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winter-literature · 1 year

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Le Chat Et Le Serpent - Chapter 54

Please note that the entirety of this story is a ****TRIGGER WARNING***** - mentions of child abuse, graphic violence, alcohol use, mental health, suicide, suicidal ideation, self-harm - basically a constant blow of pain towards the characters - as well as some "steamier" moments.

This is an additional trigger warning - this chapter goes over Luka's past which includes self-harm, overdose, suicide attempts/ideation, and additional mental illness facets.

Chapter Summary:

Our boys are starting to fall apart.

The chapter song is Nightmares by All Time Low (included in body)

Digging up old memories

Always used to be the one to let it go

Got my fears in a suitcase

I locked them away

In a place they wouldn't find

They still haunt me

Nightmares by All Time Low

Siren’s reflected off Luka’s glasses as he watched the sparking of his lighter. It kept spitting thin lines of fire, refusing to flame against the tip of his cigarette.

“Here,” Jagged cupped his hand around his lighter as he brought it to Luka’s smoke.

Inhaling, Luka stared into the bright light that offered him solace.

The fire didn’t feel hot as it crackled before his eyes. He set his hand out, inches from it, the fire was erasing what had happened. Never again would he be strangled in his sleep from the memories of his blood stained sheets.

Screams were distant in the background.

What if he went into the fire? Would it take the rest of it away?

They sounded like they were yelling his name, but he couldn’t tell for certain.

Anarka’s screams surrounded Luka as she picked the boy off the ground.

Even within her embrace, she still felt distant.

Luka rubbed his temple as he backed away from the flame, taking a deep inhale.

“I’m sorry, Luka. I really am.” Jagged stared at his own smoke in his hand. He hated that the boy was following in his steps. He had such a light in him, and Jagged knew he helped to ruin it.

“Whatever. Just don’t tell the Captain.” Luka bit his nicotine stained thumb, the irony not lost on him.

“Dad?” Luka didn’t like this house. Everyone was falling and the music was too loud. “Jagged Stone?”

He continued to push through the crowd.

“Hey, Little Man!” A strange woman kneeled in front of Luka. “What are you doing here?”

“My dad brought me.” Little Luka rubbed his arm as he stared down to his feet. The floor was sticky with liquor and ash.

“Oh shit, you’re Jagged’s kid, aren’t you?” Her lilac lips grinned at him.

“Y-yeah. Have you seen him?” His baby blue eyes were watering.

“How old are you?” She scanned the party. A group was around a table sharing a bag of coke, at least three different women wore nothing but a thong, and the room was thick with smoke.

“Almost seven.” His voice croaked.

“ALMOST SEVEN! Oh, you’re nearly a man! We need to find your dad, Little man.” She grabbed his hand. She’d known Jagged for a bit now, but she never thought he could do something like this. Why the fuck did he bring his kid here? “YO! ANYONE KNOW WHERE JAGGED IS?”

The only thing the room could agree on was that no one knew.

“Is your sister here, too?” The woman turned towards him, worried there could be another seven year old running around in this cesspool.

“No, she’s sick.” Luka tightened his grip around her hand.

“Thank god.” She mumbled as she scribbled along a piece of paper. “Let’s get out of here, Little Man. Are you hungry?”

Luka’s face was covered in chocolate ice cream as he snored along the booth. But when morning came, she had to leave; she had her own emergencies to attend to. Gazing back towards the sleeping boy, she prayed that Jagged saw her note. The boy would be so heartbroken if he woke up all alone.

His stomach hurt as he woke up, the unfamiliar girl was gone. He sat there with no idea what to do, so he waited. The waitstaff kept bringing him little activities and snacks, but he stayed nearly completely still. He stared out the window and watched people pass.

“Luka, my boy!” The restaurant clamoured around the rock idol.

Luka watched as he gave every guest more individual attention than he’d ever received from his father. Finally, Jagged made it to his table, gaining a temporary girlfriend.

“Who’s the kid?” She asked as she bit at his neck.

“That’s my kid!” Jagged smiled in pride as Luka stared out the window.

“What’s wrong with him?” She grimaced at the kid with dark hair and oversized cerulean eyes.

His teeth clenched at his mention, but he watched as a woman in a peacoat walked past the diner. It was easier to do that than to acknowledge he was coherent to the fact that the fan girl was sliding under the table.

Jagged was terrible at saying no.

The whole ride home, Luka kept his head straight. He never wanted to say anything to his father again.

“Listen, I know I messed up. How can I make it up to you?”

The boy’s face didn’t even flinch.

“Please, we can do anything! The sky’s the limit!”

The silence grew thicker between them.

“Why don’t I take you and Juleka for a week to LA? They have the best amusement parks and you guys can go to bed whenever you want!”

“I don’t want you ever near me again.” Luka finally spoke.

“Luka, I know I’m lame, but-,”

Flame burst from the boy’s steeled eyes as he screamed. “NO. YOU CARE MORE ABOUT SEX AND DRUGS THAN MY LIFE. DON'T EVER SPEAK TO ME AGAIN!”

“Wh-what about Juleka? What about your mom?” Jagged stuttered, the fear of completely losing his family palatable.

Luka resumed his cold stare.

“Please, Luka. Please don’t tell the Captain.”

He never did.

Jagged never reached out to him again.

Anarka started to realise something was seriously awry with Luka when he started asking who his Dad was. His father had never been a large presence in their life, but this was the first time she saw the broken look in his eyes.

When she took him back home from the hospital after he set the fire around his eleventh birthday, she stood outside his door, listening to him play. It was a joyous and upbeat tune. He had an elated energy. Over his playing, she could hear Luka laughing. The psychiatrists said he’d been talking about strange dreams.

“Can you believe I had a dream that our dad was Jagged Stone?” Luka’s laugh was sweet, but the reality that Anarka had tried to ignore was devastating.

Jagged lowered his head at the comment. He was certainly no longer the boy he’d lost at a party.

“Did they give you anything in there?” Jagged asked, not realising that his sentiment of concern wasn’t going to be taken that way.

“What? Jagged Stone can’t get his own shit?” Luka snorted before taking another drag.

“That’s not what I meant! For your head, kid!” Jagged aggressively tapped at his own head.

“Our ride’s here.” Luka pointed towards the blacked out vehicle driving towards them.

“Listen,” Jagged stomped out his smoke before seizing the collar of Luka’s leather jacket, “I know I fucked up as a parent. Royally fucked up. And I had no fucking idea how bad you were struggling. I wasn’t there. But we were getting better. You were getting better. You had a better head on your shoulders than anyone your age when fucking Butterfly Demon guy brought you back to me. We were talking. If I set up the same therapy session we had back home, will you come? I hate seeing you like this. You might not believe it, but I love you Luka. We’ve come so far in the past seven years and it fucking kills me to see you killing yourself like this.”

“Fucking Gabriel.” Luka shook his head as he opened the door to the car, still sliding over for Jagged.

“You know, you might not remember it, but I did still try to be there! I,” Jagged reached into his back pocket to pull out his wallet, “I always kept every birthday photo from you two. I made sure you guys got into the good schools. I was on the phone with Anarka every time you tried to kill yourself, Luka. I didn’t know what to fucking do. The moment you asked me if I was your dad, my whole life changed. It meant I finally got to actually be here for your hard moments! I love you Luka. Please. Don’t follow my shitty lead.”

Against what his angry heart wanted to do, Luka shifted his eyes towards the pictures. He’d forgotten how much Juleka loved her red hair. He tried to remember why she ever switched to purple, but the memory was just out of reach.

Everything felt light. He knew he was dreaming. Juleka was crying as she was tying a dishcloth over his wrist. Didn’t she know it was only a dream? It was amazing, how the blood so elegantly spiralled down his finger.

He lifted his arm, watching the material around the knot seep scarlet.

“Jules,” Luka smiled towards her, “it matches your hair.”

Juleka’s face faded to white as Luka held it next to her head.

“Luka, come on.” Juleka tried to tug at his unmarred arm while balancing bile and terror.

“Don’t worry Juleka, I’ll wake up soon.

“What is your lead? I’m here because I fucking need to be. You didn’t have to leave us. You wrote about how awesome it is to be without your family. I write about how much I miss him.” Luka pulled another smoke out of his pack and pushed down the mini ashtray between him and Jagged.

“Luka, you’ve always loved with your whole heart. You took after your mom in that way. I remember her calling me when that fucking older guy broke your heart. I wanted to break his goddamn legs.” Jagged lit Luka’s smoke once again. “Do I need to break Adrien’s legs?”

The trouble, with no one knowing the whole story, is that Luka was merely a boy who had his heart broken, and was running around the world to forget him. It infuriated him. That people would tell him that ‘whoever broke his heart must be an idiot’. He would shrug it off. Jagged, however, was not just anyone.

Adrenaline surged as Luka’s fist collided into Jagged’s face. “NO - I AM FUCKING DOING EVERYTHING I CAN TO KEEP HIM ALIVE!”

His fist barely hurt as he recoiled it, even though the flesh around his knuckles were raw. He’d left a sickeningly dark purple mark that already started to crawl up Jagged’s cheek.

“Jesus! You have a hell of a right hook m’boy!” Jagged rubbed the point where his jaw and skull met, trying to make sure it was still intact.

Jagged looked back towards Luka, seeing his own reflection both in the glasses and the seething boy behind them. “How is overdosing keeping him alive, Luka? Do you die and then he gets to live? Made a deal with the devil?”

“What do you say?” He ran a pill across his lips.

The man aptly called the pill ‘the brick’, both because of its ashy red shade and the way it nearly knocked you out. Luka hadn't quite listened to the explanation, he didn’t fully understand the strength of the drug that was running against the man’s lips. Besides prescriptions, Luka had always managed to steer clear of narcotics; he knew from his dad how much they could tear lives apart. But he didn’t hear the warnings, he couldn’t think of his dad, all he could think of was the fact that there was something that could take his pain away rubbing against thin pink lips in front of him.

Luka ran his hands through the man’s thin bleached hair. His eyes were a forest green as they glimmered to Luka, waiting for his answer. Instead of vocalising it, Luka brought his lips to his. They were dry, but at least something sweet came from them. Relaxation.

Falling onto the bed, Luka pulled him closer. “Adrien,” he whispered towards the man.

“Oh, um,” Luka pressed his lips against the fake Adrien’s so that he wouldn’t have to hear him correct his namesake.

Stretching back, it was still too clear. His eyes were too dark. Luka swung his hand off the side of the bed, reaching for the neck of his Jamesons bottle. “Give me another one.”

“Luka, you need to be careful oh well, you’re just really going for it aren’t you?” Fake Adrien watched as Luka slid three more pills past his lips. Maybe if Fake Adrien had said it was ‘oxycodone’, or if Luka had asked, he would have been more cautious.

Instead of words, Fake Adrien opened his mouth to ask for more. Luka passed back the ziplock bag housing the discontinued pills, waiting for the pain to stop. He’d taken entire bottles of pills and still came out the other side before… surely a few red pills could not do more.

Nathalie had requested Sass’s presence on her current mission, leaving him completely alone. He thought that he’d be fine. But all he could think about was Adrien, about seeing him again. He’d done everything he was supposed to, so whenever he finally got his chance to go back, Adrien was going to hate him. What made it worse, is that Luka didn’t have a cure for him. He was going to see the rage and hurt in Adrien’s eyes, and then it will all be over.

The lines of reality continued to blur, but it didn’t feel any stronger than anything Luka had experienced from his own neurodivergent rollercoaster.

With an inebriated smile, Nearly Adrien passed back the baggie. Luka bent over the edge of the bed, seemingly putting his bottle down, while he grabbed another two pills. Just a couple more and maybe he could truly believe this was Adrien.

His body started to warm as his face went numb. He looked over at the blonde boy. A surge of contentment pulsed through his body.

“You okay, baby?” Fake Adrien ran his hands along Luka’s face.

Tears trickled against Luka’s cheeks as he nodded, “Now that you’re here.” He kissed the man’s wrist before holding it back against his own face. “I missed you.”

Luka pulled the man against his chest and ran his fingers through his hair.

“I didn’t fucking mean to.” Luka just wanted to feel like Adrien was back. That everything was going to be okay. How did he end up being the damn Bella Swan out of the two of them?

“Luka, don’t take fucking pills you know nothing about! And I thought this,” Jagged waved his smoke in the air, “was the vice you took over opioids, isn’t that what you said?”

“I KNOW! I KNOW!” Luka took off his glasses as he pulled himself into a ball. “I just, I couldn’t stop myself. I don’t know why. I don’t understand. It just never stops.”

“Hey,” Jagged took the smoke that was quivering from Luka’s hand and, along with his own, put it out. He soothed his hand on Luka’s back. “I’ve been there. Don’t let it ruin you like it ruined me. Please.”

I gotta say it’s hard to be brave

When you’re alone in the dark

I told myself that I wouldn’t be scared

But I’m still having nightmares

(I’m wide awake, I’m wide awake)

Nightmares by All Time Low

The buzzer of the intercom rang through the apartment. Adrien hated it. He hated that she forced him to reinstall it. He wanted that noise to stop. Every time the buzzer went off he was at the hospital. Every time the buzzer went off, Luka left him all over again.

It can’t be her. Adrien thought. If it was her, I wouldn’t be able to control myself from letting her in.

“Who do you think it is?” Plagg asked from his perch on Adrien’s shoulder.

“I don’t know. But I want that noise to stop.” Adrien’s chest heaved as he stared at the intercom. “Plagg, what the fuck magic is this?” Adrien grit his teeth watching the Kwami out of the corner of his eye.

“Are - are you sure it’s not just a little bit of trauma from the hospital? Maybe seeing your parents rings triggered something?” Plagg hated lying like this to the boy, but he was worried what a fight against Marinette would look like with only him. It seems no matter what it would end in damnation, in the form of death or servitude.

Infuriated, Adrien walked to the medicine cabinet and stuffed one of the small circular pills in his mouth. He may not believe that they were the proper medication for him, but at least they numbed the torture of constantly living under Marinette’s control.

The buzzer kept going. Over and over. Adrien tore a mug from the cabinet and whipped it against the wall.

Plagg turned to the intercom and pressed it himself. He couldn’t ask who was there, but he could let them in.

When the elevator dinged, Adrien was clasping to the counter. If he didn’t have to let them in, would it work as a loophole?

Alya came out of the elevator, slowly treading through the doors Plagg had propped open for her. She gasped at the state of the house before turning to Adrien. It appeared as if a tornado ran through it. If anything was breakable, it was littered over Adrien’s floor. However, the most horrific was the blood stains that had been left to crust along the walls.

“What’s up, Alya?” The friendly phrase was raspy.

She slowly stepped forward, her hormones making the fight to not break down into tears considerably more challenging. She wanted to brush Adrien’s face, but the degree that his cheeks had sunken was too terrifying to touch. His face was a powder white with imperial purple bags under his eyes.

Forcing herself to stay strong, she pushed out the words she’d been looking for. “I came… I came to ask you for help.”

“What do you need?” His movements were languid as he rested his elbows on the counter to help support his weight.

“I.. Um… I want to talk to Felix for the Ladyblog, but they’re only letting family see him. Will you come with me?”

Before agreeing, Adrien stepped forward, testing to see if there was anything preventing him from this excursion. “Yeah, let’s go.” Adrien immediately started walking towards the door, scared that if Marinette found out before he went, he wouldn’t be able to go.

“Right now? Oh, okay!” Alya scampered after him, trying her best to ignore the haunting state of his house.

Adrien pressed his head against the window as he longingly watched as cars drove past. He wanted that back, that feeling of freedom he felt the first time when he got out of the hospital and drove his Mini.

“Are you nervous?” Alya watched him out of the corner of her eye. She didn’t know what she was allowed to say.

“Something like that.” Adrien tousled his hair. He hated its current state. Marinette suggested that he get the same one from high school, and of course, he couldn’t resist. It was a far messier version, especially since the sides were still about half an inch shorter than the hair on the top.

