he was still fully inside the van.

"Roger, how many times do I have to say it to you darling! I just simply will not go on stage without my eyes done, now where the hell is is Debbie?! I can do it myself she just has my makeup"

"Sorry about them, blueberry" Brian mocked her good naturedly, "can I meet your new friends?"

The blinds on the car window were suddenly pulled up, revealing an impatient yet attractive man with long hair and bangs, the aviators now clipped to his robe, looking for someone. It caused Brian to shoot an annoyed glance, he hoped Freddie would get a grip on his damn temper or Debbie, their formal makeup artist - who Freddie often spoke poorly of due to her "dullness"- would show up to her only job.

Jo took that opportunity to cough loudly and grab an equally excited Michelle's hand "Yeah Katy, please introduce us to your friend, please" she said in a smiling tone, waving to Brian, whose attitude changed to excitement as he waved back and walked over.

But Katy's eyes were still on the window where the lead singer of her friend's band was looking out from moments ago. She hoped he would walk by again, and heard he was looking for makeup.

"Roger!" From inside the car, Freddie's tone had suddenly changed completely. He did not expect to see such a unique looking person outside his truck, when he was wearing nothing at all besides a robe. "Roger!" he snapped, trying to get the attention of his friend, suddenly aware of how loud he was being before.

"What, Fred?" he looked up from brushing his hair in the mirror.

"Who is the girl Brian is talking to" Freddie mouthed to Roger, he did not want them to hear him and had honestly no idea how loud he was being at any given moment.

"Oh come on Freddie you know I can't read your lips" Roger retorted, a smile at the edge of his mouth. Freddie just rolled his eyes and walked over to him, any thoughts of Debbie temporarily disappearing from his concerns.

"Brian's childhood friend, she moved in primary school and they haven't seen each other since" John piped in, a little offended that Freddie went to Roger before him.

"Are she and Brian..." Freddie trailed off, trying to look out the window without being seen, when instead he caught a glimpse of two other girls, holding hands, he smiled softly.

"I just told you, they haven't seen each other since primary school Fred, no one was sleeping around in primary school, ya fool" Freddie rolled his eyes, secretly embarrassed at the mistake. "Maybe you weren't sleeping around Deaky, but I was" he winked, saving himself from any further questions when John rolled his eyes.

There was a knock on the door.

Freddie shot Roger a glance, who shot John a glance, who looked out the window.

"It's the girl" John mouthed.

Sometimes, Freddie really didn't know what took him over. He tied up his robe, for the most part, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

"Bri" he said, holding eye contact with Katy whilst drawing the attention of Brian, who was still talking to Jo and Michelle, more Jo, about the embarrassing things Katy liked to do (such as being irrationally scared of elevators, and lack of knowledge when it came to rock and roll) whose face quickly turned into a mixture of anger and confusion when he saw Freddie talking to his friend.

"Who is this beautiful pixie? Can I keep her?" he winked. John was the one to laugh from inside this time, Freddie sure could act. Katy blushed, even harder after she heard Jo scream

"That's Katy! She loves your style!" and then shoot her a thumbs up, Katy's eyes widened. She was obviously angry that Jo had exposed her like that, but she couldn't deny it, his fashion sense was something else.

"Well Kate, it's a pleasure to meet you" he took her hand in his and kissed it, she admired his black nail polish. "And, I call this look" he referred to his maroon silk robe "my birthday suit, I can show you the whole thing sometime if you'd like"

"Freddie I swear I will hit you right now I don't care if we have to cancel the show"

"Don't worry Bri, I'm only teasing" he matched Katy's eyes again and winked.

"I like to call him Galileo" the first words Katy could muster up the courage to say to who felt like a god in front of her.

Brian just sighed and walked over.

"Katy likes to think she's clever, Galileo was the astronomer who discovered Jupiter's moons-" Brian shot her a fake annoyed look, he secretly quite liked the nickname but if he told her that, she'd stop.

"Oh no, don't worry, I get it, it's because you were going to be a nerd before I saved that arse" Freddie interrupted, earning a laugh from Katy (what he wanted) and a glare from Brian (a problem he will have to deal with later).

"Anyways" Freddie continued, smiling at his success, "why'd you knock? Galileo's out here talking to...." it was clear he wanted an introduction, but Michelle and Jo were caught up in their own conversation and couldn't hear him. "My friends, Jo and Michelle" Katy smiled, happy to see Jo happy.

"I knocked, because I accidentally overheard that you couldn't find your makeup" she started

"Don't worry about it, if you're near Freddie you might find yourself accidentally hearing a lot of things" Brian interrupted, he was the one smiling this time, and Freddie glared before realizing what she had just said to him.

"You have makeup?" he asked, hopeful, and surprised by the kindness and accepting nature of this practical stranger, but anyone who Brian loved, must be good, Freddie rationalized.

She nodded, "I did Michelle's on the way here" pointing to her, before actually looking over to see her and Jo holding hands. Katy and Freddie both stayed silent for a second. Caught up in their own thoughts.

"Well, dear" Freddie finally coughed "if you wouldn't mind me borrowing it, Debbie - our makeup artist - is an absolute bore, nothing like you darling, and she's also very late" Katy didn't know what to do with all of this flirtation, she herself had never been so entranced by a boy and he was actually receptive to it.

She couldn't help but watch him apply the dark shadow to his water line and eyelids, she had made her way fully inside the van by now, and looked around. It was nothing too fancy at all, if anything, it needed a good wash. There was a broken beer bottle on the floor that John, Brian's friend and bassist was currently cleaning up, and Roger made his way outside to talk to an internally freaking out Jo.

When she looked back to Freddie he was already staring at her.

"Did you design that dress?" He asked, his gaze suddenly making her nervous.

"I did, the first attempt took me all night and was a slightly different pattern but my parents threw that one out, they aren't the biggest patrons of my art. This one isn't as nice but I-"

"You look absolutely stunning, I meant it when I said like a pixie, some woodland fairy, that is what you are" Katy blushed, she appreciated his odd compliment.

"Freddie you better not be high right now, we've got a show to play in - shit in ten bloody minutes" John suddenly realized the time and hurriedly began to gather his things.

"Don't worry darling, we are performers, they can wait a minute, maybe they'll get all hot and heavy. Are you watching tonight?" he spoke from John to Katy, while having his back to them, watching through the mirror as he tried to multi task by also changing into his leather outfit, makeup finished and looking lovely. Katy tried her best not to stare but found it hard, she almost wanted to reply with "I'm watching right now" but she lacked the witty confidence she so admired in the man in front of her.

"Of course, I'm excited to see Brian" she decided to say instead, feeding into the game it was clear that Freddie liked to play.

"And are you excited to see me?" he turned around, locking eyes with her, dressed to a tee.

"I just met you" 

CHAPTER TWO

AN: Hi guys!! Thank you so much for reading so far! I have pre written the next few chapters so they will be up soon! Don't forget to like if you enjoyed it, I am so excited to be writing this fic. ~June :) 

[dialux]

made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

[The Potters survive Halloween, but nobody else knows it. As the world gets darker and colder they need to decide when and how they’re going to fight back.]

...

Chapter One: in the dark times

Chapter Two: will there be singing?

Lily lands just out of the cave and screams as she falls- she skids down two meters of sand before she manages to stop. Her ankle is definitely broken; Lily hisses out through her teeth and drags herself upright.

She limps into the cave sweaty and disheveled, and drops as soon as she’s within reach of James.

“Here,” says Lily, taking the small pouch she’d retrieved from Gringotts and tossing it at James. It’s charmed to be extensible, and featherlight. There’s twenty wands at the bottom. “Pick your wand.”

“Mummy?” asks Harry, reaching out to her dyed-black hair, eyes wide at the new color.

Lily leans back, dropping to an elbow, and groans when she jars her ankle. She lifts her other hand and catches Harry’s tiny fist in hers, stretching her fingers to bop his nose.

“Yeah, buddy,” she says, as lightly as she can manage. “Mummy’s hurt. And her hair’s messed up. Looks too much like your dad. Right ugly, don’t you think?”

“Hey!” yelps James.

Lily’s elbow slips out from under her. She laughs through the pain and holds her hand out, blindly, until James takes it. He’s so warm. Lily doesn’t close her eyes, doesn’t cry, but the ache behind her ribs eases, slowly, and all but disappears when Harry starts crawling over her prone body.

...

“What happened?” James asks, quietly, that night.

Lily’s ankle is bandaged. She’s got a scar along one arm from Voldemort that she hadn’t healed in time, and James is obsessed with it- the long, shallow cut, the way it’s fading back into her freckled skin- it’s a part of Lily that he doesn’t know, and James can’t stop sweeping his fingers over it. Harry’s asleep, half on his lap, half on Lily’s lap, and he’s never looked sweeter than with him sleep-heavy and warm.

“Bellatrix,” says Lily.

His heart skips a beat. “Lily.”

“She was attacking in broad daylight,” Lily says quietly. “She killed a muggleborn girl’s mother. She would’ve killed the girl, her sister, their father- even more, likely- if I hadn’t stopped her.”

“Merlin, Lily,” James whispers, hand smoothing down Harry’s back in a vain attempt to regain his equilibrium. “I didn’t even know. If she’d killed you-”

“She didn’t.”

“But if she had?” He reaches for his wand when he can’t quite keep his hands from shaking. “I understand, I do, but- I’m allowed to worry, aren’t I?”

Lily presses her head against his neck. “Yes,” she says simply.

The fire flickers over her dark hair, red glinting through. The air outside their little cave is freezing, snow and ice frosting the ocean; but they’ve put up warming charms inside, and the stars are shining, and James swallows all the other words he wants to shout, winding his arms around Lily’s waist instead.

“She’s not going to be a problem now,” Lily whispers into his ear.

James pauses. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” says Lily, slowly, triumphantly, “that I killed her.”

...

Do you know how dangerous it is to make your own rituals? James wants to shout at Lily, at her shining eyes and her beautiful, beautiful lips. She might have died so easily. Do you know how many people have died, because they just tried something and failed and the ritual blew up in their face? Not even the most insane Death Eater would have tried what you tried.

But they’re Gryffindors.

Being Gryffindor doesn’t mean being insane, but sometimes- when on the wire, when pushed to the brink- it means taking risks that seem that way. It means gambling with your life, with your world, and never once looking to see the fall that’s snapping at your heels.

James holds Lily tighter, and he loves her with everything he has inside of him.

...

In one world, Bellatrix Lestrange outlives her Lord’s first death. She plans to take down his enemies while the rest of the Wizarding World celebrates, and destroys all the things her Lord gave her before she heads to the Longbottom’s house.

In another world, she dies before she can do any of that.

She dies before she can destroy her portkeys.

...

Bellatrix had six things in her pockets: a little book that was splattered over with blood; an extra wand; three quills; and a small, innocuous button that Lily had almost left behind.

The button’s the important thing.

When James runs tests on it, it proves to be a portkey.

There’s only one reason for a Death Eater to have a portkey masquerading as an innocent button.

Lily watches Harry run one finger over the broad, reflective edge, before she asks James, “You can get it to work?”

“It’s password locked,” replies James. “It’ll take me some time, but- yeah, I’ll be able to get it to take us where it needs to.” He knocks his hand on the stone of the wall. “That isn’t the question.”

“The question is whether we want to go there or not,” Lily finishes. “If we do- both of us will have to be ready.”

“Fighting fit,” murmurs James, lips twitching. “None of this- still-recovering business.”

Harry tries to chew on the button. Lily takes it out of his hands and tosses him in the air instead, catching him and rubbing her cheek against his soft hair, smiling at his giggling.

“This isn’t our fight,” she says, looking out into the sea, the horizon that she can’t exactly identify because the sea is the same shade as the sky. “We could hide here, and stay silent, and nobody would ever ask for more from us.”

“Would you be happy like that?” James asks curiously.

Lily glances over her shoulder at him. “Yes,” she says. “I would be happy. I wouldn’t be at peace, I think- but if I have you, and I have Harry- I can’t imagine being unhappy.”

He drops his head to her neck, nosing at the skin, one hand coming up to cup Harry’s head. “They’ve killed our parents,” says James. “They’ve killed our friends, and they’ve killed our family, and I can’t sleep without dreaming of him, in our home, the absolute bastard-”

“James,” Lily says, turning to face him. She looks up at him, through the curtain of her hair, and Lily is close enough to smell the apples on his breath, the clean salt, the dust and mud and blood. “It’s going to be difficult.”

“Our entire damn lives have been difficult,” says James. “Let’s not start being easy now.”

...

(Lily’s always been too sharp for the world. It’s the kind of thing that’s smudged by death, but it doesn’t make it less true. Lily’s too sharp, too quick, not the kind to throw herself into danger unnecessarily, not the kind to hesitate when she feels it necessary. In another world, she’s remembered as a mother and a wife and a muggleborn.)

(In this one, she is called death, and it is a name she chose for herself.)

...

“You carved runes into your skin?” James demands, flipping her hand over and dragging her closer to him. “Lily!”

“I had to tell the magic,” she says, yanking her hand back. “In Gringotts- I didn’t know how the bags or wand-boxes would look. So I did it. And that’s how I knew the button was important, too- there was magic in it, his magic. All cold and frightening and rotten.”

Old druidic runes stand up on her skin, bright red, scarred.

Lily’s sharpness isn’t borne just of her tongue. Her sharpness comes from her knowledge: she’s doing right. And so long as she does right, she won’t regret her actions.

The pain is a price to pay. Nothing less.

“Sometimes you frighten me,” whispers James, thumb brushing against the raised, knotted edge of one of the runes.

Lily leans into James and kisses him softly, lips barely moving.

She thinks of a twelve year old boy who refused to be frightened by a werewolf. She thinks of a sixteen year old boy who’d refused to be complicit in murder. She thinks of a twenty-one year old boy, who’d stood against the cruelest, darkest man in fifty years not once, not twice, not thrice- four times, each with nothing but a wand in his hand and love in his heart.

Lily is not the only one who’s too sharp for the world.

This world isn’t safe, she thinks, love blossoming through her limbs like warmth, like light. So we must make it safe.

Voldemort and his men brought war to Hogwarts’ walls. They let a generation of children grow, none of whom knew peace, all of whom knew love. Lily can’t think of anything more dangerous to the Death Eater’s philosophy.

"We all do,” she whispers back.

Lily’s outlived her heroes. She’ll outlive her enemies, too.

...

Two weeks later, they disguise Harry with three layers of charms and drop him off at a one-day daycare. Lily drapes Death Eater robes over their heads, fastens the mask to James head and lets him do the same to her.

They don’t land in any dungeons.

Instead, they land in a field.

Lily feels James cast protective shields; she narrows her eyes and looks up instead, towards the hill that she can feel pushing at her mind. Leave, it whispers. Don’t come near me.

And underneath it all, there’s a slow pulse that reminds Lily of something achingly familiar.

“There’s no active magic around,” James mumbles, sweeping his wand in slow circles. “Nobody’s cast in...”

“Forty years?” Lily looks over her shoulder to see him lift a brow at her.

“How’d you get that? The best spells only go till a decade.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “I developed it before I went to Gringotts. How else d’you think I managed to get all the stuff I wanted? I wasn’t sure how it’d look, and the goblins weren’t exactly going to be helpful.”