As Adrien fidgeted, Alya could see the various shades of pink along his palm.

“What happened to your hand, Adrien?” Alya debated slowing down even more, just to make their trip a little longer.

Adrien gripped his fist shut. Some scars were from his nails, some were from whatever thing he broke in his hand while he tried to resist whatever order Marinette gave him.

“The speed’s 110, Alya.” Adrien ignored her question, getting irritated at how slowly she drove. He always drove fast.

“Does Marinette live with you now?” Alya couldn’t imagine how bad it would be for him if she lived there all the time.

“She comes over twice a week.” Adrien’s bit his lip in frustration that she came over at all.

Sensing Adrien’s unease, Alya decided to divert topics. “So, do you think Lila ever actually watched Felix Akumatize someone?”

His face was so ashen it somehow looked dirty as he laughed. “It is hard to believe! Felix had a rough patch for sure, but she was there ! I don’t know how she’s so much worse!”

“I mean, you’d think since she can basically piss anyone off that she’d be the perfect replacement!” Alya snorted as they turned into the prison parking lot.

“I think it’s because we need traits that match with our Kwamis to actually be strong. Being able to understand and influence emotions, besides solely anger, is something I don’t think Lila has.” Adrien theorised as they made their way to the entry.

Felix and Adrien had never perfectly mirrored each other so much in their life. They were both dishevelled and exhausted beyond comprehension.

Felix’s eyes glimmered as he saw his guests, immediately bringing a bounce to his step.

“Ugh, this is gonna be rough.” Adrien dropped his forehead in his hands. “It’s never good when he has that look.”

Felix dropped to the table in front of them as his grin grew. “You look gorgeous , Adrien. Bet you’re regretting not taking my deal now.” He tapped his fingers along the table between them.

“That’s not what we’re here to talk about.” Adrien leaned back in his chair, unsettled by Felix’s joy.

“It’s what she’s here to talk about.” Felix’s eyes turned to Alya and lowly whispered, “I won’t tell you shit about the rings unless he’s not at the table.”

The hairs on the back of Alya’s neck prickled. She wasn’t sure what she had been anticipating, but it definitely wasn’t hearing those words.

“Adrien,” Alya turned towards him, “can you give us a minute?”

Scoffing, Adrien stood from the table. “It’s fine, I needed to go to the bathroom anyway.”

“Pretty ballsy still letting him hold that Miraculous. Before you know it, we’ll have an entirely new super villain duo.” Felix raised an eyebrow to Alya, as if inviting her to play a game.

“Kid, are you okay?” Plagg hovered by Adrien’s face as he clung onto the edges of the sink.

“Do I look okay, Plagg? I must be fine, I’ve been taking my meds haven’t I? That’s the magical solution to all my made up , insane fucking problems.” Adrien seethed as his arms started to buckle under his rage.

“Hey, it’s okay, I’m sure that we can work stuff out. You know, maybe you could ask Alya to take you back to the hospital?” Plagg thought at least he wouldn’t have to follow her orders there.

“One evil for another. Either way I’m being controlled, away from the people I love, a fucking living breathing ghost.”

“I love you, Adrien.” Plagg smoothed some of the hair out of Adrien’s face; his attempts did not stay considering he was working against gravity.

“There will always be someone ready to destroy themselves. I’m sure you’ll find a new holder without a damn problem.” Adrien’s knuckles whitened as his anger flowed through his fingers onto the ceramic.

“Not one like you.” Plagg nuzzled into the crook of Adrien’s neck. Snake Boy better come back soon.

“Thanks, Plagg.” Adrien forced himself to say as tears fell to the sink. “Why- why doesn’t it ever stop?”

Still clinging to the edge, Adrien squatted to the ground, heaving through sobs.

Adrien had barely sat down before the buzzer acknowledging the end of visitor time went off.

Fucking god damn buzzers. Go to hell.

“Sorry we didn’t get a chance to chat, cousin . I really do wish you the best.” Felix clicked his tongue as he was lifted from his seat. As one final piece of discomfort, Felix winked towards Alya as he said, “Give me a call if you ever get tired of your Turtle.”

Alya’s blood chilled, Adrien’s brother had done his homework. She had a feeling, this wouldn’t be the last they saw of Felix, especially with the Miraculous still missing.

“What did you two talk about?” Adrien dragged his feet as they walked towards the exit, not wanting to go back ‘home’.

“Oh, pretty much just said everything we already thought. He went on about how you guys would have been an amazing power wielding duo.” A truth hidden within a lie. Both her and Felix agreed until Alya was told otherwise, it was best to follow Bunnyx’s ruling. Until Luka came back, they wouldn’t risk trying to get Adrien to sneak off his own ring; if he erred in any way it could quickly lead to his death.

Author's Notes:

This chapter literally meant so much to me. Out of all the chapter's this is the one that speaks the most from the heart. I have written Luka as experiencing BPD the way that I experience BPD. It may be important to note that there are some crossovers within myself (such as possible schizotypal). No one's experience with any mental illness will be the same. Through Luka, though, I get to show how this stuff feels and looks to me.

If we were to pull out the DSM-5 and determine why Luka has BPD...

Borderline personality is often associated with abandonment at a young age. There are a lot of other factors and disorders that derive from childhood trauma, but BPD is often associated with abandonment.

It is something that will never be fully “cured” but you can continue to treat it to make it manageable. Ex. Sass is the “stress case”, but the calmest, because he had to learn it.

BPD can include blurring of reality and disassociation/depersonalization; impulsive and risky behaviour; lack of self regard; depersonalization; the need to be loved while siamotainously, neverendingly, working to fuck up your life.

The opioids were an important one to mention because it’s not that Luka suddenly decides, “heroin sounds like a great idea.” It’s the not fully considering or understanding the weight of your actions. Myself, and other people close to me, have dealt with similar situations of impulse control. When you come out of that current swing you’re looking at yourself like, “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?”

This kind of works as an awareness to others and to the actions of characters. We are always responsible for the havoc we cause, but understanding why is important.

Also - trauma blocking is pretty common for all humans (to my understanding). I don’t think it would be quite the level of forgetting your dad was related to you, but it is a defence mechanism your brain will pop up to help you get through shit.

I did a lot of research to make sure I found a red pill. Just happened to be ‘lucky’ that it was oxycodone. Luka did take a lethal amount, and the pills were (according to the website I was on, anyway) discontinued. It is important to also understand that, in regards to opioids, Luka is showing abuse instead of addiction. The addiction is taking form in alcohol.

And Adrien continues to fall further. His weight? When Adrien gets overly stressed he has problems eating. Since he’s freaking the eff out, he’s really not doing well in every form of health.

- We also see the dramatic irony from the last chapter come into play, we know that the ring came off Gabriel’s finger … buuuuut…. ‘Twas Felix grabbing his own ring.

What did you guys think? Luka’s was a newer addition, but the prison visit has been there since the initial storyboard. Im interested to hear what this walk down “everybody is fucking falling apart” lane has been life for everyone!

Oh - random little point. Fake Adrien gives Luka a pill in his mouth. Luka refuses to give a pill directly to him, but will only pass the bag. Just a little, very deliberate, tid bit there.

Another fun little piece- I did want to find a red pill for Luka, because the pills Adrien takes different red pills Adrien takes are also red. Very different , but both red.

Hope everyone is doing well! Thank you for reading!!!

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guardianspirits13 · 3 years

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Ending and Rescue

Alright so in light of my last comic, which you can find here, I have some thoughts about the Ending situation.

Ignoring the complicated relationship between Natsuo and Endeavor, the battle is kind of a microcosm of all the things wrong with the celebrity-type hero society.

Disclaimer: I understand that this is not the main plot of the story and Hori can't show the aftermath of a battle every time (he does a great job with it post-war arc) but because I'm worried for Natsuo I'm gonna go off anyways.

My problem with the Ending battle mostly boils down to how Endeavor handled the aftermath. While his ‘discussion’ with Natsuo in 252 needed to happen, it did not need to happen literally moments after an extremely traumatic experience sitting in the middle of the road.

Once Natsuo is safe he is literally in shock and can’t really process much of what’s going on around him. It takes him a full minute or two to even process that Endeavor is touching him.

Upon him pulling away, Endeavor does not spare a second in trying to justify his actions. Honestly I could care less that he wasn’t involved in the battle itself, but launching into an entire monologue directly related to Natsuo’s prior trauma?

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I’d assume psychologically that if someone with previous trauma experiences a new, separate trauma, it’s probably not a good idea to connect those two events anymore by bringing up said past trauma after another traumatic event.

Let’s do a quick rundown of what Natsuo experienced that evening:

He had been abducted for at least an hour before the confrontation. Of course nobody expected anything but they still sit down for tea and say their goodbyes before piling in the car which gives us a good sense of time.

Natsuo was in the clutches of an unstable, recently released villain with no concern for eiter of their lives and jacked up on illegal quirk drugs like a cherry on top.

As a side note, this is one of my leading points of evidence as to why Natsuo is quirkless, because self-defense with a quirk is legal, and if he had an ice quirk it would have been perfect for the job.

After being in captivity, he was exploited as a hostage and not only had his life threatened but also came VERY close to death or a least life-altering injury.

So after experiencing all that, you’d think it would be good to give him some space and medical treatment, but instead Endeavor provokes him and like, no wonder he ends up in tears. I don’t care if Endeavor’s intentions were good, that was clearly not the time.

I could give him the benefit of the doubt and say this talk needed to happen now for narrative reasons, but because it’s Endeavor I’m not cutting him any slack.

So after this talk Ending starts screaming again and Endeavor just leaves him there??? In the middle of the road??

It’s not shown, but I really really hope that there were paramedics on the scene that checked up on him both physically and psychologically. He seems to have an abrasion on his head and could very likely have a concussion from being thrown around, not to mention his mental state.

The next few times we see him also make me worried for him because it’s presumably not long after that we see him at the train station and then back at home again, and he seems fine...ish.

Idk about you but I don’t think most people would snap back from a near-death experience so quickly, I’d say he’s definitely burying his emotions.

Anyways one majorly overlooked facet of the problems with this celebrity-like, statistics-based hero society is that is does not benefit the hero to stay and help and do rescue in any way.

We know that Hawks zooms through villain attacks and leaves his sidekicks to do the dirty work (although this isn't entirely his fault since he probably knew nothing other than what the Commission taught him)

We saw that one hero quit once he saw the aftermath of the war arc and saw all the pain. The real caveat here us that the overlooked half of the 'Hero' profession is saving people and rescue training, which is often pushed aside in favor of ranking and publicity.

Going back to Natsuo, it's kinda poetic that he's training to be a hero in a traditional sense as a med student somewhere in the area of psychiatry, and he does so while disapproving of the Hero profession.

I know this is long but these are just some of my thoughts about the situation. I do have an entire meta here where I go more in depth about Natsuo's trauma specifically, and I have a couple simila metas in progress so keep an eye out for those as well!!!

(@moriphyte I see u! I'll get to your ask next, it's very long lol)

#bnha meta #natsuo todoroki #endeavor #bnha ending #bnha 252 #bnha 250 #todoroki natsuo #analysis #hero society #hawks #hero commission #bnha #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #mha #mymeta #mypost

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tessiete · 3 years

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hi ive read like all your stuff about korkie is a kenobi in the span of about three days and i'm so EMOTIONAL?? it makes such narrative sense - star wars is a story about fathers and sons and what happens when mothers are lost and in eternal spring, when obi wan doesn't reject korkie, and korkie doesn't reject obi wan, and they love each other and accept each other despite the gaping hole that satine left in their relationship it like heals and breaks that cycle of little blonde boys being 1/

of little blonde boys being left in the desert without their mothers and with father figures who don't quite accept the responsibility of being a father to all of their detriments! it lets padme live, and it lets luke escape, and it lets everyone who wants to heal and work towards a better future. anyway, this is some Good Fucking Food and thank u for writing it. if you're still open to prompts i would really like to see some kryze-kenobi family bonding. just the three of them happy and together

AH! This has been sitting so beautifully, and lovingly in my inbox for ages now, and I do apologise, but I just - I saw fluff and I panicked. I PANICKED!!!

And, as you can probably see, wrote reams of whump and h/c instead. But I tried.

Anyway, there is so much I want to say about this - I’m going to have to bookmark this whole thing just so I can come back again and again to your generous words. Thank you! I do have such a fondness for Eternal Spring, and whether or not it began as a joke, I am SO attached to the idea of Korkie as a Kenobi, the idea that blood isn’t always bad, that healing can happen, that good people make mistakes, that forgiveness IS an option - and I love how that aligns with the Pacifism of Satine’s New Mandalorians. I wish we had more of it (that insistent, unrelenting kindness and compassion) in SW, and Korkie is my little effort at that.

RANTING ASIDE, I hope you find and enjoy this little bit of fluff for the Kenobi-Kryzes. MUCH LOVE.

AND BY THE HAND LED

It was not Life Day. It was not Holyrod week, and Belli’s birthday had been a full ten month ago. Yet still, on this day, Kirokicek Kryze woke with the sun, and raced to his window where he could see the Sundari dockyard in the distance.

Personal shuttles buzzed to and fro. Docking tugs hauled heavy freighters into place. Long, thin vactrains hurtled passengers from one platform to the next, or further on into the heart of the city. A few large ferries which had found mooring overnight made their ponderous voyage upwards, headed for the small opening at the apex of the Sundari dome. They were bound for transports anchored in wet space, the people aboard away for deep space travel to distant stars.

Korkie watched as one neared the aperture, then, with incredible steadiness of hand, cleared the narrow gap with ease. He let go his breath, but his eyes remained fixed upon the opening. He was not much concerned with the ships that left, but instead found great interest in those ferries which were currently arriving.

They took turns - one in, one out - and with every exchange, Korkie felt as though the city was making room for a very special guest. One who loomed larger than life in his young consciousness, and one who occupied more and more space in his heart the closer he came.

Bebu was coming home.

A knock at his door was not enough to tear his attention from the spectacle outside, but he shuffled over to make room for his mother beside him at the window.

“Good morning, cyar'ika,” she said, pressing a kiss to his hair. “And what has got you up so early?”

She still wore her nightclothes beneath a fine gown of pressed velvet. Korkie leaned back into her embrace, stroking the soft fabric, and letting the warm, sweet smell of sleep wash over him.

“I’m watching the dockyards,” he said. “Look! Do you think that one of them has Bebu on it?”

Satine let her chin rest on the crown of his head, and followed his gaze to the sky.

“Perhaps,” she allowed. “Are you excited for your Bebu to come home?”

Korkie turned, trying to get a glimpse of her expression which could only be as teasing as his own was incredulous. She smiled.

“Excited, Belli?” he asked. “I am so, so, superlatively excited!”

“My,” she said, her face transforming to one of awe. “That is quite a superlative word you have discovered. Is it new?”

Korkie nodded. “I am saving it for Bebu, for our collection. Do you think he shall like it?”

“I think he shall be quite impressed, dinui.”

“I have another, but I always say it wrong, so I think I shall write it down, instead.”

“That is very wise,” she said. “For then there is no chance of misunderstanding, and then your father can teach you to speak it correctly.”

Korkie grinned, and squeezed her hand, so glad to be in such perfect accord.

“That was exactly my plan, Belli!”

“Te jatne mind jo'lekir ti ast,” she said, laughing. “Now come.”

“Are we going to the docks?”

“Not yet,” she said. “First meal first, I think, and then we shall see.”

She stood from her place behind Korkie, and smoothed her skirts. The early morning sun fell kindly over her face, so that it lit her eyes from behind, like the facet of some bright gem. She held out her hand to him.

“But Belli -!”

“Is that fussing I hear coming out of your mouth?” she asked, the perfect image of confusion.

“No,” he conceded, hanging his head in defeat.