“So you created a spell.”

“I’m good at that,” Lily agrees, before tilting her head at the hill. “There’s magic that side, though, and it’s long-lasting. With notice-me-not charms all over it.”

James’ hand knocks into Lily’s arm, but he doesn’t say anything- instead, they head towards the hill. Lily keeps her grip on her wand easy, the better for the quick movements needed in both breaking and forming wards. She trusts in James’ auror training to look out for physical dangers.

“Village’s name-” James kicks at a moldy wooden sign, flipping it over. “Little Hangleton, apparently.”

Lily shrugs. “Never heard of it.”

They arrive at the hill. Lily can make out that the notice-me-not charms are tied into four trees, forming a proper rhombus at the base of the hill. She just brute-forces her way through it; notice-me-nots are fairly fragile charms, overall, relying more on going unnoticed- rather than on sheer power.

When the charms fall, Lily frowns.

There’s a cabin there, in the middle of the clearing, but it-

“It looks like a hovel,” says James, flicking his wand to check for glamours. “What kind of-”

He cuts off when a pack of snakes emerge out of one of the windows, slithering directly at them. Lily tries to dispel them- she’d thought they were a good illusion- but no, the tracks they leave behind them in the grass tells Lily that they’re actually real.

“He’s a Parselmouth!” James exclaims, before he sends a piercing hex directly at the quickest-moving one. It explodes in a shower of guts and viscera. “That’s why the snakes are real- they’re probably forced to obey-”

Lily doesn’t blink. “Ignis,” she snaps, directing her wand in a circle that corrals the snakes away from them. “James, take the far end. Circle them properly.”

James climbs the nearby tree and closes the circle from that height; the snakes die, leaving behind a large swath of burned grass and a horrible stench in the air. When they step closer to the hovel, she realizes: another notice-me-not, this one even more powerful- even more insidious- than the last.

Dark magic hums in the air, just enough to make her grit her teeth. And right under it, like a heartbeat: something Lily knows. Something that frightens her, just a little, because magic isn’t supposed to be slow, it’s supposed to eddy and dance and-

“Down!” grunts James, jumping off the branch and straight onto her back.

Lily spits out grass and rolls. “The hell was-” she trails off, seeing the silver axe spitting the tree that James had just climbed.

If he hadn’t dived on top of her, Lily would be dead. She exhales roughly and shoves herself upright.

“He’s not messing around,” James mutters.

Lily narrows her eyes at the handle. “It’s Norse,” she says, then swears, fluently, at the message she can see in the runes carved into it. “Norse- Merlin, James, the name’s-”

He barks out a warning- Lily spins to the side, feeling something rustle along her ribs and scoring a bloody line across it-

She pants, staring at the scorch marks impacting the tree trunk, one hand held to her side.

“What’d you say?” calls James.

“Wolf-killer,” spits Lily, before she rises and lobs a ward-eating curse at the window the snakes came out of. She drops and turns to face James. She can feel her anger surge, swirling in her gut. Her wand’s handle digs into her palm, hard and unyielding. “It’s Thor Odinson’s.”

James stills. “You don’t mean Deathlight?”

Thor Odinson had not been a god. He’d been a wizard, born millennia before the Founders- and he’d been a powerful one at that. For two centuries, he’d conquered and held Europe together, safe against the Persians and Macedonians.

He’d been a Dark Lord.

When his daughter was turned into a werewolf, Thor had slaughtered her and the entire village that allowed it to happen. Then he’d gone on a rampage against werewolves, and to do that, he’d forged a silver axe that- even as it split the tree behind Lily’s head- was bathed in more blood than any other weapon in the history of the world.

The populations of werewolves in Scandinavia has never recovered.

There’s a reason why they’re a problem that England’s faced, and not the rest of the Continent.

"Oh,” says Lily, reaching forwards and yanking the axe out of the trunk, hefting it carefully- “I do.”

...

They carve out a hole in the hut with the silver axe next to the window the snakes emerged out of.

Lily freezes when they enter, eyes narrowing on one of the corners, where there’s an intricately carved wooden box. “It sounds-” she shakes her head like she wants to clear it, “-like you. Like your magic, James.”

“Good or bad?”

Lily thinks for a moment. “Bad,” she says finally. “Magic’s not supposed to be slow, and that’s what this is.”

“My magic’s slow?” James asks, contemplating the box.

“No. Something you had...” Lily clicks her tongue. “That’s it. Not you, something you always had around you. Your cloak.”

James’ breath hitches. “But that wasn’t ever dangerous.” Dark.

“Maybe,” says Lily. “But there’s something darker than that, too, here. It’s- difficult to explain.”

“Be careful,” James tells her.

Lily moves slowly towards the box. Her wand flicks through a complicated series of motions and the box starts to glow. Then Lily brings her wand in a decisive swish towards it- but nothing happens.

She frowns and slashes at it, quickly, but the yellow light that cuts across the wood doesn’t have a single effect.

“It’s not so bad, closer to it,” Lily mumbles, before reaching for the thin latch holding the box closed.

“Lily-”

“It’s warm,” she says, before she opens it.

Inside, James can see dusty velvet and a gaudy, ugly ring. It doesn’t look like much, but Lily- when he looks at her, she looks captivated. Her green eyes are all but glowing; she’s not blinking.

“Lily,” says James, a pit growing in his belly.

She doesn’t answer.

Instead, Lily reaches for the ring.

James flicks it closed and holds his hands up when she whirls on him, outraged.

“You looked like it was drawing you in,” he says slowly.

Lily snarls incoherently.

“I take that back,” James mutters, backing away. “Clearly it’s already-”

Lily moves, then, with devastating speed: she throws James into the far wall. If James’ ribs hadn’t been healed to perfect health, the impact would have probably been enough to have him down. But he’s healed.

So James throws up sand, straight into the air, and rolls to the side, throwing a wide-range buzzing spell that’ll keep Lily busy until he can subdue her.

It’s a solid plan.

James is a better dueler than Lily. He’s got more experience, he’s quicker with his wand, and his spells are generally geared towards the explosive; Lily’s slower, but more devastating when her plan snaps into place.

Except now she’s faster, ten times faster than James has ever seen her-

First she dissipates the sand wordlessly. Then she volleys forwards, with a purple-flecked-black spell that James hasn’t even heard of; he dodges instead of risking it with a shield. The spell hits the wooden wall behind his head in the place of his head.

James almost sighs in relief.

But Lily smiles.

Slow, coldly amused, terrifying. James’s never seen her look so cold before. Lily’s warm, always, even when she’s angry; she shouts and screams and doesn’t ever look like this, like she’s got the world in the palm of her hand and is ready to catch it under the delicate point of an eyetooth-

“Lils,” James pants, throwing up more harmless jinxes that she bats aside as if they’re nothing more than minor inconveniences, “Lily- goddammit- stop for a moment-”

He realizes, too late, what that purple spell was supposed to do, when vines snake around his arms and drag him back. One wrenches his wrist backwards until he’s forced to give up the wand; James grits his teeth and strains against it.

“This isn’t you,” he tells her.

Lily’s eyes are glassy, empty. Sheened over like someone’s covered them with a lens.

“Darling,” she coos, voice sickeningly sweet, “this is me. The most me. Without you around to drag me down, who knows what I’ll become?”

“A killer,” grunts James, even as the vines press him against the wall.

Lily laughs. She steps closer to him and rubs her wand down James’ cheek, soft and caressing. He doesn’t move; only glares at her, at her eyes, where it’s clear that she isn’t in her right mind.

“I’m already a killer,” says Lily. “Or did you forget about Bella?”

She turns, moving towards the box that James had closed- turning her back on him for a critical moment.

Because James knows what he saw.

Her eyes- her lovely, sharp, green eyes- the part of her that James loves the most, the part that he can sketch with his own eyes closed, the part that he’s been staring at so closely for the past moments- flickered red.

Bella, thinks James. Not Bellatrix. And red eyes.

There’s only one person he knows with red eyes.

It makes a sick kind of sense. This is what they’d feared, why they’d worn Death Eater robes; Voldemort.

Voldemort, who James had blown up.

Voldemort, who killed James’ parents, who tried to kill James’ son, who even now is trying to kill his wife.

I am a Potter, thinks James, and his fury in that moment- it’s been building, seething, over ragged wounds and festering helplessness and magical objects that hold the blood of thousands of innocents- but it boils over then, exactly, at the moment that he thinks his own familial name. I am James fucking Potter, and you- I will not let you take anything else from me!

He flexes his wrist, and feels something cold and hard under it. James twists to see it. Thor’s axe is right there, under his fingers, silver and shining. Uncertainty thrums through his chest for a brief moment; there’s hundreds of stories through history, of the axe rejecting Thor, of the axe killing Thor’s sons when they tried to take up his mantle, of the axe’s bloody, terrible history.

Then he looks up to Lily, and sees her cradling the ring, close to her chest, as if it’s Harry.

James sees red.

The vines around his wrists snap off, burned to ashes under the force of his rage, and before they can grow back, even as Lily spins around, eyes shining scarlet, wand rising to curse him to oblivion and back-

James raises the silver axe straight into the air.

For the first time in five thousand years, Thor Odinson’s axe flares white.

Lightning splits the world apart around them.

...

Lightning is the symbol of death. It’s the life-bringer, and the death-caller.

The first life in all the universe was born amid lightning and violence.

There are things in this world that will not leave it without the same violence.

These are all truths that Lily Potter knows.

...

Hundreds of miles away, Lord Voldemort stands in front of the Ministry of Magic, flanked by his army. His gut shivers, rolling with anticipation, thick and sweet in his mouth.

"Take it,” says Voldemort, and the very building trembles.

...

Three floors away, trapped inside the building they’re supposed to work inside, are the aurors. Rufus Scrimgeour snarls under his breath, but he’s well and truly beat: there are five Death Eaters to every auror.

And once they take the office, they’ll be able to find the rest of the force easily. There’s trackers that map to each auror, on a magical map pinned up in the bullpen.

“Stand down,” says the leader, a broad man in black robes and a white mask. “If you cooperate, there won’t be anything to fear.”

Rufus grits his teeth and feels a shiver wrack his body. Blasted dementors- useful for nothing so much as-

Fuck, he thinks, as You-Know-Who’s army breaches the Ministry of Magic. Fuck this.

Britain hasn’t once fallen to the Dark. Other countries have. Time and time again: France, Prussia, the city-states of Greece; some even have cycles of light and dark, alternating and equal in power. The Aztecs used almost solely dark magic. The fall of the Zhou dynasty in China had led to such a resurgence of dark power that it still hurts Rufus’ teeth to go near a full three-fourths of the country. Some of the ziggurats in Mesopotamia had been built to worship muggle gods, but the majority were constructed to aid in ancient Akkadian rituals that harnessed the sun’s power for longer-lasting, dark potions.

But Britain?

Brittany had almost fallen to Mordred, to Morgana; but it hadn’t actually collapsed. Grindelwald’s reluctance to cross the Channel hadn’t been entirely because of Dumbledore: the very earth, the very soil and stone- it’s steeped in light magic.

There’s dark magic, of course, as always; light magic’s mirror and opposite, but it’s never held control of the land.

It’s never governed magical Britain.

And now, there is one place that even has a chance to stand against it. If they don’t want the elements themselves to recoil on the highest bastion of light’s defilement- the Ministry is finished. It’s Hogwarts, now, that is their last hope.

Hogwarts must not fall.

Rufus is an auror. He’s a Slytherin, and he loves the Light like he loves his duty. He is a Slytherin: he understands sacrifice.

“Augustus,” he says, standing. His people- good witches and wizards- shift, allow him an unimpeded line of sight to a man Rufus would like nothing more than to strangle bare-handed. Augustus Rookwood, a boy Rufus had roomed with for seven long years. “You could have been great.”

“I am,” says Augustus, lifting his hands. “I’m the lieutenant of the most powerful wizard in the world. And now you can join me, Rufus. There’s no need for you to be limited by the Ministry’s stupid, bureaucratic minutiae.”

Rufus smiles and watches Augustus relax. One of his deputies- a muggleborn girl, with some of the quickest wandwork he’d ever seen- flinches, in the corner of his eye; then she straightens, and holds her wand at a sharp angle. Rufus can all but see the curse on the tip of her tongue.

Do or die, thinks Rufus, vaguely amused, viciously angry. That’s what the muggles say, isn’t it? This is that moment.

This is what he’ll be remembered for.

He says, loudly, “If you’d ever looked beyond the tip of your nose, Gussy, you’d know that I’ve never wanted anything other than this Ministry’s stupid bureaucratic minutiae.”

He twitches his wand, one precise, clockwise circle, and brings the physical wards crashing down.

Only the Head Auror can do it. It’s not told explicitly to them when they take their oaths, but Rufus knows the laws like he knows his magic. He knows his capabilities. And the wards are keyed to the Head Auror, not the Minister, not any Department Head. Though it hurts in him like a stab- he brings the wards down, and brings the Ministry down with it.

The floor rolls, as the ward stones holding the entire building together collapse.

“What have you done?” Augustus shouts, trying to find his balance.

Made your life harder. Rufus slips to one knee and rolls to the side, dodging the flashes of green light.

“Sir!” screams one of the rookies, not a foot from his face, crouched behind a desk, half-hysterical. “We’re not getting out of this alive!”

“No,” says Rufus grimly. “That, we are not.”

He takes aim, accurate and precise, and fires. Two Death Eaters fall, dead, and Rufus shakes out his hand, his leg that still cramps on bad days. Rufus is not a Gryffindor; bravery is not bred in him.

But ambition is.

...

(Of all the people who fought in the war, against Voldemort and for him, Rufus Scrimgeour’s tally is the highest.)

...

Frank holds Neville. Alice’s hands are tight on the Prophet- there’s a rip down the middle, sharp and thin, from her hands clenching against it. This morning’s paper has just arrived. It has Malfoy sneering from the front page. It has Lestrange smiling- smiling!- beside him.

(The last thing they’d printed, the last thing that hadn’t been Death Eater propaganda; Alice has it saved.

It’s been the point of discussion of multiple Order meetings. The swirl of dark cloth as Thanatos apparates away- the picture had graced the front of multiple Prophet covers ever since Bellatrix died. But that isn’t what caught Alice’s attention.

There’s a girl, narrow and pointy, with colorless hair- she stands in the middle of the street and glares at the photographer. She wears muggle clothing; doesn’t have a wand in sight, despite being Hogwarts-age. Alice is certain she’s a muggle.

She’s quoted, in small, cramped print, as if printed in a hurry: “This world isn’t safe. And the only way to make it safer is to make sure it’s safer ourselves.”)

I am an auror, Alice thinks, before she rips the paper in her hands firmly, straight down the middle and into two. Whatever that means now.

This morning, at breakfast, a hundred Patronuses soared in from aurors that Alice had known, had loved, had protected. She’s never seen a lovelier sight, how the world had turned shining and bright in a single moment that seemed to last forever.

And then one of them landed at the Head Table: a lion, grizzled, with one ear torn raggedly and a long scar down its flank.

“The Ministry has fallen,” it had boomed in Rufus’ rough voice, and through the shrieks of fear from the students, Alice had seen Minerva go pale, Albus sag in his chair, Filius flinch hard enough to rattle his top hat.