“I thought not,” she said. “Not my Korkie. Besides, we must first ensure that we are properly fed, and tidied before we appear at the docks. We cannot have our tummies grumbling and complaining while we are at the height of a superlative joy, now can we?”

“That would be rather distracting,” he allowed.

“And what would your father think if you showed up all bleary eyed, and sleep tousled? He’d hardly recognise you!”

“That’s not true,” protested Korkie. “He’d think me a ‘devoted legislator’. He said so last time.”

Satine cocked her head, a smirk curling in the corner of her mouth, and pinned just there, until such a time as she could give it to the owner of those borrowed words.

“Well, cyare, I cannot think he meant it as a compliment,” she said, wiggling her fingers temptingly. “Now come - to firsts.

In the kitchens, his mother suggested they arrange a menu, scrounged from the conservator and pantry, while the staff set about preparing for the rest of their day.

“No need to bother anyone too much when it’s just us, right?” She placed a stool in front of an out of the way countertop, and held his hand while Korkie made a great leap to stand atop it. “Now, what are we hungry for?”

“Isbeans, and egg!” he cried. “With fresh muja juice!”

“Muja juice!” she echoed in surprise. “My, but we’re feeling quite indulgent today!”

“Well, it is a special occasion!” he said.

“Of course, you’re right. Muja juice it is. Anything else, ad’ika?”

He thought for a moment, but knowing how easily she had acceded to his first request, he concluded it most reasonable to forward several more.

“Perhaps some toast,” he said. “And flatcakes. And melon squares with black fire jelly? And then some moof milk and summerberries because they’ll go bad if we don’t eat them. With sucre crystals on the top. And maybe - only because Bebu says it’s healthy - a cup of kava. But just one, or I’ll be up all night.”

She crouched down to meet him, mischief sparkling in her eyes and not a word of protest at his requests. Instead, her tone was conspiratorial, as though they were together in some great game of hide and hunt.

“Let’s brew a whole pot,” she said. “So that we may share it.”

He laughed in delight. Satine pulled down a tin of weava flour, and let him sprinkle the surface while she portioned out another measure into a shallow bowl for flatcakes. Under her careful eye, he cracked a tip-yip egg, and tipped in some sucre. She worked the mixture into a sticky dough, and portioned out small spheres for Korkie to press out upon the counter. Cook A’den looked on skeptically, but when his stack of raw discs began to pile up, she stepped in with a sigh, and a fond smile and lifted him on her hip while she fried them over a nano-cooker.

As he worked, Satine gathered the berries and the milk, and a little pot of sucre. Helping hands piled plates high with toast, and ulik butter. Isbeans and hard boiled eggs followed, kept warm beneath heated domes. A whole pitcher of ice cold muja juice was produced from the conservator, and a fresh pot of kava was left to steep with wide, green leaves still in it. There was so much food that, in the end, a small cart was required to bear the fruits of their labours, while Korkie added the final touch of perfectly browned flatcakes.

Normally, they would eat their firsts in the family dining hall, but Satine insisted that she could not possibly do so while still dressed in her nightclothes.

“And scandalise the whole parliament? I think not, my very shocking dinui. No, it’s best we take everything back to my rooms, and eat there where no one will think us as uncivilised as we appear.”

So with many thanks to A’den, and her workers, Korkie followed his mother down the glistening marbloid halls with their wide windows. The sun was nearly all the way up, and the traffic in the sky had only increased since Korkie last looked. He was hit with the sudden realisation that perhaps many ferries had come and gone in his absence, and any one of them might contain his father. He raced to the window to check.

“Come along, Korkie,” said Satine. “Soon. I promise.”

Torn between food and the possibility that his father was waiting for him even now, Korkie gave into the demands of his hunger, and followed his mother down the hall.

They stopped outside her door, the cart pushed just off to the side. Satine looked at him appraisingly, smoothing one hand over his determinedly erstwhile hair.

“Oh dear,” she said, straightening his synfleece robe, as he reached for the cart to steal a summerberry from the pile. “You do look a sight. But I suppose it cannot be helped.”

She gave him a fond caress, her thumb tracing the swell of his little cheek with such reverence, and care that Korkie nearly felt guilty for snatching the fruit. But she smiled as he swallowed, and he supposed it must just have been one of those strange things buirs did from time to time, where they mixed up joy and sorrow and said nothing about it.

“I shall comb my hair later, Belli,” he offered. That seemed to do the trick, for she laughed, and stood, and gave his hand a brief squeeze.

“I will remember you said that,” she said. “Now, be a good boy and get the door for your Belli, would you?”

She returned to the cart, as he wiped his hands down the length of his robe, and reached for the palmpad. The door chimed, and slid aside with the barest sigh of air. Inside, Korkie could see that the curtains had been pulled back, and the room was flooded blue and gold with the oncoming day. Playful shadows danced across the floor where hanging tassels toyed with the sun. The carpet glistened like thick grass, lush and crowned in dew. A small table with three chairs sat to one side, and an old cloak lay thrown across it. There were boots, too large for his mother to wear, a belt too wide to be hers, and there, in the bed, swaddled in silkweed sheets and haloed by the sun, was Obi-Wan Kenobi, hovering on the edge of waking.

“Bebu!” Korkie shouted.

At his cry, Obi-Wan opened his eyes, and smiled, catching his son as raced across the floor and leapt upon the bed in a single motion.

“Ah, ner wer'ika! Ni mirdir tion'tuur gar ru'kel olaror. Bic cuyir ori'udes tion'tuur gar cuyir dar.”

“Bebu!” Korkie cried again, laughing and wriggling with joy. His father lifted him over his head, holding him aloft as he made his cursory examination.

“Korkicek!” he groaned, as his strength gave out and Korkie tumbled atop his father’s chest in a tangle of limbs and blankets. “You must be very much grown since I last saw you, for you are getting too heavy for me!”

“No, I’m not, Bebu,” he said. “I’ve only grown two centimeteres since you were gone, and Belli says that’s only because I’m on a spurt.”

“Only two centimeters?” Obi-Wan demands. “Dear me, that’s not very much at all. I shall expect more diligence in your efforts at stretching if we are to make any serious headway in this matter.”

Korkie giggled. “Don’t be silly, Bebu,” he said. “I cannot stretch myself bigger. It takes time.”

“And heavy reading,” Obi-Wan agreed gravely.

“And good eating,” Satine added from behind them. She’d set the table in their distraction. Obi-Wan’s cloak now hung respectably from a hook by the fresher blind, and three plates sat waiting to be filled. The isbeans steamed, their skin crackling and blackened. The flatcakes dripped with galek syrup and butter. The summerberries shone plump and delectable in their precarious pyramid. The black fire jellies jiggled, and the muja juice sparkled.

“Is that fresh kava I smell?” asked Obi-Wan.

“It is!” said Korkie. “And all sorts of things which Belli and I made! I suppose it’s a lucky thing we made so much extra, for now you can share it with us.”

“A lucky thing, indeed,” Obi-Wan agreed. He looked at Satine with such adoration that the smirk she had pinned up earlier unfurled completely and crossed her face in a radiant smile.

“Come, Bebu,” said Korkie, taking his father’s hand in his. “Enough lazing about in bed. Let’s eat, or the kava will get cold.”

“Quite right,” Obi-Wan agreed, standing as Korkie slid to his feet beside him, and tugged him over to where Satine was waiting. “We can’t have that.”

“And you may have my cup as well,” added Korkie, magnanimously, “As it is truly a rotten drink, even if you say it is healthy. But since it is such a special day, I don’t think I should be forced to have it, anyway.”

“He drives a hard bargain, your son,” said Obi-Wan, leaning in to beg a small kiss.

“Ah, but of course,” said Satine, quick to grant his request. “He gets that from you, cyare.”

“Ah, ner wer'ika! Ni mirdir tion'tuur gar ru'kel olaror. Bic cuyir ori'udes tion'tuur gar cuyir dar.” - Ah, my little terror! I was wondering when you might show up. It has been far too quiet without you.

“Te jatne mind jo'lekir ti ast” - The best mind agrees with itself. (read: Great minds think alike.)

ad’ika, dinui, cyare - little one, gift, beloved.

#my fic #prompt fill #korkie is a kenobi #korkie kryze #obi-wan kenobi #satine kryze #obitine #fluff #fic

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cassandraclare · 5 years

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Cassandra Jean’s illustration for this month’s Chain of Gold flash fiction — this one’s about Will and Gideon, and features James, Thomas and Jesse as little kids. It’s a two-parter, so here’s part one!

LONDON, 1889

Will Herondale was full of Christmas spirit, and Gideon Lightwood found it very annoying.

It wasn’t just Will, actually; he and his wife Tessa had both been raised in mundane circumstances until they were nearly adults, and so their memories of Christmas were of fond family memories and childhood delights. They came alive with it when the city of London did, as it did every year.

Gideon’s memories of Christmas were mostly about overcrowded streets, overrich food, and over-inebriated mundane carolers who needed to be saved from London’s more dangerous elements as they caroused all night, believing all trouble and wickedness was gone from the world right up until they were eaten by Kapre demons disguised as Christmas trees. Just for example.

Born and raised a Shadowhunter, Gideon, of course, did not celebrate Christmas, and had always borne London’s obsession with the holiday with bemused indifference. He had resided in Idris for most of his adult life, where the winter had a kind of Alpine profundity, and there was nary a Christmas wreath or cracker to be found. Winter in Idris felt more solemn than Christmas, so much older than Christmas. It was a strange facet of Idris: where most Shadowhunters ended up celebrating the holidays of their local mundanes, at least the ones that spilled out into street decorations and public festivals, Idris had no holidays at all. Gideon never wondered about this; it seemed obvious to him that Shadowhunters didn’t take days off. It was the blessing and the curse of being one, after all. You were a Shadowhunter all the time.

No wonder some couldn’t bear it, and left for a mundane life. Like Will Herondale’s father Edmund, in fact.

Perhaps that was why Will’s Christmas spirit annoyed him so. He’d come to like Will Herondale, and consider him a good friend. He hoped that when their children were older they too would become friends, if Thomas was all right by then. And he knew Will deliberately presented himself as silly and rather daft, but that he was a sharp and observant Institute head, and a more-than-capable fighter of demons.

But when Will insisted on taking them all to see the window displays at Selfridge’s, he could not help but worry that perhaps Will had a fundamentally unserious mind after all.

“Oxford Street? Days before Christmas? Are you mad?”

“It will be a lark!” Will said, with the slight lilt into his Welsh accent that meant he was a little too excited for his own good. “I’ll take James, you take Thomas, we’ll have a stroll. Have a drink at the Devil on the way back, what?” He clapped Gideon on the back.

It had been a long time since Gideon was last in England. As one of the Consul’s most trusted advisors, Gideon not only lived in Idris but rarely found opportunity to leave. He also remained so that his son Thomas could breathe the healthy air of Brocelind Forest, and not the air of this filthy, foggy city.

This filthy, foggy city, his father’s voice echoed in his mind, and Gideon was too weary to silence his father’s voice as he usually did whenever Benedict crept in. More than ten years dead, yet he had not shut up.

His brother Gabriel lived in Idris, too, and for less obvious reasons. Perhaps it was not only the bad air; perhaps they both were happier with a good distance between them and Benedict Lightwood’s house. And the knowledge that its current resident would barely speak with either of them.

But now Gideon had come to London, with Thomas, just the two of them, leaving Sophie and the girls behind. He needed advice about Thomas, people with whom he could discuss the problem discreetly. He needed to talk to Will and Tessa Herondale, and he needed to talk to a very specific Silent Brother who was often found in their vicinity.

Just now he was wondering if that had been a good idea. “A good bracing walk” was exactly the kind of English nonsense he’d half-expected Will to suggest for Thomas, but “a good bracing walk down the most crowded shopping street in London three days before Christmas” was a level of nonsense he had not been prepared for. “I can’t take Thomas through that crowd,” he said to Will. “He’ll get knocked around.”

“He isn’t going to get knocked around,” said Will scornfully. “He’ll be fine.”

“Besides,” said Gideon, “we’ll get looks. Mundane fathers don’t usually walk their babies in prams, you know.”

“I shall carry my son upon my shoulders,” said Will, “and you carry yours on yours, and Angel protect anyone who complains about it. Fresh London air would do all of us some good. And the windows are meant to be a spectacle, this year.”

“Fresh London air,” said Gideon dryly, “is thick as molasses and the color of pea soup.” But he acquiesced.

He had left Thomas in the nursery, where Tessa kept a watch over him and James. A full year older than James, Thomas wasn’t always good at understanding what James could and couldn’t do or understand. Tessa had been concerned that James would end up hurt. Gideon, though, was more concerned about Thomas, who was still smaller than James, despite the difference in their ages. He was paler than James, too, and less sturdy. He had only recently recovered from the latest of his terrible fevers, which had brought a Silent Brother, unfamiliar to them, to their house in Alicante to examine him. After a time the Silent Brother declared that Thomas would recover, and left without any further conversation.

But Gideon wanted answers. As he picked up Thomas now, he couldn’t help but think about how the boy was hardly any weight at all. He was the smallest of all “the boys,” as Gideon thought of them – of James, and his brother’s son Christopher, and Charlotte’s son Matthew. He had been born early, and small. They had been terrified the first time he caught fever, convinced it was the end.

Thomas hadn’t died, but he hadn’t fully recovered either. He remained delicate, weak of constitution, quick to illness. Sophie had fought harder than anyone to drink from the Mortal Cup and become a Shadowhunter, but now she was forced to fight a far worse battle against death by their son’s bedside. Over and over again.

Sighing, he took his son to fetch their coats for their bracing Christmas walk.

As expected, Oxford Street was a madhouse of pedestrian shoppers, carriages, gawkers, and menacing groups of roaming carolers. Gideon would just as soon have glamoured them all invisible from mundane eyes (although one of the groups of carolers were obviously werewolves, who had exchanged Acknowledging Looks with Gideon), but Will of course wished to bask in the experience.

James also seemed mostly intrigued by the noise and lights, giggling and yelping at the merry scene around them. A London boy from birth, thought Gideon, and then thought, well, but I was a London boy from birth, and this is too much commotion for my liking. For his own part, Thomas was quiet, watching with wide eyes, clutching onto his father’s shoulders. Gideon wasn’t sure how weakened Thomas still was from the last fever and how much he was overwhelmed by the crowds. In some ways, when he wasn’t sick, Thomas could be guilt-inducingly easy to care of; he rarely made a fuss, just looked out into the world with those large hazel eyes, as if aware of his own helplessness and hoping not to be noticed.

Will waited until after they had already joined the crowds at the windows of Selfridge’s and Will had made a number of nonsensical exclamations of delight of the “By Jove!” variety. He had held James right up to the glass to examine the scenes in detail, which seemed to revolve around some blond children ice skating on a river. Gideon had pointed things out to Thomas, who had smiled.

Only once they had stopped to purchase some hot cider from a man hawking it down a side street did Will say, “I heard about Tatiana’s son Jesse. Dreadful business. Have you spoken to her?”

Gideon shook his head. “I haven’t spoken to Tatiana in nearly ten years, or been back to the house.”

Will made a sympathetic noise.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” said Gideon.

“What?” Will said.

“A coincidence,” said Gideon. “That both her and I have children who are—sickly.”

“Gideon,” said Will reasonably, “forgive me for saying so, but that is a load of codswallop.” Gideon blinked at him. “For one thing, you have your beautiful daughters, neither of whom were more than usually ill when they were babies. For another, all of what happened to your father was his own doing, and happened long after you were born, and neither you or Gabriel were sickly.”

Gideon shook his head. Will was so kind, so eager to spare him the consequences of his family’s sins. “You don’t know the extent of it,” he said. “The extent of Benedict’s experiments with dark magic. They were ongoing, from as long as I can remember. The demon pox just sticks in the memory, because it is rather lurid.”

“And also we were there,” said Will, “when he turned into a giant worm.”