Alice is an auror, like Rufus, like James, like Frank.

Her wand is cold in her hand. She knows, in her heart, deep and true: it will see battle soon.

...

Lily is blind.

She can feel the earth under her knees, the hard, hot edges of the ring under one palm, the shattered pieces of the wooden box that had held it. Her ears are ringing. She’s hiccuping, just a little. But the bright white lights are still spotting her vision, and Lily can’t find it in herself to try to blink them away.

Her chest is too fragile to risk movement.

The world had felt so perfect. For long, breathless heartbeats, Lily’s world had been made of light and right and weightless beauty. For weeks now, she’s had to make decisions that leave her questioning, doubtful; she’s spent weeks doing the best she can, and Lily’s certain that it isn’t good enough.

She wants to go back to that perfect world now, now that she knows how lovely it can be. Unquestioning adoration. Doubtless freedom. 

Lily feels coldness on her cheeks and knows she’s weeping, but she can’t stop. She bends over, and there’s a rawness in her throat but Lily can’t hear her screams through the ringing in her ears; she can’t move at all, she’s so afraid of what will happen- if she hurts James, if he’s gone or stuck in her brain besides all the memories Lily has of loving Harry and James and-

Oh- 

In the life Lily had before magic, she’d attended church. She doesn’t remember much of it; her mother had been the only person in their family who’d been religious, and Lily’d always been closer to her father anyhow. 

But she thinks about the psalms now, the songs, the chants, those rhythms that had reverberated below her breastbone in a place that magic’s never managed to touch.

She’s so fucking afraid.

Then she feels James, his hands large and gentle, so gentle, along her spine. Lily cants into his touch blindly; she can’t help it. Her muscles feel over-stretched and aching, her bones feel like they’ll shatter against one wrong touch, and she feels violated like she’s never felt before.

Steadily, even as her skin scrapes and aches, James gathers himself around her.

She can feel his chest rumbling soothing sounds, even as she can’t hear them. It’s James, of the two of them, who loves poetry- Lily’s too impatient for it- but in the warmth and scent of James, surrounding her all over, Lily can hear the echoes of a prayer. 

Slowly, achingly slowly, Lily blinks her eyes open.

Through the brilliance of the white spots, she sees James’ dark hair. She’d know that shade anywhere; Lily reaches for it, feels the soft spikes that curl and rub against her skin. Then she turns to James and meets his eyes.

He relaxes.

“You looked different,” he whispers, settling on the ground and bringing Lily closer to his chest. “When- when he had you. Your eyes were red.”

Lily thinks about the warmth that suffused her limbs. She’s never been under the Imperius before, but she can’t imagine that there’ll be much difference there; the knowledge of her own weakness burns in her chest like acid.

“I’m sorry,” she says. Her voice rasps, thick in her throat. “I’m- I- I hadn’t realized what was happening. It was- it was so warm, and I’ve only ever felt dark magic as cold, and he was so persuasive-”

“Lils,” says James, and she breaks off. “I don’t blame you.”

“You should,” says Lily. 

James shakes his head. “Don’t be stupid.”

It’s the fondness in his voice that makes the tears come again: exasperated, patient love. He doesn’t flinch from Lily; he drags her closer, keeps her grounded, and Lily’s never before trusted someone so implicitly. So wholly. 

“I didn’t hurt you?”

He huffs a laugh against her ear. “Your vines sprained my wrist, I think,” he says. “But then- well, I didn’t help matters any either.”

Lily frowns. “What did you do? The ring-” she looks down, and sees it- it’s warm, yes, but not in the pulsing, living manner it had been before. It’s a smoking, burned-out shell instead; a blackened husk. Lily twists around to meet James’ eyes, almost clocking him in the jaw with her skull. “Jimmy!”

“Yeah.” James nudges the metal ring with his toe. “I think I overdid it?”

“What did you do?”

“I, ah, got angry.” He looks sheepish, the idiot. “At him, right? I mean- he’s taken so fucking much- and I was just- well. Angry. And my accidental magic’s always taken the form of fire, so your vines? They got burned.”

“All of them?” Lily asks slowly. The amount of magic that would take- wandless magic is usually stronger than wand magic, but less directed; to match a wand’s spell and completely undo it would likely take more than ten times the magic needed for a wand spell.

James shakes his head. “Just my wrist. Half my arm. D’you know what was right there, though? That I could catch?”

Lily reaches for his arm and runs her fingers over the half of it that’s pink and hairless, as if something’s just plucked all of the hair out.

“Jimmy,” she breathes, as she turns his hand over and sees the livid rune carved into his wrist.

“Thor’s axe,” says James softly.

Her heart stutters. “You did what?” Lily demands, digging her nails into James’ skin. “I couldn’t possible have heard you correctly- James- Thor’s axe-”

“I wasn’t exactly thinking.”

“Oh, that’s obvious.” Lily lets go of him. “It’s called Deathlight, James, have you lost your mind?”

James looks like he’s chewing on his cheek. “Listen. I think- it’s wrong.”

“Four thousand years of history, and you’re going to prove everyone wrong?” Lily snaps. 

“Yeah,” says James, starting to sound irritable. “Because I’ve actually seen it work, Lily, and I think I know more about it than some stuffy witch translating pen marks that’ve been translated a dozen times before her?”

Lily bites her tongue, jaw working for a long moment. Then she sighs, waving her hand. “Yes,” she says crossly. “Yes, alright, that’s a fair point.”

James nods. “I don’t think it’s Dark.”

“James-”

“Because-” he breaks off, lifting his brows questioningly, until she nods. “Because you’ve all assumed it’s death of light, haven’t you? That’s what Deathlight means.”

“...yes.”

“Can you think of another meaning?” James asks quietly.

There’s a spark in his eyes- and it’s that thought, that light there, that gives her the answer. 

“No,” says Lily, jumping to her feet. She sways- the world sways- but Lily keeps to her feet and glares at James. “James. You can’t possibly be serious!”

“Deathlight,” says James, spreading his hands, revealing the rune, inflamed, livid, vivid: lightning, carved dark against his unmarked skin. “Lightning, Lily.”

Lily closes her eyes. She can see it, now that she knows what it is: a blinding, brilliant bolt of white light, searing down through the roof of the hut; it had shattered the wooden box that had held the ring, and completely destroyed the ring itself. There had been a high, electric whine in the air- that must have been what made her ears ring.

She breathes. Her chest aches, in the same spot that had hurt to kill Bellatrix. Lily’s hands are empty, her wand lying on the ground. She closes them into fists and folds her arms over her chest instead.

“Where’s the bloody axe now?”

“It listens to me,” James tells her, rubbing one hand over the back of his neck self-consciously. “I just had to will it- and it disappeared.”

Lily grips the wooden chair tightly. “And you can call it back?”

James holds out his hand and his brows furrow, before his arm jerks- Lily inhales sharply as the axe materializes out of thin air, as if James’d just conjured it. But when she approaches it, she can feel the promise of violence just leashed in its silver handle, in its shining blade; Lily can’t feel the darkness that had permeated it. 

Not that she trusts her instincts now.

“James,” she whispers.

“It’s dangerous?” asks James, wryly. 

We are both too sharp for this world, Lily thinks, sadly, tracing James’ cut lip, the shadow of a bruise ringing one temple. They’ve both had so much worse than this. When will we ever stop bleeding?

James’ skin is glowing from the silver light of the axe. Lightning, Lily thinks; deathlight, lovely, dangerous.

“Yes,” says Lily, reaching up to press a kiss to his lips. “But that hardly matters now, does it?”

...

“You need to get your head on straight,” James tells Lily. “We need to get our heads on straight. It isn’t even noon- Harry can stay in the daycare ‘til evening. Let’s go to Diagon.”

“James,” sighs Lily.

But James knows Lily; he knows how much it shakes her, to be doing the wrong thing. He knows how much it hurts her, to be doing the wrong thing and feel like she’s doing the right. To someone who lives with certainties, to have them shaken- James knows well, how that feels.

(James lives with others, depends on those that he calls family to love him and support him. 

Peter betrayed that.

There hasn’t been a single night in the past three weeks that James hasn’t woken up from a nightmare.)

“We’ll have hot tea,” he coaxes instead, reaching out and catching Lily’s hand. “Hot tea, with milk and honey. Not the watery stuff we’ve had for the past couple weeks.”

Lily closes her eyes tightly, then she nods, once.

James apparates them straight to London.

...

They slip into the Leaky Cauldron quietly, and wait in silence until their tea arrives. Lily tries to soak the warmth of the cup into her bones, where she feels as if winter has sunk into it. 

There’s marrow there, Lily knows, in the hollows of her bones. It’s where her body is born. Her blood- the vast majority of it- is made up of cells that last for only four months. Give her a year, and her blood will be formed anew thrice over. Right there, in the hollow, hallow shadows of her bones, there’s ice and darkness alongside all the parts of her that aren’t old enough to become anything.

James looks haggard, too. He’s charmed his hair blonde, and Lily’s hair’s some halfway shade between red and black; they’re both huddled in a small corner booth and curled over their cups silently, letting the steam catch on their face’s skin.

Lily rubs her finger over the smooth wood of the tabletop. 

There’s no varnish. It’s age that’s worn it down, not polish. Lily wonders how many tears have soaked into the wood, how much beer and grief and joy.

“James,” she whispers, reaching out one hand to his. She rests it on the table, upturned, waiting for him to press his palm back to hers. “I’m so afraid.”

She shouldn’t be. Lily knows how to defeat death. She knows, down deep in her blood and bone. You defeat death by accepting it, and she has to, she has to accept death before she can save James and Harry and-

“You know what we call insane?”

James’ face is thinner than Lily’s ever seen it. There’s a gauntness to his face that makes Lily want to take him and kiss his pain out of his muscles, a pallid cast to his face that makes her viciously, terribly angry. His hair is blond and his eyes are dark and there’s a spark in that darkness that reminds Lily of death and fear and brilliant, shining, lovely light.

Lightning.

“What?”

“Doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.” Lily clutches tighter at James’ hand. “How many times can we fight against him before we’re defeated? How much- how much can we lose before we lose our-”

Suddenly, James smiles and Lily stops. The shadows darkening his face don’t fade; they deepen. He looks angry, and regal, all at once, like the busts of Arthur and Gryffindor brought to life once more. 

“We’re Gryffindors,” he says. “And that doesn’t mean being insane, maybe, but sometimes it means looking insane.”

“James,” she says quietly.

“Lily,” he returns, eyes alit, silvered. “Our family isn’t dead. And so long as our son is alive, he won’t stop coming after us. I’m not letting him have Harry.”

“I’m af-” Lily freezes.

James tries to turn to see what she’s looking at, but Lily tightens her grip on his hand until he stops. She knows she’s lost what little color she had- her heart is pounding in her ears, loud, drowning out everything else.

“Fuck,” she breathes.

“Lils-”

“Don’t move,” Lily hisses, reaching for her wand and sliding it off the table silently. “Don’t call anyone’s attention- we can’t-”

“Then tell me what’s going on!”

“The day’s paper just came,” she whispers, eyes flicking over the pub. 

James frowns. “This late?”

Lily knows her hands are shaking. They’re too late-

“It wasn’t there when we came in. I thought it was because we weren’t here in the morning, that they’d run out- but they just delivered it.” She meets James’ eyes, and shivers convulsively. “Malfoy’s on the front cover.”

“Lily-” he twists around, sees the front page that Lily’s been seeing, and turns back to her, dead-white. “We have to get out of here.”

“We have to find out what’s happening.” She straightens and swallows, hard. “Three weeks was too long. If he has control of our government- well, Jesus, James, we have to move faster. Find out what that bloody artifact was in Little Hangleton, see how to kill a man who’s better with his wand than both of us combined-”

“-but first, we need to see what’s going on.” 

“Yes.” Lily tilts her head and appraises him closely. “Go to Harry. Take him home. You’re shaking, Jimmy.”

James’ eyes narrow. “You’re not much better off.”

“I’m not the one who called down lightning this morning,” says Lily. “You know that only covens used to do that, right? Weather witchery always takes covens, because it’s so exhausting. And you just- did it. By yourself.”

“Thor helped,” he says dryly.

Lily sighs. “That isn’t the point.”

“I’m a pureblood.”

“And you’re faster than me with your wand,” agrees Lily. “Listen- you levitate this cup, and I’ll let you go, Jimmy. Go on.”

James closes his eyes. “Lily.”

But his hands don’t move towards his wand. 

“Apparate home,” she says gently. “Spend time with Harry. Rest. I’ll come back with the news.”

“The last time I let you come to Diagon alone, you fought-” he drops his voice, so he’s mouthing the last bit: “-and killed Bellatrix Lestrange.”

Lily feels sick, and free, and exhausted like she’s never felt before. Her hand shakes, but her grip is sure. Give her a target, and she’ll blow out the bullseye without pause.

“I survived,” she says, before pushing her teacup back and rising to her feet. “And it won’t get that far again. The door’s that way, Jimmy.” She tilts her head towards the door leading out to muggle London, and after a long moment- when James nods in one abrupt, irritable jerk of his head- Lily moves towards the door that leads further into Diagon.

In a small corner, she disillusions herself, then spends a dozen minutes transfiguring and charming her clothes into something better fitting her persona. Dark pants, for freedom of movement; a similarly dark form-fitting tunic that splits apart at the hips for the same purpose; boots with sensible soles and a cloak that she charms with a nifty spell that keeps it from tangling with her limbs. Her hair’s already thick and tangled, so she only brushes it and

Then, still disillusioned, Lily steps out.

The paperboy that delivers the Prophet to the rest of Diagon steps out of Jigger’s Apothecary, and Lily presses her wand to the soft skin of his neck. 

“Step into the alley,” she breathes.

He goes rigid. But he does; it’s shadowed and empty, and Lily cancels the disillusionment at the same time as she shoves him away from her. When he turns back, she’s haloed by the brightness of the sun outside of the alley, and cloaked in darkness otherwise.

“Who’re you, then?” he demands.

Lily flicks her wand to the side. The boy flinches when the rock explodes beside his head- he scrambles all the way to the other side of the alley- before he sees what Lily’d done.

A silver theta, crossed through the middle with a jagged lightning bolt.

“Thanatos,” he whispers.

“Yes,” says Lily. 

“You killed Lestrange.”

“Not enough of them, clearly.” Lily eyes him. “I need help.”

The boy’s fingers dig into the dust. Slowly, he levers himself upright. He’s a slender person; tall and lean, and the result makes him look like he’s been stretched a little, pulled too thin like taffy. His hair’s a colorless sort, all washed-out, but it’s dyed at the tips with purple and electric blue. They make his eyes- a very pale green- stand out.

“I’m not helping you hurt anyone,” he says.

“There was a boy before you,” Lily says slowly. “The Diagon Alley Runner, they called him. It worked out because the shops all pitched in on his coin, and none of them needed to pay for a Prophet subscription. His name was...”

The boy swallows.

“Brian,” says Lily. “That was his name. What happened to him?”

The boy shakes his head. “I don’t- I don’t know anyone by that name.”