“Also that,” said Gideon grimly. “But two sickly sons, small and frail—I cannot say with certainty that it is a coincidence, that it has nothing to do with the depredations of my father. I cannot risk the possibility.” He looked at Will imploringly. “It took Jesse years to become ill,” he said, “and Thomas has been ill so much already.”

There was a profound silence. Quietly, Will said, “You sound as if you mean to do something.”

“I do,” said Gideon with a sigh. “I must look at my father’s papers, his records of what he called his “work”. They are at Chiswick, and I must go and ask Tatiana for them.”

“Will she see you?” said Will.

Gideon shook his head again. “I don’t know. I hoped her anger would cool, over time, and her resentment. I hoped the fact that the Clave gifted her with all my father’s wealth and possessions would help her find peace.”

“Well,” said Will, “if you go, you absolutely must leave Thomas with us.”

“You wouldn’t want him to meet his aunt?” Gideon said innocently.

Will looked at him seriously. “I wouldn’t want him, or any of my children, on the grounds of that house!”

Gideon was taken aback. “Why? What’s she done to it?”

Will said darkly, “It’s what she hasn’t done.”

Gideon could see Will’s point. Tatiana hadn’t done anything to the house. Nothing to change, or clean, or preserve it in any way. Rather than restoring it or redecorating it to her own tastes, Tatiana had simply allowed it to rot, blackening and collapsing in on itself, a ghastly monument to Benedict Lightwood’s ruination. The windows were clouded, as though fog were seething indoors; the maze, a black and twisted wreckage. When he opened the front gate, the hinges screamed like a tortured soul.

It did not bode well for the emotional state of its resident.

When Benedict Lightwood died in disgrace from the late stages of demon pox, and the full history of his infamy was revealed to the Clave, Gideon laid low. He didn’t want to answer questions, or hear false sympathy for the damage done to his family name. He shouldn’t have cared. He’d known the truth of his father already. Yet it stung his pride, when he shouldn’t have had any pride left in his besmirched name.

The houses and the fortune were taken away from Benedict’s children by order of the Clave. Gideon could still remember when he had found out that Tatiana had brought a complaint against him and against Gabriel for the “murder” of their father. The Clave had first confiscated their possessions, and finally laid out the situation: Tatiana Blackthorn had petitioned the Clave for Benedict’s fortune to be given to her, as well as the Lightwood’s ancestral house in Chiswick. She was a Blackthorn now, not the bearer of a tainted name. She made many accusations against her brothers in the process. The Clave said they understood that Gideon and Gabriel had had no choice but to slay the monster their father had become, yet if they were to speak of technical truth only, Tatiana might be considered correct. The Clave was inclined to give Tatiana the full Lightwood inheritance, in hopes of settling the matter.

“I will fight this,” Charlotte had told Gideon, her small hands tight upon his sleeve and her mouth set.

“Charlotte, don’t,” Gideon begged. “You have so many other battles to fight. Gabriel and I don’t need any of that tainted money. This doesn’t matter.”

The money hadn’t mattered, then.

Gabriel and Gideon discussed the matter, and decided not to contest her claims. Their sister was a widow. She could live in the former Lightwood manor at Chiswick in England, and at Blackthorn Manor in Idris, and welcome. Gideon hoped she and her son would be happy. As it was, Gideon’s memories of the house were, at best, ambivalent.

Now he waited at the front door, its paint mostly peeled off, with deep gouges here and there, as though some wild animal had tried to get in. Maybe Tatiana locked herself out at some point. After a time it swung open, but waiting behind it was not his sister but a ten year old boy, looking somber. He had the midnight black hair of the father he’d never met, but he was tall for his age, willow-thin, with green eyes.

Gideon blinked. “You must be Jesse.”

The boy narrowed his eyes. “Yes,” said the boy. “Jesse Blackthorn. Who are you?”

Jesse, his nephew, after all this time. Gideon had asked so many times to see Jesse when he was a child. He and Gabriel had tried to go to Tatiana when she had the child, but she turned them both away.

Gideon took a deep breath. “Well,” he said. “I’m your Uncle Gideon, as it happens. I am very glad to make your acquaintance at last.” He smiled. “I was always hoping for it.”

Jesse’s expression did not improve. “Mama says you are a very wicked man.”

“Your mother and I,” Gideon said with a sigh, “have had a very…complicated history. But family should know one another, and fellow Shadowhunters, as well.”

The boy continued to stare at Gideon, but his face softened a bit. “I have never met any other Shadowhunters,” he said. “Other than Mama.”

Gideon had thought about this moment many times, but now found himself struggling for words. “You are…you see…I wanted to tell you. We have heard that your mother doesn’t want you to take Marks. You should know…we are family first, always. And if you don’t wish to take Marks, the rest of your family will support you in that decision. With the—the other Shadowhunters.” He wasn’t sure if Jesse even knew the word Clave.

Jesse looked alarmed. “No! I will. I want to! I’m a Shadowhunter.”

“So is your mother,” murmured Gideon. He felt a slight twinge of possibility there. Tatiana could have disappeared like Edmund Herondale, abandoned Downworld entirely, lived as a mundane. Shadowhunters did, sometimes; though Edmund had done it for love, Tatiana might do it out of hatred. That she had not gave Gideon hope, although, he was sure, foolish hope.

He knelt down, to be closer to the boy. He hesitated, then reached out for Jesse’s shoulder. Jesse stepped back, casually avoiding the touch, and Gideon let it go. “You are one of us,” he said quietly.

“Jesse!” Tatiana’s voice came from the top of the entrance stairs. “Get away from that man!”

As if prodded with a needle, Jesse leapt away from Gideon’s reach and retreated without a further word into the shadowed recesses of the house.

Gideon stared in horror as his sister Tatiana drifted down the stairs. She wore a pink gown more than ten years old. It was stained with blood he well knew was more than ten years old as well. Her face was drawn and pinched, as though her scowl had been etched there, unchanged for years.

Oh, Tatiana. Gideon was flooded with a strange amalgamation of sympathy and revulsion. This is long past grief. This is madness.

His little sister’s green eyes rested on him, cold as if he were a stranger. Her smile was a knife.

“As you can see, Gideon,” she said. “I dress for company. You never know who might drop by.”

Her voice, too, was changed: rough and creaking with disuse.

“Have you come to apologize?” Tatiana went on. “You will not find exoneration, for the things you have done. Their blood is on your hands. My father. My husband. Your hands, and your brother’s hands.”

And how was that? Gideon wanted to ask her. He had not killed her husband. Their father had done that, transformed by disease into a dreadful demonic creature.

But Gideon felt the shame and the guilt, as well as the grief, as he knew she intended him to. He had been the first to cut ties with his father, and with his father’s legacy. Benedict had taught them all to stick together, no matter what the cost, and Gideon had walked away. His brother had stayed, until he saw proof of their father’s corruption he couldn’t deny.

His sister remained even now.

“I am sorry you blame us,” said Gideon. “Gabriel and I have only ever wished for your good. Have you—have you read our letters?”

“I never was fond of reading,” murmured Tatiana.

She inclined her head, and after a moment Gideon realized this was the closest she would get to inviting him in. He stepped across the threshold nervously and, when Tatiana did not immediately shout at him, he continued inside.

Tatiana led him to what had once been their father’s office, a sculpture in dust and rot. He averted his eyes from the torn wallpaper, catching a glimpse of writing on the wall that read WITHOUT PITY.

“Thank you for seeing me,” Gideon said as he took a seat across the desk from her. “How is Jesse?”

“He is very delicate,” said Tatiana. “Nephilim like yourself wish to put Marks on him, because they are intent on killing my boy as they have killed everyone else I love. You sit on the Council, do you not? Then you are his enemy. You may not see him.”

“I would not force Marks on the boy,” protested Gideon. “He’s my nephew. Tatiana, if he is that ill, perhaps he should see the Silent Brothers? One of them is a close friend, and could come to Jesse at our house. And Jesse could know his cousins.”

“Mind your own house, Gideon,” Tatiana snapped. “Nobody expects your son to live to Jesse’s age, do they?”

Gideon fell silent.

“I expect you want Jesse to marry one of your penniless daughters,” Tatiana went on.

Now Gideon was more confused than offended. “His first cousins? Tatiana, they are all very young children—”

“Father planned alliances for us, when we were children.” Tatiana shrugged. “How ashamed he would be of you. How is your grubby servant?”

Gideon would have struck any man who spoke of Sophie so. He felt the rage and violence he’d known as a child storm within him, but he’d desperately taught himself control. He exercised every bit of that control now. This was for Thomas.

“My wife Sophia is very well.”

His sister nodded, almost pleasantly, but the smile quickly became a grimace. “Enough pleasantries, then. You came to Chiswick for a reason, did you not? Out with it. I know what it is already. Your son is like to die, and you want money for filthy Downworlder remedies. You’re here as a beggar, cap in hand. So beg me.”

It was strange: Tatiana’s obvious, undeniable insanity made her insults and imprecations undeniably easier to bear. What was she even saying? What Downworlder remedies? How could remedies be filthy?

Had Benedict destroyed Tatiana as well? Or would she always have been like this? Their mother had killed herself because their father passed on a demon’s disease to her. Their father had died of the same sickness, in disgrace and horror. Will Herondale could dismiss it all as nonsense, but could it be a coincidence that Tatiana’s son, and his son, were both sickly? Or was it some weakness in their very blood, some punishment from the Angel who had seen what the Lightwoods truly were and passed his judgment upon them?

“I need no money,” Gideon said. “As you well know, the Silent Brothers are the best of doctors, and their services are always freely available to me. As they are to you,” he added with emphasis.

“What, then?” Tatiana said. Her head cocked slightly.

“Father’s papers,” Gideon said in a rush of expelled breath. “His journals. I think that the cause of my son’s illness might be found there.” He found he didn’t want to say Thomas’s name in front of his sister, as though she might decide to conjure with it.

“A man you betrayed?” Tatiana spat. “You have no right to them.”

Gideon bowed his head to his sister. He had been prepared for this. “I know,” he lied. “I agree. But I need them, for the sake of my child. You have Jesse. Whatever our differences, you must understand that we could both love our children, at least. You must help me, Tatiana. I beg you.”

He’d thought Tatiana would smile, or laugh cruelly, but she only gazed at him with the impassive, mindless stare of a dangerous snake.

“And what will you do for me?” she said. “If I do help?”

Gideon could guess. Get the Clave to leave her alone, to let her do as she wished with Jesse, for one thing. But in Tatiana’s madness, who knew what she would come up with.

“Anything,” he said hoarsely.

He lifted his head and looked at her, at his mother’s green eyes in his sister’s pitiless face. Tatiana, who would always break her toys rather than share them. There was something missing in her, as there had been in their father.

Now she did smile. “I have just the task in mind,” she said.

Gideon braced himself.

“On the other side of the road from this estate,” Tatiana said, “is a mundane merchant. This man has a dog, of an unusual size and vicious temperament. Quite often he lets the dog run free in the neighborhood, and of course he comes straight here to make mischief.”

There was a long pause. Gideon blinked. “The dog?”

“He is always making trouble on my property,” Tatiana snarled. “Digging up my garden. Killing the songbirds.”

Gideon was utterly positively sure that Tatiana did not keep a garden. He had seen the state of the grounds on his way in, left to crumble as a monument to disaster no less than the house itself.

There were definitely no songbirds.

“He’s made a disaster of the greenhouse,” she went on. “He knocks over fruit trees, he throws rocks through windows.”

“The dog,” Gideon said again, to clarify.

Tatiana fixed her piercing gaze on him. “Kill the dog,” she said. “Bring me the proof you have done this, and you will have your papers.”

There was a very long silence.

Gideon said, “What?”

#gideon lightwood #will herondale #tlh #the last hours #chain of gold #cassandra jean #flash fiction #cog2 #november

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petergrantkavinsky · 4 years

Text

RED QUEEN Spoiler Chat with Victoria Aveyard on Instagram (04/17/2020)

Q: Who’s the inspiration for Mare? VA: The RED QUEEN series is written in first person point of view, which means you’re in the character’s head. The majority of it is written in Mare’s perspectives. The inspiration for her - because so much of the books was her and so much of it was me - naturally, there were things in there and character moments that came from my personality. She also has a lot of things I wish I was and also things I’m glad that I’m not. I think that we as writers get to explore being other people the way that we write. Another character that had a lot of me in him was Julian. Julian was probably the closest to my personality. Maybe a little of Evangeline if I didn’t have the rules of society.

Q: Why did Shade have to die? VA: I firmly believe that character deaths have to mean something, and you have to feel something because if you get to the point where you’re desensitized, you’ve lost the audience and there’s no point in what’s going on. I knew [Shade] had to be removed from the narrative because he made things too easy for Mare both emotionally and physically. It’s very hard to write any kind of set piece or action sequence around someone who can teleport. I had to find really creative ways to knock him out every single time. But mentally he was such a crutch for Mare. When you’re writing, there’s supposed to be many obstacles for your characters, you’re supposed to make things as difficult as possible. That’s when they really start to shine, when shit hits the fan. So I knew he would be removed, and I knew removing him would be a major turning point in [Mare’s] character.

Q: Maven broke my heart a lot of points in the book. VA: Yeah... Yeah.

Q: Did you ever consider to have Maven’s “good side” back? VA: It’s interesting because I don’t see him having good side and bad side. I don’t see a firm delineation in his brain. It’s not like he was switching between people, it was all one. And I think that’s how most people are. We all have different sides of ourselves, but they all conglomerate into one person. I never really considered an about-face for him. I didn’t think it would be realistic to his character, to the world, to the path that he’d set himself on. I think he was really really dedicated to the idea “what if everything I’ve done has been in vain?,” and he almost wanted to make the bad things he’s done worth it, so that in his mind they balance out and there was never any way to square that. I do think - in this part of my dedication to writing real characters and writing people - I think that Mare and Cal maybe made a mistake or maybe wrote him off a little too fast? I really wanted to include that confusion and that sort of moment at the end where Mare is thinking “did we make the right choice?” You’re never really gonna know because that’s how life is, you wonder about choices you made, and you never know.

Q: What was the song Mare and Cal were listening to when they were dancing in the moonlight? VA: It was COME ON EILEEN. In the very first draft of RED QUEEN, there were so many more references to modern-day life. There was a dialogue where Mare said “we’re dancing to this song about someone named Eileen,” which honestly in hindsight wouldn’t make sense because language had changed by that time. Our English today would have been similar with what Old English is to us now in that it would be very very difficult to understand.

Q: If you could revive any character in the series, who would it be? VA: That’s a hard one. It almost makes me feel good about who I lost because I can’t immediately answer “oh, I want this character back.” I think it would probably be Shade. I feel bad for him, the hole he left behind. And it was so fun. I guess?

Q: How far in the future is RED QUEEN set? VA: Post-post-apocalyptic setting. The world has fallen apart and put itself back together. More information about that in BROKEN THRONE.

Q: How did you start writing the series? Where did the thoughts and idea start? VA: I remember I was sitting at the desk and I had this image of a girl in the arena about to be executed, and instead of dying, she electrocutes her executioner and kills them. I was like “what is this?” I remember I wrote a little snippet of it down and e-mailed it to myself, and RED QUEEN sort of built from there. The questions I asked myself, “who is she?,” “why was she going to be killed?,” “what kind of world exists for her to have this superpower?” That helped me build the story and find what sort of facet I wanted to tell and how.

Q: Were you inspired by House Lannister to make House Samos? VA: Not directly, but GAME OF THRONES inspired so much of the RED QUEEN novels. I would say the biggest inspiration I took from GAME OF THRONES - A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE - was the way that the books are structured and written. The chapter endings are almost always an insane twist. I got to the point when I was reading those books and I was covering the end of the chapter because I knew my eye was going to drift, and I would look to the side and “oh, this character just got their throat slit. Great.” I wanted to write that way, so a lot of the chapter endings in RED QUEEN and all of the endings of the books have this twist. It’s one of my tricks for getting you guys to keep reading.