Lily feels anger balloon in her chest. She’d known Brian, not well, perhaps, but- they’d been friends, of a sort, and he’d always had a smile that lit up Diagon even brighter than it was. He’d been a muggleborn. For three years, Brian had run around Diagon, delivering papers with cheerful abandon, and the day there was a headline screaming Ministry of Magic in Shambles and a Malfoy and Lestrange in the papers, he was gone.

A fucking muggleborn.

“You started working this morning,” she whispers, voice shaking, her wand untrembling. “Didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Get up,” snarls Lily, jabbing her wand at him, barely stopping herself from throwing sparks in his eyes. “Get up. Where’s your backlog of papers?”

“There’s-” he pauses, thinking, before flinching again as Lily’s wand starts spitting sparks again. “-a warehouse? We keep old papers there.”

“Take me there.”

“The past month,” she says when they arrive, crisply, coldly, like wind-whittled ice. “All of the papers, one from each day. Bring them out to me.”

He does. Lily follows him where he goes, and when he’s reached this morning’s- he pauses.

His hands tighten on the last packet, knuckles blanching, before he says, quietly, “My mam’s in the Ministry.”

Lily lifts her wand, but he continues talking without turning.

“My dad’s on the run,” he says, almost soundlessly, and Lily lets her wand lower just a little. “The Prophet doesn’t know that, though. They know I’m a halfblood, and forget all ‘bout the other half.” He turns around, suddenly, and his eyes are bright, like a glowing, eerie lamp. “They’d kill him if they get a chance.”

“I-”

He shoves the bundle at her and steps away. “You come near me again and I’ll go to the aurors.”

“They’ll kill him, but you won’t help me?” demands Lily.

“My mam’s in the Ministry,” he says again, firmly, loudly. 

Oh, thinks Lily, watching his long, ungainly limbs. Oh, you poor boy.

“Do you need help?”

He clenches his jaw. “No.”

“There’s no shame in it if-”

“Thanatos, right?” he asks. “I don’t need help from someone called death. This ain’t my fight.”

“They have your father running away,” Lily exclaims. “They have your mother working besides the men hunting him down, and-” 

How many times has she heard that- this isn’t my fight, this isn’t my battle, if I close my eyes I won’t have to see my friends and family die-

“Not your fight?” she demands. “Not your fight? This is your fight, like nothing else.”

“’m a halfblood.”

Lily scoffs. Rage thrums in her breast like a second heartbeat, hot and fierce. 

“Voldemort will come for the mudbloods first, yes,” she says. “He’ll go for the muggles, too. Then he’ll attack anyone who dared to stand against him, and then he’ll kill everyone who didn’t kneel to him- but do you know what he’ll do after that?”

The boy stares at her.

“He won’t hesitate to kill you,” Lily tells him. “And there won’t be a single person in this world who’ll stand up for you then, because all that will be left are the cowards.”

He turns away, then back to her- and he’s smiling, humorlessly, like a skull stripped of skin. “You were a Gryffindor,” he says, as if it’s a grand joke. “Weren’t you?”

“Yes,” says Lily cautiously.

“Lady,” says the boy, leaning forwards, “coward ain’t the worst insult you can call someone.”

Lily hisses out through her teeth before she can stop herself.

“Call it what you want,” he says, stepping away. “You come after me again, and I’ll show you how quick I can be with my wand.”

“I killed Bellatrix Lestrange,” Lily calls after him. “You think you’re faster than her?”

He doesn’t turn around, though he stops moving. “Doesn’t take speed to kill people. Just luck.” Then his shoulders drop just a little. “Lady Thanatos,” he says, quietly, head arching to meet Lily’s eyes. He looks older, then- exhausted, worn, but steady. The bright tips of his hair catch the late afternoon sunlight. “I won’t leave this place. But that- well, I mean to say- it doesn’t mean I don’t want my father back.”

“I don’t understand.”

His lips tip up. “Give ‘em hell,” he says, and steps out of the door.

Lily watches him leave- I don’t know your name, she thinks, a quizzical sort of sadness in her chest, before she apparates away. There’s no time for thoughts on people who don’t care about the future of their world in her life, not now. There’s far more important things that she has to face.

...

Lily spreads the papers on the damp floor of the cave carefully. 

They take alternating papers and sort through the articles as quickly as they can. After this, they need to research the ring; James isn’t sure how, exactly, Lily plans to do that- but she’s better than him at the esoteric magics, and he’s not shy about admitting it. But he can manage this easily enough. It’s just skimming over cruel words that make his gorge rise; it’s watching Harry out of the corner of his eye and thanking everything he knows that his son is safe, so near to him.

 Then James feels his heart stutter to a stop. “Lily,” he says, strangled.

She jerks her head up. 

He tosses the paper over to her. 

Lily’s eyes narrow as she skims the page. James can identify the exact moment that she reaches the pertinent article- her face drains of all color. He thinks her hands are shaking.

“James,” she whispers, not looking away from it.

He closes his eyes. James knows what it says; it’s imprinted itself on the insides of his eyeballs.

Death Eater Captured!

Early this morning, the auror department arrested Sirius Black (Figure 11) on charges of high treason, murder, and aiding and abetting the terrorist organization known as the Death Eaters. According to Head Auror Scrimgeour, there is “incontrovertible evidence” of Black’s crimes.  “Due to extenuating circumstances,” said Scrimgeour, “Black has been directly transported to Azkaban, where he will remain in the maximum security cells.” Scrimgeour went on to stress that this arrest is a triumph for the department. The aurors are making progress in derailing the terrorist activities of the Death Eaters, and witches and wizards have no need to fear for their safety.  However, until his high-profile arrest, Black had been well on his way to a distinguished career in the auror department. These are likely the extenuating circumstances that Auror Scrimgeour spoke of: the auror department is mandated by law to keep citizens accused of high treason in the Ministry of Magic’s cells for a period of 72 hours under which the accused can either prove their innocence or be remanded to Azkaban for a longer trial period. To eliminate security concerns arising from Black’s intimate knowledge of auror protocols, he was taken to Azkaban directly, where he is now under the purview of dementors. 

Azkaban is such a dark and terrifying word, the very spikes of the letters piercing through James’ skin, regret dripping across the cave floor under him, soaking into the stone.

“Jimmy,” says Lily, again, and when he looks up at her, there are tears in her eyes.

“We have to get him,” says James, in a voice he scarcely recognizes.

Lily swallows. “Of course.”

“Bloody-” he grinds his fist into his thigh and forces himself to still. Harry’s there, right next to Lily, playing idly with the seaweed net that Lily’d woven a few weeks ago. Instead, he slumps back. “We should’ve thought about it.”

“We didn’t tell anyone,” Lily agrees. “They all thought Sirius was our Secret-Keeper.” She exhales, slowly. “If I get my hands on Peter-” she shakes her head. “He’ll be lucky to die.”

James doesn’t move his head.

He doesn’t know what he’ll do, if Peter ever shows up. If Peter is standing in front of Lily, she’ll curse him until his skin is inside out, he knows; but if Peter was standing in front of James- James doesn’t know how he’ll raise his wand. James doesn’t know how he’ll cast spells at a man he’s known for nearly half of his life. James doesn’t know if he can look into Peter’s eyes and muster the hate.

He knows Peter, that’s the problem. He loves Peter, deep as he’s ever loved Sirius or Remus- they’re his brothers. They’re his brothers, and that’s the end of the story.

Sirius would never have raised his wand to Regulus, no matter how much they hated each other.

James doesn’t know how he could ever hope to do any different to Peter.

(Anger is different from hatred, James thinks, even as he doesn’t look at Lily where she’s weeping silently. He is angry at Peter, perhaps will be for the rest of his life- but he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to hate the man. Ah, Peter, I don’t know where we went wrong.)

Then he reaches for Lily’s hands and draws her to her feet.

“We sleep tonight,” he says, curling his hands over her cheeks, cradling that lovely, loving face in his palms. “We rest. And as soon as we can, we’ll take him from there.”

“Break into Azkaban?” asks Lily, disbelieving. “There’s things that even we can’t do.”

“It’s... difficult,” agrees James. “But do you know of anyone else who’s survived Voldemort more than thrice? Lily- we don’t have a choice. Sirius isn’t- we can’t- we have to save him. We have to.”

Lily’s hands reach up to clutch at his forearms. “Jimmy,” she whispers.

James kisses her. Long and slow. She tastes like honey, like summer; amidst the biting wind outside, James can feel home in her warmth.

“We have to,” he whispers into her ear, and watches Lily slowly rock forwards, press her face into his chest.

Then Lily pulls away. She steps towards Harry and swoops him up, pecking at his forehead. Slowly, she turns back to James.

“Harry can’t stay with us if we do,” she says. “It’ll take too long- what, two days? Three?- we’ll need to keep him with someone safe, then.”

James leans against the side of the cave. The rough stone is cold against his shirt. He thinks on it- Remus is in hiding with the werewolves; Sirius is in prison; Peter’s betrayed them. Of Lily’s friends: Marlene is dead, Mary left for foreign shores as soon as she graduated, and hasn’t been seen since. There isn’t anyone else that they can trust with Harry.

“Who, though?” he asks.

Lily traces Harry’s hair, then conjures a glittery phoenix out of her wand that flies around his head. He looks enchanted by it, and Lily rises to her feet slowly, looking like her limbs are aching, like she’s more than thrice her actual age.

“I know someone,” she says, hesitantly. 

James frowns at her. Lily looks up at him, glass-green eyes like all those shattered, shining pieces he’s seen out of pubs, drinking glasses and bottles crushed under his heel in the gutter. The phoenix soars above them, glittering golden and scarlet as it spirals upwards to the ceiling.

“You’re not going to like it,” says Lily.

The phoenix explodes.

“Do you trust me?”

Red sparks fall on their skin, catch on Harry’s dark hair, shine from the depths of Lily’s thick hair. She looks like a siren, like an ancient priestess. She looks like his wife.

“Always,” says James. “Forever.”

...

In one world, Petunia Dursley opens the door on a cold November morning to a letter that explained of her sister’s death.

In one world, it was accompanied by a small, scarred boy. In another, it wasn’t.

...

“May I come in?” Lily asks quietly.

Petunia glares at her. “No,” she snaps. “I don’t want you here.”

“Petu-”

“You’ve the nerve to come here after what you did?” Petunia demands, voice growing shriller. “You try to- to- to infect my son with your witchiness, and now you come here? Get out, I say! Out!”

“I’m not in yet,” says Lily levelly. Petunia flushes angrily, but Lily only lifts her chin to meet her anger. “‘Tuney, I’ve no idea what magic you’re speaking of. I haven’t spoken to you in-”

In nearly a year.

Since their parents died.

“-a while,” finishes Lily lamely.

Petunia flushes as if she knows what Lily’s thinking of. Her chin goes up, in a move that Lily recognizes as her own, as a thing that comes directly from their father- but then she steps aside from the door, eyes sweeping over the rest of the street.

“Well, come in then,” she says impatiently. “No use dawdling on the street.”

“It’s a lovely neighborhood,” says Lily, pressing her hands together to keep from wringing them. She feels distinctly helpless, in this white kitchen and its smooth linoleum tiles and polished appliances; Lily’s world is made of wood and stone and blood, and this modernity is as far as one can come from that. “Very expensive.”

“Vernon and I moved in when I realized I was pregnant,” says Petunia, before turning and arching a disapproving brow. “There’s a primary school right down the street- the best in the county. And there’s a lot of families with children around Dudley’s age. Where are you living now, Lily? Some mansion, like your husband spent all of my wedding dinner expounding on owning?”

Lily thinks of the chilly, damp cave that she and James have been living in for the past month, and can’t resist a wry smile. “No,” she says. “Definitely nothing like that.”

“So your husband’s a liar as well as an imbecile.”

“’Tuney-”

“Don’t call me that,” flares Petunia, before smoothing her hands over her skirt. “No, Lily, you tell me how fair it was of him to spend our wedding dinner- the wedding that Vernon paid for out of his own pocket!- in homage to himself and his- his stupid friends, and all the money that his father and father’s father had passed down to him! As if Vernon hasn’t been working himself to the bone for his entire life! As if being given things is better than working for them! And then his friend- your friend, Lily- had the gall to call Vernon a leech!” 

“I’m sorry,” says Lily quietly.

Petunia eyes her. She breathes deep and lets the angry flush fade from her cheeks. “Why are you here?”

“Because- well, you know of the war, don’t you?”

“The war that killed our parents.” 

“Yes,” says Lily. “Well- the leader of the terrorist group- he came for us. For me and James. A month ago.”

There’s a long silence. If Lily’d expected Petunia to gasp or ask after her health, Lily would’ve been sorely disappointed. But their relationship had soured long before such expectations could have arisen.

“Clearly you’re alright,” says Petunia.

Lily inclines her head. “It was close, though.”

“Lily-”

“One of James’ friends betrayed us. That’s how he knew where to come.”

“The one with black hair?” asks Petunia, lips twisting.

“The- the short one,” replies Lily. “And he framed Sirius. Which is why I’m here, actually.” She firms her shoulders. Don’t flinch now, Lily. “I need your help.”

Petunia’s eyes narrow suspiciously. “Help?”

“It’ll take three days- at least- to rescue Sirius. We can’t have Harry with us then. It’ll be so dangerous, ‘Tun- Petunia. Dueling, spells being thrown all over- he needs to be kept somewhere safe.”

Petunia doesn’t answer for a long minute. Then she whirls around and strides into the living room, Lily chasing on her heels, where she scoops up a chubby little boy with her stick-straight hair; she whispers into his ear and juggles him through a tiny tantrum before setting him down once more.

“I told you we don’t hold with your- kind in our house,” she announces coldly. “You haven’t respected that ever before, so why would you do so now?”

It sounds like a rhetorical question, but Lily answers anyway.

“I’ve stayed away since you sent that letter last year,” she says. “Petunia- I haven’t sent anything, I haven’t spoken to you in-”

“-you sent a letter!” exclaims Petunia. “It was just there, under my milk one morning, and you had it magicked to follow me wherever I went! Don’t deny it, I know what your magic looks like! It spat glitter all over me when I tried to ignore it!” She sweeps a hand over her collarbone, shaking. “It was terrifying.”

“And I’m sorry for that,” says Lily, before stepping forwards and taking Petunia’s narrow palm in her own. “But I didn’t send that letter. Did you read it?”

“No.” Petunia hesitates. “I burned it.”

Lily snorts, imagining the glittery letter and Petunia’s desperate attempts to burn it before it could be seen by her neighbors. There’s only one person who would have sent that kind of a letter, though. In fact, there’s only one person who would even know to send it to Petunia.

“Then it was probably Dumbledore,” she says. “He probably sent it to you to say- well- that I was dead.”

Petunia goes white. “What?”

“I told you that the leader of the terrorist group came for me and James,” says Lily. “We survived, but- it was so close, Petunia. James was hurt so badly. And I had to heal him, I had to care for Harry, I had to make sure nobody else was following us- the safest thing was to let everyone think we were dead.”

“Have you lost your mind?” Petunia demands loudly. 

Her eyes are their mother’s eyes. Blue-grey, like the froth of an ocean’s waves. Lily fights not to recoil at the brightness in them; at the fear, and shock, all melding into something that looks a lot like anger. Of all the people she’s known, Lily’s lost the most: her mother, her father, everyone she was close to in Hogwarts. James and his friends don’t understand- they’ve been risking their lives for so long, they’ve forgotten how it feels to not throw themselves into danger at the first provocation.