Q: Do Mare and Cal get back together? VA: Well, I don’t know, maybe we’ll find out in BROKEN THRONE, who knows? But I was really really proud to get to that ending and have my characters in a place where they know they need to heal and maybe sort of find themselves again. You can’t necessarily do that with another person - some people do - I just don’t think they could. And they’re so young. I’m so happy with many different endings, but to me it didn’t feel true to sort of bookend a life that young. I think it gives the world more reality if you feel there’s more to come and there’s more going on as opposed to the door has shut, the book has closed.

Q: Which power would you like to have? VA: My favorite superpower is not in the books. It was in the first draft of RED QUEEN, but wisely my agent was like “everything up to this point was great. You’ve got to take this out.” It was time travel, and I’m so glad she told me that. But I would love to be a time traveler. I just want to check out what’s going on back in the day.

Q: Did you cry writing a scene? VA: I’m not a cryer while writing. Some authors are, some authors aren’t.

Q: Did you ever give up while writing RED QUEEN? VA: Yes. I distinctly distinctly remember this. I was about three months into writing the draft. I was halfway through, and I thought this was garbage. I remember I reread CATCHING FIRE, the second HUNGER GAMES book. That sort of gave me this motivation to refill the well essentially, and I wanted to write again. But that wasn’t enough. The thing that really pushed me over the top was both my dad and my best friend who were reading the book as I was writing the chapters. I slowed down so much that both of them were like “can you just tell me how it ends because i really wanna know if you’re not gonna finish it?” And I was like fine, okay, I will write this book. And I did. It just came down to that moment of decision to push through. I work best when I’m under pressure. I was really really under pressure then, my back was so against the wall in terms of career. Looking back, I see what a precarious position I was in. I’m really glad I didn’t realize it at that time, but I’m very glad I pushed through on that.

Q: Was there a different ending to WAR STORM? VA: No. I knew the emotional ending I wanted for RED QUEEN when I wrote the first book. I knew I wanted to end this with the main character and the love interest not together. I knew I wanted to have that reality of too much has happened, we’ve been broken, and we need to heal on our own. That was the message I really wanted to send. In GLASS SWORD, I figured out the plot ending and where it was going to go, and it never changed from there. I’m so happy that my editing team didn’t push back on that, my agent never pushed back on that. Everyone was go for it. I got really lucky.

Q: How did you come up with the names for the characters? VA: A lot of them just popped into my head for the most part. Cal was the only one that was really constructed. I knew I wanted him to have a cool nickname but a really good-feel royal full name, so Tiberias Calore. Calore means heat. And I shortened his last name into Cal.

Q: Maven and Thomas? VA: As of now, no plans to return to that story, short story or a novel of its own. But it was a relationship I was really keen to focus on and show how much that colored Maven and his relationship with his mother. His mom is such an interesting character because she does love her son, and so many things she did to him, she did out of love, like trying to take away pain from him by messing with his brain. It had a lot of repercussions later on, but Thomas was definitely the first thing that was so painful, and he went to his mother and said “take this from me.” I think that was really a slippery slope.

Q: Tyton was good character. VA: Thank you! I liked him too. I really loved the electricons getting sort of a little squad going. That moment where Mare realizes she’s not alone. She’d been kidnapped at that point, and people are coming for her, but she’s not alone in what she is. Up to that point while learning “oh, I’m not the only Red who has powers,” she was the only Red with her power, and finally people who deeply understood what was going on...it felt like giving her a hug.

Q: How many times did you think of Maven’s ending? Were you sad to write him the way you knew you had to? VA: I don’t have those emotional downturns with work. There are definitely scenes where I’m so excited because I cannot wait for someone to read this. His twist in RED QUEEN when he reveals where his true alliances lie, that was one of the things I was so excited to get in front of people and to experience with you. But no, I don’t think I was sad. Does that make me a bad person?

Q: Do you think you would write a book in the same world as RED QUEEN? VA: I would say never say never, but I’m definitely playing in different sandboxes right now.

Q: Do you worldbuild as you go or do you know every backstory beforehand? VA: For RED QUEEN - and maybe this is why this is the first book I ever finished - I did a lot of the worldbuilding as I went. I got my bases, but then I really pushed myself to start writing as quickly as possible. In the past, I worldbuilded so many books, and you kind of burn out your inspiration on trying endless maps, trade routes, character backstories, and family trees. I think RED QUEEN was little bit of both. This new story, I did a little bit more of worldbuilding to begin with, but it really made myself jumping. I think there’s definitely a benefit to extensive worldbuilding. Most of it, at least in my experience, does not make it on the page, but it does help the author metabolize the world and the characters to the point where you’re writing it second nature, you’re not entirely thinking about what they’re doing, it’s just happening because you already know.

Q: Do you have an exact vision of every place? VA: Some places, yes. Some scenes, yes. Some scenes, it’s like shot for shot in my brain, it’s like watching it on a movie screen. Some places, it’s fuzzy at the edges and it’s just the people’s faces I see. But sometimes even those are fuzzy.

Q: RED QUEEN characters in Hogwarts houses? VA: Mare - Slytherin Maven - Slytherin Farley - Gryffindor Cal - Gryffindor for sure, he’s such a blockhead. Kilorn - Hufflepuff Elara - Ravenclaw Evangeline - has Slytherin, Gryffindor, and Ravenclaw tendencies. I do not believe in split houses.

Q: Did Maven and Thomas have a romantic relationship? VA: Yes. I believed and wrote Maven as bisexual.

Q: What inspired you the powerful and amazing ending of GLASS SWORD? It’s iconic! VA: GLASS SWORD is definitely my weakest of the four books, I think. That one was tough. Adjusting to writing a book in a vacuum versus writing a book when you had a first book and there was a third one coming, that was really tough. But the ending of that book is probably my favorite. “I kneel.” I remember I wrote those words and [screamed].

*Transcript by me :) (Yes, for the first time in maybe two years, I finally have all the time in the world again.)

*You may also watch the live session on VA’s IGTV.

#red queen #victoria aveyard #*

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spectralscathath · 3 years

Text

Fria's Day Out- RWBY drabble

Ruby spent all of volume 6 trekking across Mistral and nearly getting killed due to the stupid Relic of Knowledge, and now General Ironwood's trying to give it back to her? When there's a perfectly good Vault there?

Absolutely not.

(AKA this was not your best plan ever, Jimmy)

Ao3 link

"You're giving the lamp back to us?" Ruby asked, brows furrowing in confusion as James held out the relic. He thought it was a good idea, at least until the vault could be safely opened.

"Who better to safeguard it than the people who already protected it?"

Ruby reached out, hand resting on the relic, before she shoved it hard against his chest, looking aghast as she darted back like it had burned her.

"Are you crazy? That thing's a Grimm magnet, we nearly died, like-" she paused to count on her fingers, "three times?" She glanced at her teenage friends for clarification. "Three, was it three?"

"Manticores on the train, Apathy at the farms, Leviathan at Argus." Weiss rattled off, ignoring Winter's horrified gasp.

"And you want us to keep carrying it? We came here to throw it in the Vault in the first place!" Ruby stared at him like he was an idiot, and right now he was able to somewhat understand her reasoning.

Still, he pulled up some bluster. "Well, Fria's bedbound, so the Vault can't be opened right now. She's in no state for it."

"I mean- this is Atlas, right? Do you have hoverbeds? Wheels? You guys have invented the wheel, right? Just push her along, it can't be that dangerous."

"Well-" James started before Winter cut in.

"Actually, sir, it might be good for her to get out and about." Winter noted, face completely impassive as he beheld her treachery.

"She'd be remaining in the military base as well, Mr Ironwood!" Penny chirped cheerfully, oblivious to how he was beset on all sides by treason. "And we could set up a guard!"

"See?" Ruby squeaked determinedly. "I vote we throw that lamp from heck into the Vault and never look back!"

"We can't just wheel Fria to the vault," James rolled his eyes. "That's preposterous."

James pushed Fria's bed along, one of the wheels clicking on every rotation like a shopping trolley. "This is undignified."

"Oh, I'm having a great time, pet," Fria chuckled, a Barstucks takeaway cup held in her shaking hand. The concoction inside was some awful pink monstrosity that looked incredibly malevolent. "You ignore him, Winter, my son's just taking himself too seriously again."

"Mom, please." James groaned as Winter laughed, no restriction on the bell-like sound. Fria really brought down her guard.

"I can't believe you've got a mom, Mr Ironwood." Ruby skipped alongside them, holding the relic like it was about to jump up and bite her. James didn't know which of his scientists gave her the tongs but he was going to have a word with his R&D about loaning equipment for frivolous purposes. "I always thought you were raised by a pack of soldiers."

"You should have seen him at your age, he was a hellion," Fria gossiped with her, Winter's eyes sparkling as she hid her smile with a sip of coffee. "Running around Mantle and constantly getting into trouble, I think some of your old graffiti is still down there."

"Graffiti?" Ruby's eyes lit up with mischief. "But he's so serious!"

"I'm standing right here."

"Is that what he does now, walks around all serious?" Fria cackled. "Dear me, James, you haven't gotten boring, have you?"

"I'm afraid he has," Winter jumped in before he could defend himself, her tone dour and her twinkling eyes anything but. "It's quite a shame, from your stories he sounds like quite a rabble rouser."

"Oh he was!" Fria snorted gracelessly. "I could tell you stories- have I told you stories? I can't quite remember-" she frowned, James's gut twisting as the damnable memory loss wiped some of her spark.

"You have, Fria," Winter reached down and took Fria's hand, black gloves gentle as she clasped wizened fingers. "But I'd be happy to hear them again, if you like."

"Aren't you good?" Fria smiled again. "And you, Ruby, I swear, you Huntresses get younger every year."

"Oh, well, I'm just a prodigy," Ruby preened like a peacock under the praise. "I got into Beacon two years early."

"Really? My, that's impressive. Did the old man let you in himself?"

"Ozpin?" Guilt flashed over Ruby's face. James decided she should never play poker. "Uh- yeah, um, he did. It was cool."

"How is that old coot anyway? Still talking in riddles?" Fria asked as Ruby grew more and more uncomfortable, James keeping half an ear on the conversation as they reached the lift down to the Vault. He wheeled Fria onto the platform, shivering slightly at the chill in the air. The cold always gnawed at him even with extra coats on.

Ruby's babble broke off as the platform under their feet moved, bringing them down the passage before it opened into the cavern in the heart of Atlas, Ruby's eyes going wide with childlike wonder. "Wow…"

James felt a bit of pride at that. Atlas's Vault was very nice indeed. The geometric blocks floated in the air around them, icy blue flames flickering in torches as they descended towards the platform, a cavernous drop awaiting below. "Impressive, isn't it?"

"Yeah!" Ruby looked around, awestruck. "I never saw the one in Haven, Yang did- and she doesn't like talking about it aside from saying it was weird and there was a tree and a desert, but this is amazing! How are those blocks floating? Why is the fire blue?"

James opened his mouth to answer before realising he didn't have one, jaw clicking shut as he was left to shrug. "Dust?"

"Oh, not magic?" Ruby pouted for a moment before something shiny caught her attention. "That door is huge! What's it like inside, Yang said the Haven one led to a desert, how cool is that?"

"I don't know. I've never seen inside." He couldn't help be curious as well. "The Atlas vault hasn't been opened since Ozpin lifted the city into the sky, in a past life. It was before my time."

"I remember, I think." Fria piped up. "I was only a girl, but a floating city is rather spectacular."

"I can imagine." Winter mused. "Fria, would you like me to hold your Very Berry Hibiscus Coconut Milk Refresher with Extra Whip?" She said it with a straight face, because she was a stronger person than James could ever hope to be.

"Oh, yes, thank you. It's very nice," Fria handed it over, a quaver in her hands.

James raised a brow. "You need to hold her coffee?"

"Well, you'll have to help her up to the Vault, sir." Winter stated like it was obvious.

"Huh?"

"James, pet, did you think you were going to roll me up the stairs?" Fria laughed, tiredness beginning to steal across her eyes. They didn't have much time left before the excitement of the day turned to fatigue.

"What stairs, there's no stairs- oh my gosh there's stairs now!" Ruby squeaked excitedly as the staircase formed, practically bouncing in place. James sincerely hoped the relic clasped in her tongs didn't go flying. It would be such a hassle to get it back if she dropped it off the edge.

James hesitated. "Mom, are you sure?"

"I can't walk well, but if I'm going to open a Vault for the first time, I'd like to get up there myself." Fria stated with that rock-solid determination he'd seen a million times, dark blue eyes steady and firm, and that was that.

"Alright." He carefully, carefully helped her out of the hospital bed, struck by how small and frail she was now. He supported her with an arm under her shoulders, and wondered if she'd let him get away with carrying her up.

Fria's eyes glowed brilliant blue, azure flames springing to life for a moment as she formed a walking stick from thin air, gnarled wood and ice crystals melding together to perfectly fit her hand and height.

Seeing her perform magic never got old.

Fria rested some of her weight on the stick, most of her weight on James, her legs shaking as she set her jaw and started hobbling towards the Vault with him.

"Mom, are you sure?" He didn't want her to hurt herself.

"James, I'm feeble, not dead." She informed him briskly.

"Uh- if you want I can scatter you guys up?" Ruby offered, having gingerly shifted the relic into her actual hand, holding it at arm's length. "It's fun, like being in a tornado. And it'll be quicker?"

"I'm not sure about that-" James started, remembering the tournament footage of Ruby's semblance before Fria nodded eagerly.

"Well that sounds exciting, scatter away, dearie!"

"Mom, please-!" James suddenly found himself caught up in a swirl of red, shooting forward like a bullet from a gun and broken apart into pieces (he felt like it should have hurt but it didn't), before suddenly he was on his feet again, too fast for him to comprehend as rose petals floated in the air around him and Ruby collapsed to her knees.

"Wow, you are heavy, Mr Ironwood, what are you made of, metal?" She leaned against the golden metal of the Vault door. "Whoo- okay, I'm never picking you up again, no offence."

He dearly wanted to tell her the answer to her question was 'yes' and refrained, instead checking on Fria. "Mom, are you alright?"

She laughed, her hair a mess and her eyes bright. "That was fun!"

He sighed in relief. "I really think we should get this done sooner rather than later. I'm glad you're okay." She was in a very good state today, they'd waited for that, but he didn't know how long it would last. How long until she forgot where she was and who she was and who he was.

Fria nodded, leaning most of her weight against his side as her eyes blazed with fire, her hand shaking as she touched it to the Vault. The sharp lines of the overlapping rectangles began to glow pale white, the light racing up to the top of the door. The golden facets of the door began to drop, and a wave of roaring heat washed out over the three of them, bringing with it the smell of sulphur and brimstone.

Ruby coughed and covered her face, her nose already turning red. “For a Vault of Creation, I was expecting something- I dunno, more cheerful?”

Cheerful was not how he would describe the cavern within, thick streams of magma dripping from the walls and pooling around a slender path of rock that led to a pedestal, heatwaves shimmering in the very air. It was like the inside of a volcano, maybe it was one, and there above the pedestal, the relic of creation floated, a pearlescent white gem that had been sculpted into the handle of a paintbrush, golden filigree elaborately ensconcing the jewel as snow white threads formed the brush.

“Ruby, place the lamp in there and we’ll close it up.” He ordered, sweat forming on his brow.

“Right!” She ran in, careful to avoid the edges where molten rock bubbled hungrily, setting the lamp down in front of the pedestal and scattering out, her petals catching fire from the sheer heat in the air. James waited for her to pass them by, scooping up Fria as he walked down the stairs, eager to get away from the heat at his back.

“Are you okay?” He asked as he carried his mother back to the hospital bed, holding off on any feelings of joy at a task completed. Until the Vault door closed and Fria was back in the safety of her ward, there was still danger.