It’s been so long since she’s had someone look at her with rage for risking her life, rather than pride.

“No,” she murmurs.

Petunia shakes her head. “You’ve a son,” she hisses. “How selfish can you be, Lily? You’re still fighting, after everything you’ve lost? Why?”

“Because I can’t run,” replies Lily, wearily. “He’ll follow us wherever we go.”

And god, isn’t that frightening? There’s nowhere in this world that will keep Lily’s son safe from Voldemort. If they flee to France, further- dark magic is strong there, stronger by far than Britain, and even worse: no nation in the world will harbor refugees fleeing from a Dark Lord. If the government finds out that Lily’s family might begin a war in their lands, they won’t hesitate to deport them.

The best defense for Harry is for Voldemort to think he’s dead.

“Will you help me?” she asks instead of explaining further, turning to meet Petunia’s gaze. “I know how horrible we were to each other, Petunia. I know- I know our history. But a terrible mistake’s been made, and an innocent man is in prison, suffering things he should never have to, and the only people who can save him are me and my husband. Will you help me?”

Petunia closes her eyes. She wavers, thin and tall, like the girl from Diagon; like the boy Lily’d met this morning. 

Then she opens them.

“This prison,” she says, licking her lips, “is it- that one- Azkaban? The one with the... dementors?”

Lily pauses. Petunia couldn’t have ever heard that name more than twice; Lily’s shied away from discussing it in front of their parents. The only person in Lily’s life who would have ever spoken of such things is Severus, and she hasn’t spoken to him in nearly seven years.

She thinks of Petunia, small, smart, shoved out of the limelight by Lily; Lily’d looked like their mother’s youngest sister reborn, a woman who’d died from an unlucky riptide almost before she could walk, and their mother had always been more loving of Lily, kinder to her, than ever to Petunia. Lily thinks of how close they’d been, despite all those little things that must have hurt Petunia. She thinks of their childhood, and all those things that had made Lily stand out in a world that had only ever punished Petunia for attempting the same. 

She thinks of Petunia trying to grasp those slippery, shining syllables that encompass magic, quietly, desperately, slowly turning to hate to keep jealousy at bay.

“Yes,” says Lily, careful to keep her voice unpitying.

Petunia’s jaw works, slowly, like she’s testing out the words and biting them back even before they can reach her lips.

She doesn’t look at Lily- her eyes are focused on her son, and there’s some conflict raging in them- and after a long, breathless pause, she says, deathly quiet, “Very well.”

“What?” Lily can’t help asking.

“I said very well,” says Petunia, lifting her eyes to meet Lily’s. She doesn’t look away now. It’s bravery, Lily thinks; not a kind that anyone else would have recognized, but real, extant, and as hard as anything Lily’s ever done. “Bring your son here.”

“Thank you,” says Lily softly.

Petunia’s eyes harden. “Nobody deserves to be locked in a place with soul-eaters.” She swallows. “I never liked that boy- but- Lord, Lily, there’s things that I wouldn’t ever wish on a person.”

The last time she met Sirius, he’d charmed Petunia’s hat into a frog and cursed Vernon to have a raincloud following him over all of their honeymoon.

Lily steps forwards and before she can overthink it, she hugs Petunia.

But Petunia shoves her away. 

When Lily looks up at her, hurt, Petunia’s trembling, white-faced with her anger. “Don’t you dare act like we’re on equal terms,” she bites out. “This is- this is what a normal family does, when asked to, when given this choice- but that doesn’t mean that I’ve forgiven you of anything. You’re a selfish, privileged little girl who’s never had to grow up with the fears everyone else has. So send your son to me.” She seems to coil in on herself, abruptly embittered and sour as an unripe lemon. “Maybe I can teach him to be kind.”

“Why do you hate me?” cries Lily, throwing up her arms. 

Every time she thinks they’ve bridged something- every time she even hopes- Petunia changes the game, she steps back, she goes cold and cruel as Severus fucking Snape. Lily hates it. 

“Oh, as if you’ve not given me enough excuses,” sneers Petunia. 

“What is that supposed to mean?”

��Where were you when I buried our parents?” shouts Petunia, advancing on Lily, using her height to crowd her backwards. “I sent you letter after letter, Lily, and you didn’t come! I delayed for a fortnight before I realized you weren’t coming!” There are tears in her eyes, those terrible eyes that look like their mother’s. “I needed you,” she whispers. “For the only time in my life, I needed my sister there for me, and you weren’t there. You couldn’t even give me the courtesy of an answer.”

Oh, thinks Lily, and her heart twists in her chest like someone’s taken it and squeezed it. Oh, ‘Tuney, I never meant this.

“I did send you one,” says Lily quietly.

Petunia’s eyes flash. “One. And it ignored everything about the funeral- it was like you hadn’t even heard-”

“I’d heard.”

“Then why?”

“Because they went after our parents because of me,” says Lily. “You know that. They killed our parents and they would’ve killed you, too, if they could’ve gotten their hands on you. And I had to make sure that wouldn’t happen.”

Petunia sits down, hard, on the armchair behind her. “That was a possibility?”

“Petunia.” Lily stares at her. “It’s a war. Of course it was a possibility. These people- they’re such- I tried to hide it from all of you. The ugliness of magic. But it’s- there’s people there who hate people like me, who hate people who aren’t born into magical families. They’ve gained power. Too much.”

“And you couldn’t tell me that, of course,” says Petunia. She’s trying for her usual disdain, but she looks utterly unnerved; her voice wobbles just enough for Lily to try to soften hers. “You couldn’t come here, and explain things to me.”

“I spent the weeks after they died developing a ritual,” Lily says, before kneeling and taking one of Dudley’s red colored blocks, running her fingers over the smooth wood. “I made sure they couldn’t track you through my blood.”

Petunia licks her lips. “How?”

She hesitates. “By cleaving myself from the name Evans.” Petunia’s head snaps up, and Lily clarifies, sadly: “I’m no longer Lily Evans, ‘Tuney. Not Lily Evans Potter either. I’m Lily Potter.”

If she and James ever separate, then Lily won’t be anything. Just Lily, red-haired, bright-eyed, quick-tongued Lily. She’ll have her wand and her mind and her anger, and not a single thing more.

It isn’t a sacrifice she regrets.

Lily watches Petunia for a long minute, then she reaches over and pats Dudley on his head- and then she rises to her feet. It aches in her bones. But Harry will be safe here, Lily knows, between wide windows and clean sofas and soft carpets. So she nods to Petunia and heads towards the door.

“Lily,” calls Petunia, and she stills. “That letter- those flowers you kept prattling about- was that a code?”

“Yes,” says Lily.

“Whose?”

“Whose do you think?”

(Their mother’s. Long, sunny afternoons filled with their mother showing them pictures of coastal blossoms and describing another language. They’d eaten oat cookies that tasted like salt and sand, and their mother had whispered long, liquid syllables of a language that their father hated- he’d never learned Welsh, had even forbidden it from their household, and their mother had accepted that to his face.

When he napped, though, she took her girls out to the back and gave them cookies she’d learned from her mother, and taught them, slowly, patiently, two languages: one of her hometown, and another of flowers.

The last time she’d done so had been before Lily went to Hogwarts.)

“You remember that?” asks Petunia.

“I’ve never forgotten,” says Lily. 

She turns, and Petunia’s closer to her than she’d thought- close enough to touch, though neither of them does.

“I’ve never forgotten,” Lily murmurs, and Petunia nods, once, face pale and narrow in the kitchen sunlight- she’s not pretty like Lily, not with life bursting out of her, but rather like a piece of cut glass- hard, harsh, tempered and forged and shining. They’ve hated each other for so long. For too long. “I’m sorry for letting you think otherwise.”

“As,” says Petunia, slowly, lifting her chin, eyes glittering, the last Evans in all the world, “am I.”

...

In one world, Petunia welcomes a boy into her home in November.

In another, she welcomes the same boy into her home in December.

(In one world, Petunia welcomes a boy into her home. In another, she welcomes him into her heart.)

...

They’re ready: James- as an auror- has patrolled Azkaban; he knows the way its security works. One day to map the terrain and decide their route, Lily thinks, and to test the wards from the island’s edges, where the wards are faltering, and then- then, they can break into it.

Lily hefts her bags higher onto her back, and sees something stick to the rough cloth- she peels it off, revealing a damp, smeared piece of the Prophet that she’d clipped out and forgotten in the rush to save Sirius.

Irene is there, written into immortality on one of the papers: defiant, angry, vicious. This world isn’t safe. And the only way to make it safer is to make sure it’s safer ourselves. Lily reads the words, traces over them, and she feels the sadness in her chest battle with pride, feels the sadness surrender.

I said this. Her fingers are stained black with ink. I touched another’s life, and she remembered that. 

There had been blood on Lily’s hands that day. She’d touched Irene’s shirt, and she’d stained it red, and Irene hadn’t flinched away. Just a few days earlier, Lily’d hated her sister. This morning, she’d handed her son over to him, and shed only shed a few tears in the process. Days before that, Lily met a boy, years older than Irene, a coward and a prideful one at that- a boy who’d been swallowed by the war far earlier than Irene ever had been; a boy who hadn’t raised a single wand to the dark side, who refused to do so.

Courage, dear heart. It’s an old saying. Lily remembers the words, surging up from the black waters of her childhood; reading books on her kitchen counter, amidst the smell of egg and pungent thyme, sunlight leavening her hair and warming her shoulders. There is something brighter than this.

She hadn’t known courage then. She hadn’t known all the forms courage could take, hadn’t even dreamt them.

Now, she looks up at James, as he enters the cave, ready to do the impossible, and the tears in her eyes fall when she sees the familiar, blocky edges of his hair. 

“Lils?” asks James, startled.

She shakes her head, not trusting her voice. Lily swallows, then reaches up and presses her fingers to his narrow, sharp jaw, spreading shadowy ink over his stubble.

“Let’s give ‘em hell,” she whispers.

...

They land on a stony shore.

James transfigures a boat out of the smooth rock, and Lily charms it to head towards Azkaban. Once at the edge of the wards, Lily runs the quick tests, wand flashing over the choppy waters with bursts of brilliant light.

“They’ll allow you in,” she says finally. “With verification.”

“Then it isn’t an issue.”

“James,” says Lily. “You don’t have your wand, have you forgotten that?”

He narrows his eyes back at her. “Bobby Crick had a memory for shit.”

“Azkaban’s warden?”

James nods easily. “Kept forgetting his wand inside the sealed room. So Scrimgeour changed the wards, from wands to magic. And there’s no way they’ll have stricken me from the stones, not with the whole restructuring of the Ministry. If they’ve even figured it out in the first place.”

“If you’re wrong, Jimmy,” warns Lily.

But this is James at his worst- or his best, because Merlin knows his luck’s held out thus far- because his friend is in danger, and half the reason his friend’s in danger is because of James, so there won’t be any reasoning with him on safety.

“I’m not,” he says firmly, and that’s that.

...

The next morning, they return. And James’ luck holds: they enter the wards without any problems. Lily keeps herself tucked in the shadows of her cloak, motionless, as they move further towards the dark fortress.

It’s like a parody of heading to Hogwarts. Here, the boat is cold, the waves are rough and chilling, the fortress is lit by sparse torches that aren’t helpful even in the light of day.

“Come on, love,” murmurs James, as they dock. His eyes- so bright, always- are shining with something too hot to call excitement. Bloodlust, perhaps. This is what the Britons of old had faced against Viking raiders, thinks Lily. This is what the Romans had faced, when battling the druids. Lily’s so glad she’s not on the opposite side. “Ready?”

Lily lifts her wand and tilts her head at him. “Always,” she returns.

...

The bottom levels of Azkaban are devoid of dementors.

It’s where petty criminals are kept, as well as those who are still waiting for their trials. The dementors’ miasma permeates even this floor, despite them not being allowed here, and it’s that which holds the prisoners locked inside, not the guards, who’re just three aurors, all of them who spend their miserable shifts in the guardsroom that’s really nothing more than a glorified dungeon.

James walks back into the prison.

He doesn’t shiver; he’s well past such easy, uncomplicated motions. Even in the dank, dark blackness, the world feels hot and bright and sharp enough to slice. Slowly, silently, James heads towards the guardroom.

Years and years ago, the first time he watched Remus transform- the world had been so bright that night, the moon silvering everything in sight; James’ flank had been ruined, a mess of shredded blood and bone, to the point that he hadn’t been able to walk- James had watched the sky lighten, had watched Remus’ shame, his horror, and he hadn’t repented for any of it. He hadn’t been able to breathe without choking on the blood. For weeks after, his teeth were stained red, the insides of his cheeks raw from chewing on it to keep from screaming.

He can’t imagine regretting that.

In this war, James has taken lives, saved lives, blown up buildings and escaped madmen. His hands are stained a red bright as Lily’s hair, as Harry’s mouth, as Remus’ tired eyes and Sirius’ jackets and Peter’s delicate, carefully tended roses. 

He doesn’t regret it.

James slashes his wand down, once, words surging over his tongue, slippery and harsh, and the door to the guardroom explodes as if it’s never existed in the first place.

Spellfire erupts from his wand, scalding and brilliant. The three aurors within don’t stand a chance: James is the best in the division, in the Order, and he’s got rage and surprise both on his side. A breath later, Lily sweeps in after him. She waves her wand and sinks into the glittering strings that represent wards. She’s searching for Sirius, whose magic she can probably feel with those runes she’s carved into her skin. 

Suddenly, Lily hisses out through her teeth, like she’s been slapped across the face, and her fingers move even faster, flicking the strings with a fervor that makes James’ spine itch. Then she looks at him.

Her eyes are dark.

Black, like the sea around them.

James lifts his wand immediately. “Lily.”

“It’s me, Jimmy,” she says, but it’s strained, as if coming from a great distance or after a great feat. It does nothing to reassure him. “It’s me. But- there’s a thing that I can do with these wards- it’s like a loophole. Stupid of them. It’ll take- give me a minute.”

“We don’t have much time.” 

“I know,” she snaps, but her eyes are reflecting the light of her wards, unearthly and ugly; James doesn’t care what she says, he wants to reach forwards and catch her pale, lovely hands, drag her to him, ground her to the earth with the weight of him. But he trusts Lily, too, would trust her even if she gives him a sword and asks him to gut himself, would trust her so long as he knows her to be in her own mind. So he stays silent.

When she finally lets the wards fade, the blackness has faded from her eyes. Her pupils look a little larger than usual, but that could just as easily be the darkness around them.

“I have Azkaban,” whispers Lily, before raising her chin to the ceiling, eyes shutting dreamily. “Come. I know where Sirius is.”

James follows, slowly, warily. But Lily does seem to know where she’s going- they head upstairs, towards the maximum security portion of Azkaban; and, perhaps, Azkaban is indeed responding to her, because they don’t even encounter any dementors along the way.

“Two more flights,” she murmurs, at one point. 

This, thinks James, wand held too tight in his left hand, fear and anger a hot ball in the pit of his stomach, lungs a little too small for the rest of his body, is too easy.

And just as he has the thought, Lily’s body seizes up. She doesn’t collapse. Rather, she goes rigid as a board, and when James leaps forwards, he sees blood trickling down her nose, vivid against her skin. Lily opens her eyes.

They’re black again, and James has to fight not to recoil.

“You didn’t kill them,” she says. 

“Kill who?”

“The guards.”

James shakes his head. “No, I did. I definitely-”

“One of them just alerted the Ministry!” Lily says, voice pitching higher, almost into hysterics. “I need- give me a- a minute.” 

Even as he supports her body, she flicks open the ward schema- it shouldn’t be accessible outside of the guardroom, but Lily’d mentioned something about a loophole, hadn’t she?- and starts tangling the strings together with a speed that looks like madness. 

But the walls ice over; James can feel the chill in his bones as the dementors approach. Whatever Lily’d done to keep them away must have failed. It’s clear to him, even as he watches her worriedly: she’s faltering.

James jumps as the door at the far end of the hall starts rattling. He swears under his breath, then shifts away from Lily carefully- she keeps to her feet easily, doesn’t even seem to realize that he’s not behind her- so he turns to face the door. 

The hall goes darker, if possible, and James sees three dementors surge through the door. The only illumination comes from Lily’s ward schema, and even that is a flickering, pale shade of what’s necessary.

He thinks of Harry, warm and small in his arms, a tiny, black-capped bundle that hadn’t even been as long as his forearms, and shouts, “Expecto Patronum!” and-

And-

And Prongs doesn’t leap from his wand.

A silver shield forms instead.

James is driven backwards one step, two, three. He sets his shoulders and shoves forwards, gasping. But the dementors approach, unconcerned by the flickering, fading shield between them.

He sinks to his knees. Sweat drips down his back. James inhales, exhales, inhales- and he breathes in freezing, terrifying despair along with precious air.

It reminds him of the peppermint leaves off the Orkney coast; that’s where Potter Manor’s been, for the history of their family, and it’s where they’re all buried, his blood. In fields of peppermint, where the wind bites through one’s cheeks and the entire world is colorless and the sea and stone and salt all comes together in cold, icy wrath. When his father died, he’d clutched James’ palms in his dry, fevered hands and choked on the word peppermint.

James lifts his head, shaking, and bites down on his tongue, blood red and rich in his mouth as his shield winks out.

He’s never been good at the Patronus spell. It’s such a stupid thing to fail at; here lies James Potter, who survived Voldemort but couldn’t survive his own despair.

There’s no light. The black sluices over his head, starless and dark as Lily’s eyes. James can’t breathe. This will be how he dies: swallowed by his wife’s darkness, by all the things they’ve sacrificed along the way. 

The dementor reaches down and grips James’ chin and there’s nothing left in him.

It leans down. 

James doesn’t close his eyes. Even terrified, even cold down to his bones and despair a living, clawing beast in his chest, he won’t die blind.

There’s a rattling, slow inhale.

Lily... he thinks. He can’t tell her that he loves her. But she’s the last thought he’ll ever have: his wife, lovely, beautiful, wonderful wife. Lily.

And something brilliant, brighter than a thousand stars, explodes out from behind James.

He sprawls, ungainly, on the floor. When he gains the strength to move his head up, he sees Lily standing, wand outstretched, blood dark and dripping down her face. She’s staring at something, face white and eyes wide. But James doesn’t have the energy to turn, to see, so he looks at her instead. He stares at her until he can see her eyes, pale and green and clear as spring vines chasing away winter’s ice.

Relief clutches at his heart.

Slowly, aching, he rolls over. 

The first time Lily cast her Patronus had been the first time they’d defied Voldemort. James remembers it well: Benjy Fenwick’s corpse beside him, the yawing hole in his heart that he hadn’t realized came with dementors. The sun had turned shadowed. Just that morning, he’d showed Lily his animagus form; they’d laughed, and drunk tea, and been happy.

James had been so sure he’d die. 

Lily’d done the Patronus instead, a silver doe leaping from her wand to save them. He’d loved her so much in that moment- even now, he doesn’t remember what he’d told Moody, what he’d told McGonagall; all he knows is how they’d fucked just moments later, in the foyer of their home, vicious and hard and bruising and good, like they couldn’t live without it.

But now, in the icy corridors of Azkaban, glowing and large as any phoenix, is a silver swan.

“Lily?” croaks James.

Slowly, she lets her wand fall; slowly, Lily approaches James, and cards her fingers through his hair. “Up, Jimmy,” she whispers. “C’mon. We don’t have time for this.”

“That’s looks... different.”

“If you don’t get up, I’ll slap you.”

“Lily-”

Something settles over James’ shoulders, warm and stifling. He jerks his head up to look at her, meets her eyes- those lovely, light eyes- and Lily says, quietly, “I’ve put up anti-apparition wards.”

“Okay.” James blinks. “Why?”

“To buy us some time.” She stands and levers James up, too. “We need a distraction. That’s the only way. Get their attention some other way- get them not to pay attention to Azkaban, just to something else-”

“And how’re you planning on doing that?” 

“Thor could fly,” she says. Her eyes are so earnest, so true; it makes James want to shrink away. It’s so fucking terrifying. “Thor could fly, James. You’ve his axe. I’ll get Sirius, get us both out; but you need to make sure they aren’t looking for us.”

“That’s a big task,” he says slowly.

Lily grins at him. “You’re up to it.”

“Lily-”

“If anyone was born to fly, it was you.” She steps away, towards the stairs leading to the maximum security. “I’ve faith in you, Jimmy.”

Is this the last time I see you? James wonders it, but he doesn’t reach for her. They’re in a war. They’re the fucking leaders of the war. There’s no room in them for those kind of things now. I love you, Lily.

But she knows that.

She needs him to fly, though, to survive. So James- his hands red, his chest cold, his wand steady- 

James will fly.

...

(Here’s a secret that the world doesn’t know: when James first transformed with Remus, when he first saw that painful, terrible, unnatural change- when he shifted back the next morning with a bloodied flank and wounds severe enough to leave him with a limp- James Potter laughed, loud and clear and ringing, because this, this, was what life was about.)

(Here’s a truth that James hasn’t told anyone: he doesn’t regret standing up to Voldemort, not even when it means he’ll come after Harry. Here’s a burning, terrible secret: James has regretted three things in his life, and none of it makes him a better person.)

...

“Oh, Sirius,” says Lily sadly, when she sees him. 

He’s so thin. He’s gotten so gaunt- his eyes are sunken, dark holes, and his robes are threadbare, patchwork things that hang off his bones. He also doesn’t recognize Lily; he seems to think she’s an apparition.

Lily bundles him out of the cell quickly, carefully.

...

Thor’s axe vibrates in James’ hand, impatiently, and James tries, hard, to breathe through the fear in his gut. The winds around Azkaban buffet his body, try to make him throw himself over. He doesn’t know how to tell them that he’ll be doing it of his own free will in just a moment.

As he clambers onto the stone turret, wand in one hand and axe in the other, struggling for balance, the world narrows to one shining point, glittering like a gem.

I’ve faith in you, Jimmy, says Lily, warm and loving, right beside him. 

James doesn’t let himself think on failure. 

That’s where the others fell. That’s why Thor’s sons and all the rest were rejected by the axe. Because the axe won’t accept anything less than total faith in it. Absolute trust.

He breathes in, salt and ice chilling his lungs, and steps off of Azkaban’s highest tower.

...

Lily nearly has Sirius out of the castle when she sees an auror limping along. The third one, she thinks, that had been in the guardroom; the one who’d called the Ministry.

Fuck, she thinks.

Then he sees her, and her world lights up with spellfire.

...

James flies.

...

He alights on the shore trembling, quivering, weak as a lamb. He’s never felt so glorious in his life. It’s strange, of sorts, to feel such disparate things together; but James catches himself before he can fall into thoughts.

Now is not the time for reaction.

It’s time for action.

Raising the axe, letting it catch all the light, letting it swirl the clouds above him, James thinks of how angry he is. How desperately, furiously, terribly he wants to be safe once more. How he wants his son to grow up in a world that loves him, and how enraged he is that Harry can’t.

Lightning splits the sky open.

[undertaleowl]

May I request US/UF/MT discovering that their male S/O is deeply romantic and absolutely believes in true love but feels like he can never tell anyone or let anyone know how much he longs for that or they will think him weak or foolish?

If this is not me;  I’m assuming that you meant the skeletonbrothers, just because of their popularity. If you want any other characters,just send the ask again! Thank you for your ask, and I hope you enjoy!

–Owlie

US Brothers

US Papyrus (Stretch)

Ahem. Have you metthis guy’s brother? That boy seems to spout love, encouragement, and everythingin between all over the place, all the time. That’s one of the things he lovesabout his brother. If anything, Stretch thinks that this is such an amazingtrait for his boyfriend to have, especially because his outlook on the worldand lasting relationships aren’t always so great. Since discovering this, he’lltry to encourage this outlook, not in a huge way or anything, but just in tinysubtle ways.

“Hey babe, are you mysoul-mate, because I’m SOUL lucky to have you…”

He tries.

US Sans (Bone Berry)

What? Why is hisboyfriend ashamed of this? Huh? You’ve done this bab a heckin of a concern.Like, he was under the impression that what he and his boyfriend had WAS truelove, so by extension, did that mean you thought the relationship was foolish?Before confronting his boyfriend directly about just how WRONG he is forbelieving that such an ideal should be kept secret, he goes out of his way todeclare his true and undying love every chance he gets.

“Date Mate! It is butthe east, and you are the sun!”

The light blinds hisboyfriend.

“Please put thatflashlight away, I can’t see!”

“But our love is trueand never-fading, just like the light of the sun!”

“Berry, we’re in agrocery store.”

His boyfriend doesn’tthink that Berry knows the meaning of that line in Romeo and Juliet, but atleast he knows that his thoughts and feelings are not only mutual, but valid.

 UF Brothers

UF Sans (Red)

He understands. Hedoesn’t follow the logic, exactly, but he understands. It sucks and it’s awful,but it’s probably better that his boyfriend feels that way. The culture thathis boyfriend had stumbled into does not look kindly on those who love and do notLOVE. These ideals of love will immediately put a target on his mate’s back. Redwill try to find a way to find a happy medium with this philosophy. Let it bethis way in the privacy and protection of their home, but make sure his mateknows how much safer it is for him to keep all of those thoughts hidden inpublic.

He’ll make sure tomention how much he loves his boyfriend (in an incredibly awkward manner sincehe’s still kind of new to this concept), how smart they are despite being inlove with a moron like him, the works.

“So, is this the partwhere the princes kiss or *censor* or whatever?” Cue irritated slap on theshoulder from the boyfriend.

UF Papyrus (Boss)

“Yes, these beliefsare foolish, and you should keep them to yourself lest someone less mercifulthan I hears you!”

At least, that’s howhe initially reacts. When he sees his mate further withdraw from him afterthat, he manages (after a month because this guy does not pick up well onemotional cues AT ALL) to put 2 and 2 together. He tries to come up with a wayto explain how he didn’t mean THAT exactly, that he was just wanting to protecthis boyfriend from a more unforgiving audience. Ultimately, he comes up withthe same solution as Red, only a bit more over-the-top than his brother.

Echo flower petalslead to a dinner for two, and candles are lit. He had threatenedconvinced two of his Royal Guard underlings to play live romantic music from aCD that had fallen from the surface.

“’Cuz I’m addicted toyou, because you know that you’re toxic—-”

“See, date mate, likepoison surely kills its victims, I hold affection for you that is more realthan anyone else’s!”

His boyfriend isreassured, goes along with it, and says that he loves him too.

MT Brothers

MT Sans (Short Stack)

He just sighs. Heknows where his boyfriend is coming from, he really does, because he used to bethe exact same way. But then, his life in the family began, and he has watchedcountless people, friends, enemies, and neutral acquaintances, all fall to thepavement in a shower of red blood or ashy grey dust. What was the point of truelove and romance when there was a 90 percent chance of one of them dying? Itseemed kinder to just deny his boyfriend’s true love and romantic nature,because then maybe, just maybe, the boyfriend would leave him, and save themboth the pain of separation.

He’d just ignore thisrevelation and carry on with the relationship as it had gone on before. If therelationship with the boyfriend gets worse, Short Stack isn’t sure how he’sgoing to be able to fix it.

MT Papyrus (Diplomat)

SAME. Dippy is aPapyrus, after all, so he wants everything that he thinks will help himsucceed. And one of those is true love to surpass any grueling tasks that hiswork may hold for him. However, letting people outside the family know that youare in love with someone is something that can and most likely will be heldagainst you in some way, shape, or form. So, this guy completely understandshis boyfriend’s predicament.

How does he deal withthe violence and stuff that comes with this? Answer, he doesn’t. He is acompletely love-struck nerd who doesn’t want to compromise his true love justbecause there is a chance that there will be consequences. Because there is achance that there will be consequences of letting the world know just how pureand strong that this love is, that means there’s also a chance of livinghappily ever after.

The boyfriend justlets the Diplomat do what he does best, negotiates his way past criminals whothink that messing with you is worth it. It also helps when you have aspear-gun-wielding best friend looming behind him as he lays out his terms.

[mtjester]

Chapter 2: The Necklace in the River

Sydney Armistead jolted awake, gasping. The dream clung to her mind and body like it was trying to follow her into reality. The cream-colored walls of her room seemed to glow with the light of a fire, and she almost expected a mist to creep across the floor from underneath her bed. A shiver ghosted over her skin as though a cold wind was pushing through her closed window. Her body felt like it was trying to detach itself from the world.

She pushed herself upright with a grimace and yanked the curtain open to let the afternoon sunlight flood her room. The light battled the dream away, but the sensations were reluctant to fade. The dream seemed determined to trick Sydney’s mind into believing that it was a memory rather than a dream. She wrapped a blanket around herself and looked at the clock. Half past noon.

She  was immediately flooded with anxiety, but the reason she should feel anxious was trapped beyond the mist of the dream, refusing to be remembered. She bit her lip and knitted her eyebrows, but her brain was fog. Then, below her, she heard the front door open and people talking as they walked into the hall.

“Shit!” she hissed, her memory peaking through the brain fog. She crept out of bed and pressing her ear to the carpet. Her aunt’s restrained laugh was recognizable through the floorboards, as was the cadence of her father’s deep, resonate voice. They exchanged a few words before her father’s heavy footsteps rose up the stairs towards her parents’ room on the third floor.

She lifted herself off the ground and bit her thumbnail. She wasn’t supposed to be home. She was supposed to sneak out a half hour ago to wait in the woods behind their house for school to let out. Why did she take the stupid nap? She checked the clock again and considered her options. Making up her mind, she opened her door as silently as she could and slipped out into the hall.

The voices were coming from the kitchen. She crawled down the stairs on all fours, minimizing the sound of her footsteps, and tiptoed to the front door. Grabbing her shoes and her backpack, she gritted her teeth and pulled the latch on the door down. It opened with an audible click.

“Sydney?” Sydney froze and looked up. Her mother’s face popped out from the kitchen. She saw her cousin’s reflection in the spotless chrome fridge. Wiping the expression off her face, she straightened up.

“Oh, uh...hi, Mom! I just got home!”

“Oh? Just now?”

“Uh, yeah. Just now.”