“Yes, James, I’m fine,” she smiled weakly at him, her eyes returned to the dark blue that was so similar to his own. She looked so drained, even that small bit of magic sapping her strength. “I’m just tired. Not as young as I used to be… the magic takes more of a toll now…”

“Well, rest up, alright?” He gently placed her down, tucking the quilt around her. “You did good, mom.”

“I did my job.” She stated, whispers threading through her voice and undercutting her surety. Because she was an Ironwood, much like himself, and they did their jobs no matter the cost on themselves. “But yes… I think I’ll rest a bit... Winter, will you keep my drink cool for me?”

“Of course.” Winter studied him. “Sir, shall I stay here until the Vault’s closed again?”

“No. I’ll guard it. You take my mother back to her room so she can rest.” He smiled at Winter, before he gave Fria a gentle hug, always careful with his right side. He didn’t think he’d see her again. The transfer of power had to be kept secure. This was already too much of a risk. “Thanks, mom.”

“I had fun,” Fria smiled as she nodded off, a large white Beowulf with cyan eyes forming from a glyph, grasping the hospital bed in its claws as Winter guided it to walk with her, escorting Fria to the lift out.

James watched her go, ready to wait for the vault door to close. He could still feel the heat from here. “Miss Rose, are you alright?”

“I’m good, in the red but good,” she sat on the ground, staring up at the Vault. “I know that I knew it was a paintbrush, but I was really expecting a spear, or a staff, yunno, something more impressive?”

“You don’t think painting’s impressive?” He chuckled slightly, choosing to return to somewhat of a good mood.

“That feels like a trap question.” Ruby eyed him suspiciously, her hands and belt looking empty without the relic she’d been guarding on the trip here.

“Fria paints.”

“Definitely a trap question.” She smiled a bit, and it reminded him of Summer. She really did look so much like her mother. “Your mom is cool.”

“I know she is.” He hoped she slept well, and could remember today. If she had happy memories, he’d rather she was lost in them, rather than anything else. “At least the relic’s safe now.”

“Yeah. It would’ve been really stupid to just carry it around in the open up here, I mean, it draws Grimm. Yeesh.” She looked up at the open Vault. “Well, at least now it’s locked away and no one can get to it. Ugh, could you imagine if I took you up on your offer?”

“... I'd rather not." He hoped he lived that particular idea down soon. It really wasn't his best.

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

A quick drabble about what would have happened if Ruby remembered The Entire Point of Volume 6. Toss Jinn into the Vault already, she'll live with it.

#rwby #james ironwood #ruby rose #winter schnee #rwby fria #Fria Ironwood should be canon #my writings #apparently I never got over this

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junggoku · 4 years

Text

(Don’t) Say My Name - Ethan Ramsey x f!MC

book: Open Heart

pairing: Ethan Ramsey x f!MC (Nina Valentine)

word count: 2,513

summary: No, Nina did not think she was working too much. No, she is not that tired. No, she is fine. Really. She’s fine. (*narrator voice* She was not, in fact, fine)

A/N: Okay guys, just take this. I have no idea what this is, but I made a promise to get this out there and I finally finished it. I’ve been working on this for about a month now and honestly, I’m kinda proud of it. I’m proud that I managed to finish it at least. HELLO MY DEBUT AS A FANFIC WRITER MUAHA. Jk, but seriously. Enjoy! Also, let me know if you wanna be added to my tagslist? I’m not sure if I’m gonna write often but I figured I should throw it out there anyway.

Rainy weather always brought with it a certain restlessness in the air. There was something about the rain that made her lose focus, distracted as it falls and showers the earth. With her head resting in her hand, her attention was directed towards the windows in the cafeteria, watching as raindrops patter and hit the side of the glass. Her eyes tracked the movement of one particular drop, following as it slid down the smooth surface until it disappeared over the edge.

Dr. Nina Valentine leaned back in her chair with a sigh, taking her elbow off the table and turning to witness the smattering of doctors and nurses inside the cafeteria at this hour. It was later in the afternoon at Edenbrook and she had been pouring over a patient file in an attempt to distract herself from the bone-aching exhaustion seeping in from working 48 hours straight. In between putting her five hours at the free clinic earlier, studying up on diseases for the diagnostics team, and checking up on her regular patients, Nina was about two breaths away from falling asleep atop her file on one Ms. Rebecca Pope.

With a scrape of her chair, she pushed her hands on the table and stood up, gathering all her materials and drifting back out into the hallways of a bustling hospital. Making her way over to one of the nurses’ stations where a small collection of interns had congregated, Nina noticed the head of her own intern standing on to the side alone, brows furrowed as she focused intensely on a patient’s chart.

“Anything interesting on there, Ortega?”

With a start, Esme looked up, her eyes wide for a split second before schooling her features.

“Not particularly, no,” Huffing, the intern lowered the chart, fixing her eyes on Nina. As the resident reached the counter of the station and set her stuff down, she could feel Esme’s gaze sticking, and glanced up at her intern, an eyebrow raised in question.

“What?”

“You look like the walking dead,” Esme states flatly, zeroing in on the deep circles under Nina’s eyes, purplish bruises broadcasting to everyone exactly how many hours of sleep she got—or did not get—in the past couple of days.

“Gee, thanks. Mind you, I think it’s a great look for me,”

“No, seriously. You look like you’re about to fall over. Do all residents sport eyebags like that or is that just a you thing?”

Rolling her eyes, Nina doesn’t respond as she turns her attention back to some paperwork on the desk. Esme sidles up, and steals a quick glance down at the files and journals Nina had placed on the counter. “Stuff for the diagnostics team?”

“Yeah. Gotta turn myself into a walking disease encyclopedia if I’m gonna be able to do my job,” Nina sighs as Esme pulls out an article on gastrointestinal viruses, ignoring the group of interns that was still hovering nearby, a couple of them glancing over at them curiously. The last few hours are starting to get to her as Nina feels herself slipping a fraction, her eyelids growing heavier as she stands. Her workload had grown significantly, something that she already knew and expected, and while it was challenging to keep up with, thinking about the patients she can help—can still help for who knows how much longer—kept her moving.

Esme flips through some of the pages in the article, “Man, seriously. How do you do it? I’m getting second hand exhaustion just from looking at this.”

The corners of her mouth quirked as she allowed herself to take a breath. “I’m not sure I’m even really doing it.”

It’s getting harder to focus. She’s been putting off sleep so often these days that she knows she’s not going to be able to stand upright for much longer, but she couldn’t afford to. Edenbrook’s situation loomed in her mind so much recently it was hard for her to sleep without thinking about all the patients she could still help if she was at the hospital.

Preparing to head back to check on another one of her patients, Nina started to turn around. She miscalculated though, moving too fast. Esme’s voice rang out in mild alarm, “Hey-”

It all faded to black.

----

“Is she gonna be okay?” Sienna glanced over at Nina, eyebrows furrowed in worry. Her friend was snuggled up in what looked like three layers of blankets, an almost blissful expression on her face. The light sleep medication was setting in, Nina’s nerves stilled and numbed. Sienna knew her friend had been working late hours and forgoing sleep more often lately, but didn’t notice just how much of a toll it had taken until Nina collapsed, head burning with a high fever.

“She’ll be alright. She’s still running a bit high in body temperature, but with some rest she should be good as new.”

With that the doctor walked out, leaving the residents as they all peered at their friend, now snoring lightly without a care in the world. Jackie shook her head, a strand of hair falling into her eyes, “I should’ve noticed. That kid we babysat a few weeks ago saw it right away and even then I didn’t pay attention.”

“Not your fault. We all should’ve said something. We know how she gets about patients,” Bryce sighed.

“We shouldn’t be doing this right now anyways. Let’s go and let her sleep,” Casting one more concerned glance at Nina, Elijah slowly wheeled out of the room, the others trailing closely behind. A soft click of the door closing and the world was bathed in quiet once more.

The air settled, a strip of the moonlight trickled in and Nina opened her eyes, releasing a breath, and tilting her head to look out the slits in the window.

Raising a hand to her forehead, she continued peering out, a small frown crossing her soft features. Stupid. How stupid of her to end up passing out. And from not getting enough sleep? This was the last thing she needed. Feeling annoyed at herself, the brunette huffed and closed her eyes again. The sooner she rested, the quicker she could get back to her patients.

Admittedly, being in a bed again felt nice. Good for her neck at least, to not have to nap on the stiff boards in the on-call room. Allowing the numbness from the medications to kick in, she willed herself to fall asleep and relaxed her muscles. It was pleasant, to be honest. Letting her nerves and senses be dulled for once. It’s been ages since she was able to shut down her brain. Everything had been in hyperfocus mode in the past month.

She needs to be better if she’s going to be helping anyone, if she’s going to save Edenbrook. Her sluggish thoughts are interrupted though, as the sound of the door click signaled a new arrival in her room. Assuming it was one of the nurses, Marlene, coming to check on her, Nina kept her tired eyes shut, “Mar-”

“Nina.”

A pause. It’s in moments like these where Nina swears the world slows down just a little, everything suspended as time lulls for a brief second, like an intake of breath. And while her mother always told her she was a bit dramatic and a bit of a romantic, Nina would argue that she never felt these kinds of sensations, had these kinds of moments and these thoughts before in her life. Not quite in this way. Not until she came to Edenbrook. Not until him.

Even in her befuddled state, she realized how sappy she sounded in her head. The meds must be getting to me. In this condition, she might have been a little too honest.

The way he said her name created a throb in her chest, bringing up an emotion she refused to acknowledge at the moment. Still, she was aware enough to hear something else in his voice. Try as he might to control it, there was a hint of anger there.

“Ah. Dr. Ramsey. To what...” Another pause, “...do I owe the pleasure?” Cracking open her eyes, Nina found the tall figure of Ethan Ramsey by the door, his arms crossed over his chest, face carefully blank.

Even in the low lighting of the room, Nina could see him scanning up and down her frame to make sure she was alright. Ice blue eyes finally connected with warm brown ones and she willed herself not to look away. That bothersome part of her mind started to tickle, but she quickly opted to ignore it.

“I was told you fainted and landed yourself here from exhaustion. Why didn’t you say anything?”

The junior fellow broke eye contact, staring straight ahead at the potted plant on the dresser across from her bed. “I just...it didn’t really matter. I was fine.”

“Clearly, you were not fine, since you’re now lying here in a hospital room.” Voice rising, Ethan crossed the rest of the way over, coming to stand right beside her bed. “If your workload was too much, you should’ve spoken up about it. I understand you wanted to keep working, but you’re not helping anyone in your state right n-””

“You nag too much, Dr. Ramsey.”

“...Excuse me?”

Rolling her eyes up all the way to the ceiling, Nina turned her head towards the window again and tried to drown out the deep facets of his voice. “I passed out from being too sleepy and the first thing you do when seeing me is to nag. How sweet of you.” She was growing frustrated for some reason, the medication making it difficult for her to control her emotions now. Would it kill him to be honest for once?

Ethan’s mouth was opened to respond, but she didn’t let him, her words spilling out. “You always know just what to say. Really. It’s very cute of you. Are you a pine tree? Cause you’re just full of sap, aren’t you,”

A moment of silence as Ethan waited for her to finish.

“...That’s a maple tree.”

“Oh,” The brunette frowned. Was it? She really needed to sleep soon.

They descended into another bout of awkward silence. Glancing back at her boss, she found him peering down at the ground, scratching the back of his neck. In a quiet voice he broke the silence, “I’m sorry.”

Deflated, the junior fellow shook her head slowly. “No. I’m sorry. I got mad for no reason. Thanks for coming to check on me.” Being around him always made her feel a multitude of emotions, but it was worse in her current situation. She didn’t have her usual self-control nor her filter and the fuzziness creeping at the back of her head told her she wasn’t going to actually remember this conversation the following morning. ‘Least I won’t remember calling him a pine tree like a dumbass.

Eyes softening a fraction, Ethan spoke again, voice pleasantly gentle this time, “When I heard you collapsed all of a sudden, I was...it was concerning to say the least.” His hand came up to her forehead, lightly brushing away her bangs. His fingers were cool and felt pleasant against the warmth of her skin. Staring up at him, the soft stream of the moonlight accentuated his sharp, handsome features, and her heart stuttered again.

The furrow in between his eyebrows was irritating her. She hated when he made that face. Like he was disappointed in himself. For not having caught on sooner. As if any of this was his fault.

“I’m okay now though,” Fixing a smile that probably wasn’t all too convincing, Nina tried to reassure him. “And besides, this was on me. If I can’t handle it I’ll let you know next time. Alright?” Stop making that face.

He didn’t say anything for a while, seemingly content to just gaze down at her, as though he were trying to find something. Sadly, the brunette wasn’t in any state to try deciphering it now. His fingers had moved lower, caressing her cheek softly. “I’m sorry again for raising my voice earlier. I guess I was just frustrated you weren’t looking after yourself. You make it very easy to nag at you.”

Feeling slightly indignant at that, Nina pursed her lips into a small pout, but she quickly sagged again, too tired to reply in her usual spirit. Instead, she tried focusing on the feel of his fingers brushing on her skin.

“It’s alright. Really. I’m sorry too. For snarking at you.”

“Mhmm. That was hurtful,” What looked like amusement lit up his eyes, a minute smirk playing at the corners of his lips, “You even tried calling me a maple tree.”

“To be fair, you’re as prickly as a pine tree. So I guess it still works.”

Chuckling, Ethan shook his head a little, a quiet fondness crossing his expression as he watched the junior fellow’s eyes begin to droop.

“I should let you get your rest. It’d be a waste if you didn’t use this time to catch up on sleep,” With that he began to move away, retracting his hand and Nina already missed it. “Goodnight, Nina.” He whispered. As Ethan began to turn around and take his leave, the brunette let the silence linger for a second before speaking up one more time, voice so soft she wasn’t sure he’d be able to hear, “Please don’t say it like that.”

A pause. There were so many pauses tonight.

“...What?” Bemused, Ethan spun back around.

Nina avoided looking at him, keeping her eyes on the ceiling. “Whenever you say my name like that...it hurts.” He’d be able to pick up the rest of what she didn’t say. It hurts to hear you call my name like that. Like you’re saying everything and nothing all at once. Like it’s a wish you want desperately but can never grant. Like you lo- She blinked, turning her head slightly to him.

A deep sadness flashes across Ethan’s face, reflecting her own yearning back at her. He audibly released a breath, piecing together what he wants to say. What he can and should say.

“Nina, I...” It’s always the same game between them.

“...Yeah. I know.”

With that, Nina adjusted herself to at last allow sleep to take over, pulling up her blankets to her chin and shutting her eyes a final time, “Goodnight, Ethan.” In her growing drowsiness, she could hear faint footsteps crossing back to her, but she didn’t open her eyes again, sleep quickly overtaking her senses.

An undefined emotion tickled at the back of her head and her chest throbbed again. She already had an idea of what that feeling was. But tonight, she didn’t want to think about it. She wasn’t ready to give it its proper name. All she wanted tonight was to dream about blue eyes and low chuckles. In her dreams, she could feel a soft brush of her temple, the faintest touch of his lips. It’ll never really be enough, but tonight it was everything.

Fin.

tagslist: @openheart12 @ethandaddyramsey @noboundariesplease @ethanramseysgirl @sekizincimektup @drethanramslay

#open heart #playchoices #choices oph #ethan ramsey #ethan x mc #ethan ramsey x mc #choices fanfic #choices fanfiction #my shitty writing #GFJHSDGFJ pls don't let this flop i am fragile #jkjk honestly be free to make comments and criticisms #i will not take them well but i will read them #man i am so soft tonight #my god this is so long i really felt i had to write a novel #i applaud anyone who reads this till the end #or just reads it in general

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overheardatthecontinental · 3 years

Text

Talk Chapter 11

AO3 Link

Marcus had faced armies. Had gone head-to-head with mob bosses and mafiaso assholes. He’d been shot, stabbed, tortured and looked death straight in the eyes on more than one occasion. Every encounter had only made him wiser. Each scar had only made him stronger.