“I didn’t hear your car pull up.”

Sydney tried not to grimace. She had parked her car on the next road over so that her parents wouldn’t see it, and the plan was to go get it when it was time to make her grand entrance. “I...parked down the street.”

“Sydney, it’s noon. Did today just happen to be a half day, and no one bothered to inform me?”

Sydney opened her mouth and closed it.  Both her aunt and her cousin were silent in the kitchen.  “Well...” she said, putting her shoes down, “I felt sick, so...?”

Her mom’s face was set in a very familiar, very unwelcome look of displeasure. “Come in here,” she said, gesturing to the kitchen. Sydney sighed and obeyed, leaving her backpack at the door. She heard a shocked gasp as she entered the room.

“You cut off all your hair!” said Aunt Liz, Sydney’s aunt on her father’s side, with a note of horror. “Now, of all times! You’re practically bald!”

Sydney reached up and brushed her fingertips over the tight, dark fuzz blanketing her head. “Yeah, I cut it last week,” she said, glad for the distraction, even if Aunt Liz’s reaction was less than encouraging. She had anticipated something like it. She forced on the smile she had practiced in the mirror and said, “I’m going to try a more natural look.”

“Natural? You mean like that frizzy mess you had when you were a toddler?” Aunt Liz demanded, turning to Sydney’s mother, who rubbed her temple.

“That isn’t important right now,” she said. “Sydney, when did you come home?”

Sydney hid her guilt with a shrug. “Third period?”

“Why?”

Shrugging again, Sydney glanced towards the wide windows in the dining room, out of which she could see the calm forest behind their house. Her eyes fell on a new stack of books on the extravagant and usually immaculate dinner table.

“Sydney.”

“Boredom.”

“Boredom isn’t a good enough reason to skip class.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think my social studies teacher likes me. You know which one I’m talking about.”

Her mother grimaced in almost the same way Sydney would. Aunt Liz looked between them with pursed lips, which was her version of a scowl, but Sydney’s cousin, Alice, kept her face carefully blank. “You don’t know if that’s true,” Sydney’s mother said.  “And even if it is, you have to learn to deal with it. You’re going to meet many people in your life, and you won’t like all of them.  Learning how to interact with them effectively is a life skill.”

“I do that enough outside of school,” Sydney said. “He’s a terrible teacher anyway. Everything is so boring. Literally the only thing I like at school is the track team, and even that sucks now that everyone cool graduated.”

”Makayla,” Aunt Liz interrupted, addressing Sydney’s mom. Both of them turned their attention to her, and she said, “I know my brother has it in his head that public education is good for the girl, but you know, Alice never has these kinds of problems at her academy. Do you, Alice?”

Alice, Sydney’s cousin, smiled and shook her head. “There’s too much to do to get in trouble. And the teachers never disrespect students.”

“Do you know the number of electives Coulden Academy offers, Makayla? I’m sure Sydney would find something to occupy herself. And the track and field team travels all over the country to compete.”

“Thank you, Elizabeth. We may consider that option,” Sydney’s mother replied with a polite smile, but Sydney knew how to spot the signs of “diplomatic insincerity” in her mother’s expression. She glanced away as her mother’s eyes slid to hers. “Although I do think Sydney should try to work things out in her current situation.”

“It’s not my fault everything’s so...mmm,” Sydney said, censoring herself.

“Sydney,” her mother started, but her father’s voice floated down from the stairs.

“Makayla? Is that Sydney I hear?” he called.

She shot Sydney a look and called back, “Yes, she came home early to prepare for the banquet.”

“Shit!” Sydney said, smacking her hand to her forehead. Her aunt looked at her sharply with disapproval, and her mother’s eyes darkened into a glare.

“Watch your language, Sydney,” she said. Sydney ignored the threat.

“I forgot about Uncle James’s fundraising dinner!” she hissed. “Do I have to go to that?”

“Now you do,” her mother said. Sydney groaned.

“Now she does? Of course she has to go! How could you have forgotten about your own uncle’s presidential campaign?” Aunt Liz asked, looking from her to her mother with indignation.

“I didn’t forget about the campaign, just the dinner,” Sydney said. “I was...distracted by other things.” Her mind flashed to the dream, displacing her for a second. She furrowed her brow and shook her head.

“Sydney, dear, you really should try to be less spacey,” Aunt Liz said, indignation still in her voice. “Makayla, the girl needs a challenge. Look at her, she’s wasting all her wonderful potential! She’s going to fall behind.”

Sydney’s mother sighed. “Girls,” she said to Sydney and Alice, “perhaps you could help each other get ready for the banquet?”

“Sydney, there must be something to do about your hair,” Aunt Liz said, eyeing Sydney’s head. She looked at Sydney’s mother. “Perhaps you have a wig she could borrow, Makayla?”

Sydney turned away as her mother conjured a polite response, crossing her arms as she walked to the dining room to examine the stack of books on the table. Alice followed.

“I’m sorry to hear about your school problems,” Alice said with a sweet smile. Sydney examined Alice’s face as she picked up a book and weighed the paperback in her hands. Alice’s expression was reserved, pleasant but insincere in all the places that counted most. Her eyes didn’t light up with emotion when she smiled, but she managed to seem friendly and respectful nonetheless. As much as Sydney hated how fake it was, she wished she could reflect it back. No matter how much she practiced in the mirror, Sydney’s fake smile was too fake to pass. She knew it was one of the many reasons she couldn’t find an ally to help her through the politics of her life.

“Thanks,” she said, dropping her eyes to the book. It was Of the Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

“Oh, we read part of that in class!” Alice said, taking a step closer.

“I hate this stuff,” Sydney said under her breath.

“Hmm?”

“We don’t read this sort of thing at my school,” she said more loudly. “My dad probably got it for me.”

“I did,” her father said. Sydney jumped, and Alice turned to her uncle with a happy smile. Sydney’s father ruffled Alice’s hair and glanced towards Sydney. “I know you’re not especially keen on political philosophy, so I included a full spectrum of thought to compensate. I even threw in some Thoreau. I’m sure you’ll find something that suits your fancy.”

“I did like Thoreau,” Alice said, looking towards Sydney with an earnest expression.

“You know,” Sydney said, “Aunt Liz was saying something about the electives at Coulden Academy...and apparently Alice has read this kind of stuff in class.” She raised her eyebrows and waved the book to emphasize her point.

Her father’s lips pulled down into a tiny frown and he said, “Despite what Aunt Liz may believe, there is value in going to a local school with peers who aren’t exceptionally privileged. I’d like you to trust me about that, Sydney.”

“Yeah, okay, that’s great, but I didn’t know being bored and frustrated was also a part of my education.”

“Well, perhaps Alice here can help fill in the holes. I’ve been thinking about getting you a better tutor, and you two should interact more anyway.” Alice glanced between her and her father with a face kept tactfully blank, and Sydney felt her own face heat up.

“Maybe you should ask her if she wants to hang out with me before you make plans like that,” Sydney mumbled. Instead of replying, her father dropped his hand on her shoulder twice, patting her with either sympathy or dismissal. It was hard for Sydney to tell the difference.

He turned and went to speak with his wife and sister, and Sydney watched them huddle in the kitchen, sensing that they were talking about her. Looking at her parents, a stranger probably wouldn’t guess they were husband and wife; while Sydney’s father was a pale senator whose blond hair had grown prematurely grey, Sydney’s mother was an imposing lawyer whose black matte skin was still a source of confusion and discomfort for her husband’s parents. Sydney was secretly glad that she had only inherited a rich bronze skin tone from her mother, which was already dark enough to set her apart at her mostly white school. When she was younger, she had gotten along with the other students well enough--had gotten along with everyone well enough--but a long list of offhanded comments and unfair assumptions had worn her down.

Sydney sighed and stared down at the stack of books her father had bought her. Glancing at Alice, she toppled it over and grabbed the copy of Thoreau’s Walden resting beneath the philosophy.

“I’m going to go read by the river,” she said to Alice, shooting her a humorless smile and holding up the book. “You liked this one, right?”

“What about the banquet?” Alice asked.

“I’ll be there,” she said. “I’ll only be away for a half hour, an hour at most. Don’t let them worry about it, okay?” She tilted her head at her parents, and Alice nodded. With a slightly more sincere smile of thanks, Sydney tucked the book under her arm and left the house through the large patio doors that opened to their well-manicured lawn.

Strolling across the lawn, Sydney tried to shake the stress from her mind, rolling it out of her shoulders and stretching her back to loosen herself up. The dinners used to be fun when she was kid, but the more recent, more exhausting memories far outweighed the enjoyable ones. People she barely knew, talking to her about frustratingly complicated political and social issues, sharing opinions she didn’t agree with, always with that aloofness that rubbed her the wrong way...she purged the thoughts from her mind and began to search for something more enjoyable to think about.

Almost as though it had been waiting to emerge, the memory of the dream pushed its way to the front of her mind. The images were not nearly as clear as they had been when she first woke up, but the feelings remained, and that was all she needed. She hiked into the forest behind her house and let the flickering shadows from the canopy feel like flickering firelight. She willed the smell of cold, dry air to fill her nose, even though the day was moist from recent rains and only pleasantly cool. The sensations ran down to her bones. Her body felt like it was trying to push away from reality, or maybe that something else was pulling at it. The feeling faded as Sydney stopped at the edge of the river, leaving behind a strange sense of frustration and loss.

The spring melt and a series of heavy showers had increased the river’s flow. It swelled over its bank. The rock Sydney usually sat on was submerged. There were plenty of logs and boulders that could have served well enough as a seat, but none of those options appealed to her as much as they usually would. She felt compelled to look downstream, where she knew a brook fed into the river. After a brief pause, she began to pick a careful path along the edge of the water, climbing under branches and through the snaring underbrush.

Like the river, the brook had also overtaken its banks and flooded the nearby land. A large pile of debris had collected at its mouth from both its flow and the river’s. Plopping down on a decaying log, Sydney juggled the book in her hands and stared across the water. After a few minutes, she set the book down on the log and stood up, walking to the pile of debris at the mouth of the brook and hoisting herself up.

The flat, forested land on the opposite bank of the river looked the same as it always had, but she didn’t feel the comfort she usually felt when staring at it. She surveyed the scenery, searching for something she could not define or explain, and her eyes dropped to the water. Something glinted.

Sydney started and looked closer. Caught on one of the branches that had sunk deep into the river was a necklace. It was an intricate pendant, a thin, gold cylinder inlaid with precious stones and wrapped carefully in silky ropes and coppery wire. Tassels of the same silk trailed behind it in the water. The gold of its surface glimmered in the sunlight. It looked like it could be holding something; a piece of paper, maybe, or a picture, or tiny diamonds.

Sydney paused, watching the necklace sway in the current and deciding what to do about it. It looked as though it hadn’t been there for long, and, judging by its quality, somebody was probably missing it. She glanced up and down the banks of the river, wondering who had been climbing over the debris of the flood so recently while wearing such a unique piece of jewelry. There were plenty of people she knew who would wear the fancy thing out on casual errands, but not to do any serious hiking. She thought about leaving it for its owner to find, but her eyes stayed fixed on it. A steady pulse of excitement was flowing through her body that she could not explain or ignore. Exhaling through her nose, she said, “Mom’ll know what to do with it,” and clambered over the hazardous pile of wood towards the water.

She crawled to the lowest stable log she could reach and braced herself on a branch protruding from the pile beside it, leaning towards the necklace. It was farther than she’d expected, so she stretched, allowing herself to hover precariously above the water. As slowly as the river ran, she didn’t expect much of a disaster if she fell in.

Grunting a curse, she made an awkward lunge for the pendant, nearly yanking the branch that anchored her out of its bundle. Her entire arm dipped into the frigid water as her fingers closed around the chain. She inhaled sharply and pulled her arm out, necklace in hand, and a strange tingle pulsed up her arm that wasn’t connected to the cold.

A sudden, acute sense of vertigo overcame her. Her surroundings felt distant, as though she were looking up from the bed of the river and not from its bank, and muffled noises filled her ears. It sounded like somebody was yelling. Feeling sick, she leaned over and reached down for a handful of water to splash against her face. To her horror, the reflection staring up at her was not her own.

Sydney screamed and recoiled from the water, accidentally dislodging the branch that held her above the river. She toppled over with a cascade of sticks. The water raged around her, rushing her downstream in a swirling surge of undercurrents and foam. She flailed helplessly, straining to reach the surface. The river rolled her up for air and took her back under, drawing her between gigantic boulders and down a furious set of rapids before it ran her into a shallow shelf of rock. Coughing, she pulled herself out, shivering with cold and alarm.

Or, at least, with the memory of cold. She gasped in the shallows, the river running past her hands, but no water dripped down her skin. Her clothes did not sag or cling to her. The gentle breeze seemed to move through her rather than around her, and she felt a vague but bizarre concern that it would carry her away if she stood up too quickly. Even before she had taken a look around her, the world felt different than it ever had before.

“What—?” she choked, lifting her head. The quiet forests that surrounded her house were gone. She rested on a rock at the base of a stout and craggy cliff, which collapsed into a stony bluff just yards downstream. Evergreen trees peppered the slopes on both sides of the river, and the dull green hills rose sharply to meet precipices of solid rock, forming grey and yellow mountains that loomed above the valley. In the distance, snow-capped giants faded into a dusty, purple horizon.

The air smelled crisp, clean, and cold. The sounds of suburbia were replaced by birdsong and shadowy, muted whispers that floated beneath the breeze. There were no buildings, no people, no machines, nothing in sight. Nothing but scenery that looked like it came straight out of a bottled water commercial.

Sydney turned to look up the river, searching for something familiar. The rapids rumbled on, heedless of her growing distress. Her heart hammered in her chest. She couldn’t stop shivering, as though her body desperately wanted to feel as cold as it was supposed to feel. Sucking air in through her teeth, she struggled to her feet. “Help,” she said, stumbling through the shallow water towards the end of the cliff wall. Losing composure, she began to shout, “Somebody...somebody! Somebody, help me!”

To her relief, stones began to slide down the hill, and she heard someone shout back to her. “Here!” she yelled, staggering around the crumbled rock face. There was a glint of light, and Sydney halted, her neck inches from the point of an iron blade.

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Blitz: Blood and Sand

https://ift.tt/324MBN5

  General Fiction (cozy small town fiction)

Date Published: August, 2019

Publisher: Pen & Key Publishing

    A tiny town. A broken tavern. And one woman searching for a place to belong.

Logan Cole is used to getting her way and what she wants more than anything is for her father to get out of jail and restore her old life in New York. All she has to do is wait for his scandals to fade and the online rancor against her family to subside. Low on cash and out of options, she takes a bus north looking for anonymity and stops in the smallest town she can find: Ramsbolt, Maine.

When she stumbles into Helen’s Tavern, she finds a place in need of a make-over and a grandmotherly woman who could use some help. Soon, she finds herself growing fond of the bar, Helen, and the town. She’s even found a friend in Grey, the local plumber. The tiny town puts her at a crossroads: keep hiding her identity to preserve her new reputation or let down her guard and reveal her true self to the people she’s grown to love. But the choice is ripped from her hands when tragedy strikes the bar and saving it requires every tool at her disposal.

Can Logan find a true home among the people of Ramsbolt Maine?