And despite all his prowess, his strength, his wisdom, Marcus was fairly certain he wasn’t going to survive Helen Kingston.

John had warned him.

Hell, Helen had warned him.

He’d taken it as a joke. Just because John had fallen victim to sharing his feelings certainly didn’t mean that Marcus would.

After John had left, they made small talk. They watched a movie, and then another. Helen would read until her eyes hurt and then they’d watch another movie.

It started with a simple question, asked over chopping vegetables to have with dinner.

“How’d you get involved in the Underworld?”

“I saved a man’s life in Vietnam. The son of a prominent member of the mob. When we came back to the States, he recruited me."

And Helen had seemed genuinely interested. She asked questions so casually, he hadn’t even realized that they were delving into his past. Not until their plates were in the sink and Helen was curled up on the couch, facing him in his chair and nodding along to a story from his early days as a New York City mobster.

Before he knew it, he was lost in his own past, searching to understand things he thought he had left behind.

“It just seemed like the right course to take. My father did it, his father did it. I think a part of me thought if I followed in their footsteps and joined the army, things would start to make sense. Like I would understand how my father viewed the world.”

“How he viewed the world or how he viewed you?”

The question stabs at him and Marcus looks away, “My mother used to defend him all the time. He never loved us the way he was supposed to. She said that the war had damaged him—that when they were younger, he was caring and loving. But when he came back, he had a hard time adjusting.

“I wanted to understand why he couldn’t get over it. Why he couldn’t leave the war behind. Why—” He stops himself.

“Why you couldn’t be enough.” Her voice is soft, almost hypnotic, lulling him in further.

He nods, despite himself. “He had a great job, a good house, a family… and it was never enough.”

Helen nods along, “You know, every generation has its experiences, it’s rights of passages, it’s issues, it’s stories. Your generation was built in that post-war haze that focused on going back to what had been normal before the war. Except there is no going back from that sort of cultural upheaval. Time changes, and values with it.

“And in that day and age, we didn’t really understand the consequences of war on individuals. So, your father came back, as your grandfather had a generation before, and tried to make sense of peace after having lived in a warzone.”

Marcus nods, “And I get that it must have been tough for him. I do. But then why get married? Why bring another person into your fucked-up life? Why bring children into the picture?”

“I can’t answer to your father’s motives.” Helen says softly, “At best, I can guess that he probably felt like it was his duty to rebuild America. To have a family and try to put the past behind him. But the past always has a way of catch up with us. And it wasn’t fair to the rest of your family and your father’s trauma is not an excuse for the pain that he put you through.

“In therapy, we use a term called ‘intergenerational trauma’ to explain this. It’s the idea that severe trauma, severe distress can follow each generation. Your grandfather probably brought his experiences from the Great War into your father’s life. And your father brought those experiences, combined with his own from the second World War into yours.”

“Didn’t know there was a term for it. But it’s why I don’t ever want children.” Marcus admits, jarring himself with the fact that he admitted out loud how much his father had affected him. “I couldn’t bare to pass that down again.”

“Which is entirely within your right.” Helen’s calming voice eases his anxiety. “A lot of people, particularly from the baby boomer generation and before, believe that we have some sort of duty to procreate. The remnants of generations’ past, I suppose. But the reality of the matter is we don’t owe anybody.”

He shivers at her words and wonders if she notices.

He’d laughed at John for being tricked into revealing his life to a pretty face, but it was so good to say the things out loud that haunted him at two in the morning when he was unable to sleep.

“I always thought I had moved on from all this.” Marcus shakes his head, “That I left my father back in Idaho. Thoughts creep in every now and then but when I work, I can forget about it.”

Helen nods, “We forget how broken we are when we start to fixate on something else. But, eventually, we’re forced to look back at ourselves and face the truth: distracted is not the same as healed.”

And that cuts deep, but not as deep as the thoughts simmering beneath the surface. The knowledge that he had spent decades hiding behind jobs and contracts to ignore the rejection and isolation that seemed to follow him.

“So, there is no moving on, no healing.”

Helen offers him a small, empathetic smile, “I had this conversation with John just yesterday. We tend to think of healing as linear. Something happens to us, we give it time, and it heals. But that’s not always the case. You should know as well as anybody—not every scar heals. Sometimes a bone doesn’t set right.”

She lets out a soft sigh as she tries to find a way to explain, “Try to think of it in terms of a broken leg. If your broken bone is tended to right away, if it’s splinted properly, if you’re cared for during your recovery, it will heal. Sometimes even stronger than it was before.

“On the other hand, maybe you’re alone. You splint your own bone the best you can, but there is no one with you to share the burden. No one to help you heal. The bone may mend but, oftentimes, it won’t heal correctly. Maybe you walk with a limp. Or maybe you walk fine, except on days when it rains. The trauma comes back, haunting you.

“Then, of course, your bone breaks and you ignore it. You try to stand but your leg can’t support you anymore. You pretend that nothing has happened, but all you do is injure yourself the more. So, what happens, then?”

“If you can’t heal, you’re dead.”

“In the animal kingdom, you would be.” Helen says, “But we are human. We are resilient and we can adapt and, even when we feel like we are, we are not alone. So, what happens if your bone doesn’t heal correctly?”

Marcus feels a shiver travel through his body, “We re-break the bone.”

“Very good.” Helen rewards him with a real smile this time, “We re-break the bone and we try again. And, most of the time, trauma isn’t quite so severe. Most of the time, we’re stuck somewhere in the middle. Our wounds heal, but they still come back, aching on days when it rains.”

He sighs, “But what does that mean? That even if I make peace with my father’s memory, I’ll still feel him haunting me now and again?”

“There are no guarantees, but it’s likely. We all experience trauma differently but it seldom disappears all together.”

Idly, Marcus hears the sound of a car on gravel but he shakes his head, still lost in his own thoughts, “And what, there’s no way to make it disappear?”

“Not permanently. There are skills you can learn to help cope with the memories or to restructure your experiences. But trauma engrains itself within us.”

“It’s stupid.” Marcus spits out, “I came out of ‘Nam without feeling a thing. I’ve killed more people than I can count, and I don’t think about it. But the thought of my father’s voice makes me want to scream.”

“The events that happen in our formative years leave far deeper scars than what comes later. You spent your childhood seeking the approval of a man who probably lost sight of who he was long before you were born.”

The door opens and Marcus catches sight of John, carrying a couple grocery bags and a suitcase.

“And you can’t hold yourself responsible for that.” Helen adds softly, checking over her shoulder. Her eyes scan John, assessing for injury before she asks, “Is that your blood?”

“No.”

Marcus swallows, forcing the heaviness weight on him back down his throat and motioning to the bags John is carrying. Still, his voice is gruff as he asks, “You go shopping?”

“Just picked up a few things. Soap, a toothbrush. Better coffee.” John reaches in the bag and pulls out a pint of ice cream, reveling in the way her eyes light up as he hands it to her.

“Oh, fuck yes.” She takes it and undoes the plastic wrap locking the lid on, looking at Marcus as she does, “Do you need some. too?”

“Marcus won’t eat that much sugar.”

“What I need is Cognac.” Marcus mutters.

Helen hums, “Was Cognac also your father’s drink?”

Marcus looks up sharply, “Pass me the damn ice cream.”

Helen tosses the pint to him and John sighs, “Hels, I thought I said not to break him.”

“I didn’t! We were just having a discussion.”

“Uh huh.” John watches as Marcus slips into the kitchen for a spoon, “I’ve never seen Marcus eat refined sugars. Ever.”

“Physical health is only one facet of being. Ice cream tends to the mind and the soul.” She says knowingly.

Marcus plops down on the couch next to Helen and hands her a spoon.

John raises an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“Fuck off.” Marcus says, digging the spoon into the ice cream, “I have unprocessed trauma.”

He looks from Marcus to Helen, the latter of whom just shrugs.

“Couldn’t last one day without breaking somebody’s psyche?” John teases.

Helen swallows a mouthful of ice cream, “I can’t turn it off any more than you can stop counting exits, looking for weapons.”

Marcus nods, “I say next time we have a tough case, we just send her in.”

Not a chance in hell, John thinks even knowing that Marcus is largely joking. Still, he couldn’t deny that it would be hilarious to drop Helen in the middle of the Continental and just watch.

She leans to the side on the couch, looking up at him with her warm brown eyes. “Did you have dinner?” He shakes his head and Helen sighs, “We saved you a plate, just in case. Go shower, I’ll heat it up.”

“It’s okay—”

“Go shower.” She says again, leaving no room for argument as she stands, “And change in the bathroom! I don’t want you getting blood on our bed.”

Our bed. He tries not to read to much into that but holy fuck the way that sounded… The casual way that she said it felt so fucking right even if he knew he was reading far too much into the innocent statement. He pushes it out of his head as he acquiesces with a soft, “Yes, ma’am.”

She swats at his side the best she can from her seat on the couch to prompt him forward. John sets the grocery bags with actual food on the counter and heads to the back. He tosses the suitcase on the bed and finds his own sleepwear from the night before.

Grabbing the bag with the hygiene products, he disappears into the bathroom.

He showers quickly, watching the tub stain red then wash clear as he cleans the blood from his body. It had been a long day, as he had known it would be. And while John had hoped that DeLuca would change his demands, he had been correct in assuming that he wouldn’t.

Already, a clock was moving against him.

Three days until Senor D’Antonio and Gianna returned to Rome. Three days in which to kill him and his heirs.

Marcus had said they would find a way out of it, but John wasn’t so sure.

He’s run every scenario he can think of in his head on the drive home. For four hours, he contemplated possible courses of actions that he could take. They all resulted in either Helen’s death, which was unacceptable, or his own, which was unfortunate.

He cut the shower short, anxious to see Helen after spending a day dealing with people who wanted to do her harm. See for himself that she was safe and uninjured. Let himself feel a glimmer of joy at the sound of her voice, the energy of her presence.

Cloak himself in her scent and sound and sight. Memorize it all just in case he was unable to make it through this week with his life.

He changes into his sleepwear and quickly towels his hair.

There’s food sitting in front of the armchair when he returns to the living room. A plate with vegetables, potatoes, and chicken. Helen and Marcus share the couch and are passing the ice cream back and forth to one another.

John idly wishes he could use his phone to snap a quick picture for Sofia. Marcus with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s in his hand, a spoonful of chocolate ice cream aimed for his mouth…

Sof would have a field day with that.

Helen’s eyes meet his and he wonders, for the millionth time, what it would be like to kiss her.

He’s probably going to die anyway, already set for Hell. Would it be so wrong to steal a kiss before going to his death?

“Did you meet with DeLuca?” Marcus asks, snapping John out of his thoughts as he sits down with them.

He nods once, his eyes flitting to Helen. Not wanting to discuss it in front of her, John adds, “We’ll chat later.”

It’s clearly the wrong thing to say he realizes as her eyes flash.

“Oh, no. We’re not doing this.” She bemoans, “You don’t get to shut me out of this.”

John shakes his head, “Helen...”

“I have every right to know what’s going on.”

“You don’t need to be worrying about this!” He insists and watches as her entire body tenses.

“Marcus,” She says, and her voice is just a little too sweet for John, “Would you mind stepping out for a moment?”

Marcus, ice cream in hand, looks between them, “I mean, I’d rather stay and watch you demolish him but—”

“Marcus!” Helen and John say together and the older assassin laughs, sliding to his feet.

“Guess I’ll just go downstairs and see if anything new has magically appeared since yesterday.” He pats John on the shoulder on the way to the basement, “Good luck.”

Helen waits for the door to close before she speaks, “We are not doing this, John.”

“Doing what?” He asks, resigned.

“You’re not leaving me out of the loop! I know that you think you’re protecting me by keeping me in the dark from what is happening, but I can handle this.”

Again, he shakes his head, “It’s not about what you can handle, I know you can handle this, but you don’t have to. I don’t want you to be worrying—”

“You don’t get to decide what I’m allowed to worry about.” She snaps, not unkindly. Helen pauses, sighing to herself. She moves down the couch so that she’s closer to where he sits and, gently, tries again, “John, I am doing what you ask. I’ve cut off contact from the world, I’m staying hidden. Meet me halfway here.”

His leg is shaking, she notes. His face is tense.

She reaches out across the space to where his hand sits on the armrest and lays her own atop. “I know things are going to get worse before they get better. But you trying to deal with this all on your own, without support, isn’t helping.”

He hesitates again, gathering his thoughts together before he admits, “I don’t want to let you know how bad it’s gotten. And not because I don’t think you can handle it,” He adds before she can say anything, “But because I don’t want to expose you to that. You might not like some of the things I might have to do.”

“We got to this point together.” Helen argues, “Hell, I’m more accountable than you are for this fiasco.”

John snorts, “No, you’re not.”

“I’m a licensed professional. I was the one in the position of power. I had a moral obligation to ensure the boundaries between us stayed clear. I knowingly violated that, okay? I got us to this point, too. So, please, let me help fix it.”

John lets out a breath, his shoulders settling. “I don’t like it. I don’t like involving you in this world more than you already are.”

“You don’t have to like it.” She reminds him, “But you’re going to deal with it, because I’m not going to let you carry the weight by yourself.”

There’s such force behind her words. And Christ, she would be pissed if he laid it all out. She would demand that he ignore DeLuca, even at the cost of her own life. And they would argue and fight about it, but ultimately, he would do whatever it takes.

But she’s not backing down and, while John has never been good at compromising, he is more than capable of recognizing when an opponent is going to fight until their last breath. She has that same look in her eye now.

“Okay.” He agrees. “Okay. But tomorrow? I… I don’t think I can handle that tonight.”

She nods and her hand tightens on his, squeezing momentarily, “Thank you.”

For a moment, she stays in place, looking at him. A small smile of thanks graces her face. He forces himself to look away from her lips.

“Marcus!” She calls, letting go of his hand and sitting back in her corner of the couch, “You can come back in.”

Marcus comes back up and makes a show of checking his watch, “Not even five minutes? Come on, John. That’s just sad.”

John smirks at his friend, “You think you can win an argument against her? Be my guest.”

Marcus winks at Helen and holds up the ice cream, “You want more?”

“Not now, thanks.” She replies and he puts the ice cream back into the freezer.

John takes a bite of his leftover, noting that this might be the first time anybody had ever thought to save dinner for him. It’s a little bit better knowing that Helen had thought of him when putting it away, certain it was not Marcus’s doing. Not that Marcus didn’t care, but he was more from the school of everybody fend for themselves.

Marcus settles on the couch and looks to Helen, “What did I miss?”

John finds himself smirking despite himself, “What, is she in charge now?”

“Have been since the beginning, but glad you’re catching on.” She says with a heart-stopping smile before looking back at Marcus, “Discussion is tabled until tomorrow.”

Marcus nods, “Fine by me. My head still fucking hurts.”

John smirks as he raises his fork, “Welcome to the club.”

Marcus shakes his head, “And you do this with her every week? Willingly?”

“It gets easier once you know what to expect.”

The older assassin looks to Helen, “We’re not making a habit of those discussions.”

“We don’t have to do anything you’re uncomfortable with.”

John recognizes the look in her eyes. She’s an expert at subtle manipulation—letting you think you’re in control right up until the moment she snatches the rug out from under you. And by then, you’re too addicted to her kind words and soft stares to leave.

She’s magnificent.

Marcus sighs and glances at John, “How screwed am I?”

“Very.” Helen shoots him an amused glance and he feels his own gaze soften as he looks at her, “You know I wouldn’t change a thing.”

At least, about her.

Their circumstances on the other hand…

Her lips twitch slightly and yeah, John thinks, he’s going to do it. Not now. But before he goes off to face death, he’s going to kiss those soft, pink lips. He’s going to carry the taste of her with him to the next world.