The Collected Stories of Ramsbolt is a series by Jennifer M. Lane, award-winning author Of Metal and Earth and Stick Figures from Ramsbolt. Fresh and heart-warming, the series tells the stories of a small town looking for belonging.

Excerpt

Chapter One

  Logan Cole had never been on a bus in her life. As she stretched her legs and stumbled onto the sidewalk at the tip of Maine, she cursed the eight hour learning experience and swore never to do it again.

The last stop before the border was less like a terminal and more like a dead end. No benches, no depot, no ticketing window. And no taxis. Just a little yellow house with leaning porch surrounded by scruffy blueberry shrubs. At least it wasn’t sweltering out.

She yanked her black Rimowa suitcase, one of the few things the FBI let her keep, from the bottom of the bus. She gave the driver a wry smile and thanked him for the trip. It wasn’t his fault a woman coughed and crinkled candy wrappers the whole way, and that guy with his earbuds in behind her never learned to sing.

“Six hundred miles better be far enough.” She mumbled to herself as she dragged the suitcase down the sidewalk, fumbling for her phone in her purse. It was a habit she still hadn’t broken, opening apps to fill a void, but she’d deleted Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of them when the threats started pouring in. Eight months, four court cases, a thousand stories in the news, and she still hadn’t gotten used to being without social media. Being disconnected was better than scrolling through contempt, though.

“Battery’s almost dead. Map won’t load. Damn it.” She walked back the way she’d come, past quaint little houses and blueberry bushes, back to the bar she’d seen a mile or so before. It was across from a cheap motel with moldy siding and mildewed plastic chairs. The bar itself was windowless and brick. Definitely not the kind of place where someone would look for one of the wealthiest people in the country. Or someone who used to be.

She paused at an intersection and started a text to her mom, a quick note to say she was far from the gossip and rumors, safe from tabloid headlines squawking about a Cole Curse, and nowhere near the internet trolls who flooded her notifications with threats, saying they knew where to find her and what they would do to her when they did. All because of her father.

She waited among the cigarette butts and rusted beer caps while her text bounced its way to France.

Delivered. Three dots appeared. Her mother’s reply came slow.

Good luck. Lay low. I'll send money if I can. Try to blend in.

Logan sent back a smiley face and a greeting for her aunt and uncle.

Letting her phone fall back in her purse, she swallowed hard and tugged hem of her T-shirt down over her jeans. Her heart pounded so loud she wouldn’t be able to hear traffic if there’d been any. But the intersection was dead. The only other animate object in that town was the little orange hand blinking on the stop light, telling her not to walk.

The light changed and a little white man blinked, urging her to cross the street before it was too late. By the look of the town nothing was urgent. The only signs of life were two cars in the bar’s parking lot. They could be abandoned for all she knew.

A countdown timer marked off the seconds. Eleven. Ten.

Left to the motel. Straight to the bar. Neither option looked all that inviting.

For the first time since she left New York, rage, hot as the surface of the sun, boiled within her. She was supposed to be in an air conditioned office somewhere, running a foundation. Sipping a latte that came from cart. Logan kicked a beer cap into the street, and it skittered into a pothole.

Five. Four.

The little man on the pedestrian signal had his whole life together. He had purpose and goals and a job. He had an identity, and everyone knew who he was. Logan had all of that until her father screwed up, and the government charged him with money laundering and took it all away. All she had left were some comfy pants shoved in a suitcase and a cell phone plan she couldn’t afford. She squeezed the handle of her suitcase so tight her knuckles turned white.

Two. One.

The Do Not Walk signal blinked, and she crossed the street defiant.

The sidewalk rippled. Uneven slabs of concrete were mere islands, broken by the freeze and thaw of ice, lost in a sea of weeds and road dirt. She faced the bar.

When she opened that door, she would find herself in a whole new world. There would be questions. What was her name? Where did she come from? Maybe they would recognize her right away from the newspapers, the tabloids, Twitter. She wasn’t prepared for any of it, and she never would be. She didn’t even know how to fill out a job application. What was she supposed to say? I’m a Yale graduate with a degree in Art History, the daughter of a felon, and I’ve come to scrub your bathroom?

The sun would set in a few hours, and that motel did not look hospitable. The keys to a job and a cheap apartment were somewhere in that bar.

Taking in a shaky breath of Maine air, she held it in until her lungs soaked it up, then let out a steady stream of all she had left.

“Get in there and prove your mother wrong. You are still a Cole and Coles do not give up. We don’t stand on the sidewalk and talk to ourselves, either.”

Her whole future lay ahead of her. She just had to get by until her dad set it right. Shoulders back, head up, she opened

About the Author

A Maryland native and Pennsylvanian at heart, Jennifer M. Lane holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Barton College and a master's in liberal arts with a focus on museum studies from the University of Delaware, where she wrote her thesis on the material culture of roadside memorials. She is the author of the award-winning novel Of Metal and Earth, of Stick Figures from Rockport, and the series of stand-alone novels from The Collected Stories of Ramsbolt, including Blood and Sand. Visit her website at https: //https://ift.tt/2CDNy6o

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[survivingart]

NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL SYMBOLS

Just as with sweeteners and coffee, you have natural and artificial options to spice up your art, too. Both sweeteners and symbols are created by moulding reality to our will, but unlike aspartame and the like, artificial symbols don’t have negative health side effects (unless we count war and propaganda, of course). 

It does though open up your work to the possibility of being misinterpreted, and in today’s blunder, we’re going to take a peek at how we can at least guide our audiences into the right direction as well as take a jab at the underlying question that many of you might be asking yourselves. Namely, if there even is a “right” direction with art — we might just as easily say that any perspective is a valid one and that there are no “wrong” ways to understand a work of art. 

Well, let’s find out!

First, let’s take the basic idea of a symbol and — using our tiny mental equivalents of surgical equipment (our thoughts) — try to see if we can’t find a good and workable definition of what a symbol actually is.

The problem isn’t that symbols are amorphous blobs that evade scrutiny every time we try to observe them closely — this isn’t quantum physics — the real issue comes forth because of the exact opposite: 

You can’t but see something in anything you observe attentively.

Symbols really are just neatly assembled and wrapped ideas that were made presentable and therefore intriguing enough to stand out from the crowd of everything else the world has to offer us as far as experiences go.

To be clear, we’re not going to talk exclusively about visual symbols, because the experience and inner workings of symbolic structures are more or less the same regardless if we look at them, hear them or smell them — albeit our focus will be visual arts, because, well, my numbers say most of you lovely souls reading or listening to this are visual artists just like me and evaluations of sheet music just don’t ring as true to us as a nice, juicy-red Barnett Newman painting. 

And, I also have to address all of you philosophy and linguistic aficionados: When I say semantics, symbolism (but I never use the term semiotics) — as far as I’m concerned — all three mean more or less the same. 

This isn’t due to ignorance, but because semiotics, being the study of symbols, and semantics, being the study of the meanings of words, in the end combine into one, big, splashy field of study. 

And that’s exactly where we’re all going today.

Symbolism is to words like water is to rivers; you could have a river of oil or ketchup, but when you read the word river, it’s just more likely that water is going to be involved. The same goes for symbolic structures. 

You have non-linguistic symbolism — we will talk about that — but the majority of symbols we encounter in our daily lives that actually do spark our interest (especially our intellectual interests) are all built on language and operate by its rules.

So, symbolism:

The human mind is a wonderful piece of meaty equipment, especially one part of it, residing somewhere in our prefrontal cortex, that not only makes us the apex predators on the planet (if we do not count the penis fish or Candiru of the Amazonian rainforest — that creature scares me to death), but also gives us the ability to be attentive.

And if you’ve been part of this channel for a while, you know how I love attention and the old myths regarding its importance.

Attention is the cornerstone of the human condition; it’s the starch or agar-agar that holds our fragile whipped cream-like amalgamation of anxiety, fear of death and other basic drivers at reasonable bay and in a homogenous enough shape so that we can (even though nihilism is just a thought away) still enjoy the finer things of life. Like ice cream, art and thinking about things.

Attention is also the basis of how symbolic structures and understandings are formed in our brains; without us being attentive enough, we could never learn the meaning of something and therefore would be forced to uncover meaning in things, people and other phenomena every time we’d encounter them — rather than how it actually works, where we have a basic concept saved somewhere in our meat noodle and use it to manoeuvre through the world.

Take a stop sign for example; it takes attention to be able to focus on a red piece of octagonally-sheet of metal, painted on with four white scribbles of lines, and see a prompt to stop. 

It takes even more attention to learn that said collection of red and scribbles is actually a universal prompt that can be found almost all around the world and that every time we encounter it, we have to stop.

Were we not to posses this ability to memorise certain collections of either words, images or even sounds and smells into systems (or to say differently symbols), we would have a panic attack every time we sat in our car, go to the supermarket and probably every time we turned on our tap at home to get a drink of water (especially if youe tap is actually a faucet and most likely doesn’t produce clean, drinking water).

Without our ability to think and experience life via symbolic structures, causality would be a cruel and completely foreign mistress indeed.

But, that’s (luckily) not the case. 

We do learn to manoeuvre through life via symbolic structures or ideologies, and my favourite example for how symbols work is Beethovens’s 9th symphony — I lied, there will be a bit of sheet music analysis after all — more commonly referred to as The Ode to Joy.

Since its creation, The Ode to Joy has been used by a myriad of different, even contradicting causes, to propagate their ideas. Used by both governments of Nazi Germany and Communist China, by the protesters in Chile, demonstrating against Pinochet and the then ruling class. 

It was played at the fall of the Berlin Wall, by christians, buddhists and all sorts of other religions — it was also the theme song of the USSR (old-school talk for communist Russia), picked by Stalin himself.

In short; everybody and their fascist grandma used to relate to that song while just over the border the same tune was played by diehard communists — and now it’s the unofficial hymn of the European Union. 

It’s a lot like if the song Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gees was used by both sides of any conflict (the concert itself would probably be aired in some neutral country like Switzerland with the speakers faced into the direction of the fighting countries) and just blasted onto the battlefield with everybody, regardless of side, religion or mindset, relating to the same thing; the beauty and sheer amount of grace 3 pairs of airtight trousers can unleash in a society without autotune. 

If they only knew what was coming…

While my example is based on music, it works in visual art all the same. There’s a wonderful story someone told in a video somewhere on YouTube (might be Peterson, but it could also be Žižek or any other philosopher/sociologist fond of either lobsters or other people’s toilets, so I couldn’t say for sure):

He said that he owns a portrait of Stalin that he proudly hung on one of the walls in his home. But, being someone that despises the horrific deeds that man was capable of doing, that portrait doesn’t hang there as a token of reminiscence or a symbol of some old, partly-forgotten way. 

He keeps it there, because of the sheer fact that he can watch the ideology of the painting slowly crack and fade away. 

Meaning; now it might still be a portrait of Stalin, the horrible person, but over time — in 100 or 200 years, when nobody that actually remembers what happened firsthand is alive anymore — he’ll just be another “old important guy on a painting”. Just like the rest of them, probably exhibited in some museum and sorted on the merit of date or technique, not deeds.

He might even be hung next to some old Russian icon of Jesus — when ideology vanishes from people’s hearts and minds, it leaves its products empty and only the technical traits like size, colour, texture, motif and composition stay. 

So, ideologies or structures of symbols are empty of meaning when the context is removed form the equation. The only things that stay regardless if a painting is presented inside a religious, political or plain-old white cube context are natural symbols.

Natural symbols, unlike their counterparts — symbols of the artificial variety (sounds like a tittle for a Philip K. Dick novella) — are timeless and non-linguistic. As their name implies, they originate not from any man-made context (like language), but from a wider, much much older context of nature itself.

For example; nature is more than 4 billion years old. People one the other hand have only existed for about a couple of hundred thousands of years — even just a couple of thousands, if we only start counting from the first known formations of civilisations, when a lot of the artificial symbolic systems we all know and love (like the Bible, Koran, Talmud, and other religious texts, that shaped western society) were formed.

But I’m sure all of us that ever spent at least a few hours studying visual art theory (or went to any school, really) are more familiar with a different name, that our field has given to natural symbols: basic artistic elements — or design elements, if you studied design.

There are seven of them, to be exact: line, shape, space, value, form, texture, and colour. Other natural symbols include the second basic assortment of artistic tools, the principles of art or design: unity or harmony, balance, hierarchy, scale or proportion, dominance or emphasis, and similarity or contrast.

All of these basic features that anything in the world (especially in the world of art) has, are not manmade — they are the features around which our perception and interaction with the world evolved.

On the opposite side are artificial symbols; these are all manmade structures, like symbols for love or hate or appreciation. Think of how various differences between cultures (especially the east and west) create an incredibly disparate context around the same symbol, like the O.K. sign. 

A gesture where the thumb and index fingers are connected and the rest left to form a kind of mohawk, but with fingers, is more or less known to communicate agreement or content with something; like in Japan, where it means wealth and is therefore a good thing.

But in the Middle East, it usually represents an anus and is meant as an offensive gesture, pointing towards the recipient not only having an anus, but also being one. In Kuwait for example, the same gesture is understood as an evil eye, a course laid on the recipient.

And in places like France it gets even more convoluted, because of the cultural diversity of the country, it can mean both a good and a bad thing to different people. The point to take home is to have ones hands under control when traveling and that artificial symbols — unlike natural ones, that always mean the same thing — depend on their context to give them meaning or their semantic value as it is also called.

And you can also combine natural and artificial symbols together (that’s more or less the majority of all symbolism — an amalgamation of both).

While a line will always be a line and a dot will always be a dot, we can make an amalgamation by drawing two dots and writing “sesame seed” under one of them and “butt hole” under the other. The point is that understanding the difference between natural and artificial symbols is imperative if we wish to help guide our viewers through the labyrinth of experiencing our art. 

While of course even the most basic of shapes and colours can become imbued with subjective, extremely personal meanings for some people (winning 100 million Euro in a lottery while being dressed completely in baby blue clothes will leave an imprint on the mind for example), natural symbols usually have similar meanings and offer similar impulses to most people.

But it’s also not impossible to predict how certain groups of people will read a certain arteficial symbol either. 

Punks will usually see the symbol for anarchy when confronted with the letter A painted onto a wall, but it could just as well be a badly painted logo for a new Avengers movie and Marvel fans will most likely only see that meaning. And many won’t even notice it, because they have no deep relation to the symbol; that’s why some people see something in art, that others don’t. They are just projecting what they think is important to them onto the work they are experiencing. 

And that’s also why art is such a wonderful and powerful medium; when confronted with a good, layered and complex work of art, it will eventually show us — just like the mirror in Harry Potter — exactly what we are striving for, whether we like it or not.

Our job as artists therefore is not to produce blindly and unconnected with our environment, but to carefully craft our products in such a fashion that they become part of our zeitgeist — of the now. 

Only then can both artificial and natural symbols work in unison, forming a strong and easily legible communications channel with our audience and giving them not only the ability to see what is important to us as creators, but also what is most dear to them.

In the end, we merely facilitate the artistic experience by making art, the viewers are the true artists, creating the artistic experience by immersing themselves into our work and opening up enough to internalise it as part of themselves. 

from Surviving Art https://ift.tt/2TsV73Q via IFTTT