Let that be how she remembers him—not as a broken man or as a murderer. But as someone who loved her completely.

That wouldn’t be so bad.

“Me, either.” She says and it takes everything inside of him not to fly across the room to her now.

“Yup!” Marcus says, very loudly, interrupting the moment that passes between them, “Therapy is not for me.”

Helen looks away, her cheeks tinged with pink. He watches her swallow before looking up at Marcus, “It’s not for everyone.” She admits, then teases, “Some people just can’t handle the weight and strength needed to address their inner battles.”

“Listen, Kingston…” Marcus says but there is humor in his voice, “If assassins actually started addressing the issues we all have with our parents, we wouldn't have the time kill anybody.”

She laughs at that, “God forbid.”

Marcus looks over her head, “Don’t you just want to set her on Winston? I want to know what’s going on in his head.”

“That’s the guy who operates New York, right?” Helen asks and John nods.

“That’s him. And, frankly, Marcus. I’d rather not know what’s going on in Winston’s head. Or anybody’s.” Looking back to Helen he adds, “I don’t know how you deal with knowing so many people’s thoughts.”

She shrugs a shoulder, “We all have our stories, but the same themes come up again and again.”

“Jung?” John asks.

“Very good.” Helen says, “Did you ever end up reading The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious?”

John nods, “I did.”

“Nerd alert!” Marcus coughs into his hand.

Helen and John both glare at him before she looks back to John, “I mean, you know my feelings on listening to anyone labeled an ‘expert’ but, at the very least, I agree that if you look close enough at peoples stories, you’ll find the same themes prevailing over nearly all of it.”

“And what are your thoughts on listening to experts?” Marcus asks.

John smirks, already knowing the answer, “Helen believes very strongly in subjective truth. Nothing can be taken at face value.”

Helen nods, “And people in the psych community tend to stick to their niches. The psychoanalytics stick to Freud, the REBT people stick to Ellis, Cognitive Behavioralists stick to Skinner. The reality is, they all work in their own ways. But to put all your stock in one school of thought, you’re going to miss out on a lot of relevant shit.”

Marcus smirks, “You talk with that mouth in your office?”

Helen inclines her head, “Only with John. But he’s got a thick skull. Sometimes you need to do things to catch his attention.”

“That thick skull is necessary to protect the small brain inside.”

John flips him off.

“He’s had a lot of undiagnosed concussions.” Marcus adds, ignoring the gesture.

“I’d smack you,” John comments, humor in his voice, “But I wouldn’t want to damage your hearing aids.”

Marcus smirks in response, glancing to Helen, “You don’t get to be my age in the Underworld without some wear and tear. You spend enough time around munitions and guns, your hearing is the first thing to go.” He looks over at John, “This one laughs now, but he’ll be exactly where I am in fifteen years. If he lives that long.”

Helen rolls her eyes, “Well, on that note, I’m going to get ready for bed.” Helen stands up, her hand brushing along John’s arm as she walks by. “Come to bed soon, okay?”

He nods, forcing himself to remember to breathe when she talks to him like that, “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Good. Night, Marcus.”

“Night, sweetheart.”

She disappears down the hall, watching her long after she disappears. There’s the sound of a door closing and a sink running. He can still feel where her fingers grazed his arm.

“Henry.”

John looks up at Marcus, blinking in confusion.

“Henry.” Marcus repeats, “It’s my middle name. Good strong name, you know, if you’re starting think of what you’ll name your children.”

“Fuck off.”

Marcus laughs, “Jesus, John, you’re fucking gone.”

John glares slightly, “Really? Calling her sweetheart?”

The older assassin rolls his eyes, “Calm down, Romeo. I prefer my women not have the ability to psychoanalyze me. I meant exactly what I said—she’s a sweetheart.”

He nods, relaxing slightly. He’s well aware of Helen’s allure, even platonically he understands the way she manages to pull people in. A kind word from her is enough to hook anyone and, before you can remember to think, you’ve bared your soul. A search for absolution that can only be found in the quiet of her eyes.

“She is.” John agrees.

Marcus nods, “I, uh, wanted to talk to you about the marker.”

John raises an eyebrow.

“I don’t need it. Not for doing this.”

“You’re doing me the favor of a lifetime.” John states the obvious. This was no small thing that Marcus was doing for him.

Marcus nods, “I was. But, truth is, I’m happy just to do this for her.”

John huffs a small laugh, “I get it. She pulls you in, doesn’t she? So fast you don’t even know you’re sinking.”

“She does that.” Marcus pauses, thoughtfully. He looks to John and asks, “How long the two of you going to keep playing this game?”

He looks away, “Marcus…”

“You are both way too smart to be playing stupid to the looks, the touches. If I didn’t know the two of you and we just met, I’d assume you were married with the way you act around each other.”

Shaking his head, John looks to his friend, “Let it go.”

“John—”

“Let it go.” John says again, “I promised her we wouldn’t talk about it without her but… things aren’t looking good. And, if by some miracle, I’m still alive at the end of all this, what can I offer her?”

“She knows exactly what you are and she doesn’t care. She still adores you.”

John can’t even begin to address that so he ignores it, “She’ll never be safe so long as her name is associated with mine.”

Marcus stares at him incredulously, “I think that particular ship already sailed.”

John pushes his hair back, frustrated, because Marcus is right on that note. Everything was already fucked. But there was still something looming over John that forced him to add, “She deserves better.”

“Definitely. But she still wants you.”

“You don’t know that.”

“My ears may be shot to hell, but I’m not blind.”

John takes his plate, shaking his head as he stands up, “Goodnight, Marcus.”

“Night, dumbass.”

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drawbauchery · 4 years

Text

The Inherent Eroticism of Clowning

fic by cartoons-tothemoon

At some point, Rico realized that Kowalski wasn’t a smiler.

He wouldn’t call the guy happy or well-adjusted, but, then again, could he even call himself that? And he smiled all the time!

But Kowalski…

It wasn’t like he was an especially angsty guy, he was just…moody. Emotional. Maybe even more so than Private. Private had two modes that he volleyed through, and otherwise remained at a middle point of the emotional equilibrium where he was just…fine. Skipper’s emotional state also seemed to be apathetic unless under great stress. But Kowalski? Kowalski bounced back and forth between that spectrum, it might as well been like watching a tennis game.

It fascinated him on some level that their resident nerd seemed to share many of the same instabilities as he did, and on some level, he was able to find a kinship in that.

Of course, Kowalski was never receptive of such a friendship, and why would he be? It would mean, on some level, admitting to being some sort of freak. An overly-emotional basket case with some unexamined problems here and there.

Sure, it was fine to BE like that, but admitting to it meant some form of culpability. The only reason Rico usually didn’t have to deal with consequences like that was because Skipper didn’t usually bother over-examining the issues that laid before him or the little discipline he gave him was harsh and swift enough to be a simple slap of the cuffs for five minutes before Rico could go on with his life.

Kowalski wasn’t the type to receive a slap on the wrist. He was, for lack of a better word, good. Not morally good, but, good by the standards of the team. He could be building his third edition of a death ray, but as long as he stayed out of Skipper’s way in the morning he might as well be a saint.

Come to think of it, Kowalski stayed out of everybody’s way, pretty much. Sure, they ate meals together and watched movies, but unless Skipper called them together or he had something to show off, he mostly kept to himself. He was usually in his lab or in Private’s greenhouse…

These were the facts as Rico knew them. Kowalski was a paradoxically over-emotional logical man of science, who gave off the vibes of being a gifted student in grade school, and kept to himself.

And he wasn’t a smiler. Over-emotional, yes, overly positive emotions? Not quite.

Rico figured it was his job to change that.

—��—

Over breakfast that morning, Private and Skipper went through their strange morning charade of being simultaneously open and loving and incredibly repressed, which, made for good entertainment on slow days.

However, this was not going to be one of those slow days. He had the lofty goal of trying to make Kowalski not only smile, but laugh. Laughter was easier to gain without just simply asking than smiling. It was sudden and explosive, while smiling was quiet and demure. Not his style, but he was looking for something of the same effect.

And besides, to get a genuine smile out of him in the first place, what was he really going to do? Complimenting him would feel weird, and anything else felt like uncharted waters for a reason. He might be known as the impulsive and weird one, willing to dive into anything, but, that came to violence and action. Those things made sense to him. Social things, even benign ones like these with people who he has known for years, had their own rolling tides associate with them. He didn’t know if these seas would treat him unfavorably, but he would never truly know until he took the plunge.

As plates were set down on the table of some weird sort of Russian pancake that Private had found on the internet and had wanted to test out in the kitchen, a thing that seemed to make him rather proud, enthusiastic to try something new, Rico dropped a line in Kowalski’s direction he had found on the internet.

A spoon was dropped.

Private looked scandalized, his palms practically super-glueing themselves to his face in shock. Skipper looked a little horrified, eyes briefly flittering to Private to read his reaction. Yeah, he saw that. Kowalski seemed to share in this same look of horror, jaw agape, blinking once or twice to get a read on the situation before letting out something of a confused scoff? - He was guessing that was what it was - before he wrapped a hand around his mouth too and turned to the side to cough.

He couldn’t guess what his own face looked like, but he guessed it was a little vacant, at the least. didn’t see anything wrong with what he said, but he probably should’ve guessed he’d be wrong about that given his track record.

And that was how Rico once again found himself forever trapped in the ‘too horny on main’ corner that seemed to exist only because of him, with cold blintzes and an empty kitchen to return to.

He was forced to acknowledge it. In the event of being given the choice to sink or swim, he sunk. And everyone knew he did.

———

Upon reflection, Rico was starting to think that Kowalski might have been a happier person than he thought he was. He knows that whenever Private tells him a lame pun or joke, he gives a small laugh or two to keep him from getting discouraged. Not to mention, whenever Skipper praises an invention, be it an actual “good work, Kowalski!” or a back-handed “I like that it hasn’t killed us yet” seems to make him rather excited, though that could just be the pure enthusiasm he has when it comes to his work carrying him through a demonstration.

Come to think of it, Kowalski doesn’t smile a lot around him. He might if they’re in a group, when they’re all celebrating something with this big mob mentality thing going for them, but, otherwise. Nah.

Maybe this is because they don’t hang out a lot? He WAS banned from the lab. There was a sign and everything.

Maybe he just didn’t like him all that much? It’s not like he ever SAID anything really, but who could be for certain?

These were the things he had to think about while he braided Julien’s hair. Well, tried to, anyhow. He didn’t exactly understand how it worked, and no matter how many times Julien explained it to him, even that day, he didn’t think he was ever going to get it. However, on some level, it was their “thing” to do together, on days where they didn’t feel like doing anything but lounging around, but still wanted to do something more than watch TV. So, that seemed to be their afternoon, trying to figure out a French braid while he contemplated the emotional state of another man. It would sound almost scandalous if Julien didn’t know.

“You are like, the funniest guy on the planet,” Julien stated. ��The idea that he can’t even shine a smile at you is a thing that is preposterous.”

Rico hummed at that, giving him a small head scratch that had Julien reaching for his hand to keep at the motion, but his mind was still somewhat elsewhere.

Julien probably only thought such a thing because he already liked Rico, and this love of his had made him dumb. Just yesterday he read online that he should microwave a metal spoon before having ice cream, so it’s easier to scoop out of the tin, and Kowalski had to save what he referred to as his “souped-up electromagnetic baby” from such an act as soon as the sparking had drawn his attention.

Yes, truly it was love that had made him dumb. Nothing else, be it circumstances nor his general careless nature, could be the cause of such a thing.

At least the microwave thing had made Julien laugh. Watching Kowalski scramble from his seat at the kitchen table to wrestle a uranium-powered microwave off the counter, forgetting in his panic that he could’ve simply unplugged the thing. Such an act toppled him over, almost crushing him underneath the device. Julien found the erratic movement funny enough to laugh, even if it turned Kowalski three shades of a flustered red in the face afterwards.

Rico was also there. He knew what was going to happen when Julien had suggested it, and wanted to watch the sparks fly with him. He should’ve expected Kowalski to prevent them from absolutely destroying his creation, but he didn’t expect that.

Perhaps Kowalski was full of surprises like that. Multi-faceted. A puzzle.

That almost frustrated Rico more. He HATED puzzles. He liked things direct. To the point. Muddling through ambiguity was just such a weird and fussy thing to him. There was a reason he was the only one in the group with a functional romantic relationship that was able to stand more than three months of time, but it wasn’t that easy.

For one, Julien had asked first.

For second…what was he even supposed to say? “Have you secretly hated me this entire time or are my jokes just simply that terrible that you can’t even smile in my presence out of principle?” That was too direct. That got to the heart of this weird insecurity that had only popped up in the last week, and Kowalski seemed like the type to be frightened by that kind of thing.

And besides, the last thing Rico wanted was to look insecure. The second last thing Rico wanted, though, was to BE insecure, so those two conflicting thoughts sort of kept him from taking action. Or, at the very least, taking action at this point in time.

He was considered sort of an absolutist in his own right. An all-or-nothing sort of guy. However, that didn’t mean he was incapable of walking the thin line of gray that lined the black and white.

He just wasn’t capable of doing that right now.

After all, he was trying to learn how to braid a French braid.

———

Rico decided to lay relatively low for the rest of the day. Nothing during lunch, no weird comments during dinner. Nothing.

Sure, he still talked, but, it was a casual sort of thing. All very shallow stuff like “hey, how was your day?” Or “hey, dinner was pretty good tonight.” You know, normal things that sounded so utterly strange out of him. He might as well have been flying a kite at night, that’s how unsavory he guessed it came off given the ire that Skipper gave him during dinner, though Private seemed to welcome it.

It was a movie night tonight, though, and it was Rico’s turn to pick, so he figured he’d take advantage of the situation he was in. Especially since Private and Skipper were busy making up the popcorn (why there needed to be two of them when they weren’t even using it as an excuse to make out, he’d never know) and Julien and Maurice were chilling in the other corner of the room, reading or looking at their phones or something of the sort.

He had to seize the opportunity that he had so carelessly squandered earlier.

Rico flickered through a bunch of action movies, a few catching his eye for later viewings, but none of them really appealing to him at the moment.

He turned to Kowalski and shrugged.

“Y-You got any n-nature docu-documentaries you’re lo-looking to watch?”

“Are you feeling alright?”

“O-Only if they’re, if they’re cool.”

Kowalski seemed a little surprised at this. He shrugged. “There’s one about anacondas I’ve been looking to watch.”

“A-Are you s-sure that isn’t m-meant f-for pri-private viewing?”

Kowalski had to take a second to think about it before returning slightly scandalized, though more mad than anything else really. “It’s the REPTILE. That’s a dated joke even by your standards.”

Rico laughed a little to himself before sobering up. “I g-guess I ha-have been acting, acting weird t-today.”

Kowalski regarded this at first dryly, but then with a touch more compassion than Rico thought he was capable of showing towards him. “Oh, uh,” he began elegantly.

Rico sighed. “There’s-there’s a lot of el-elements t-to how I’m f-feeling, ya know?”

It looked as if Kowalski was about to put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder, but he seemed to hesitate for a reason Rico didn’t understand that well, but also didn’t want explained.

“Yeah. L-lots of el-elements. H-hydrogen, Ox-oxygen, RadoN, Yttri-yttrium…The lot.” He sighed once more, trying to keep the smirk from sliding onto his face.

The hesitant hand that was at first drawn to Rico’s shoulder found a place under his chin as Kowalski slowly thought about what he said and how he compiled it together. When Kowalski realized, his eyes widened and Rico received a punch in the arm as Kowalski laughed, genuinely LAUGHED at such a stupid, corny science joke! He could’ve sworn Kowalski would’ve called him a son of a bitch as he did if he was that type of a guy. Seeing him laugh made Rico laugh too, with a sense of camaraderie that came with it, which kept Kowalski laughing as well in a sort of self-perpetuating cycle.

Rico let out a heavy breath as he had finally gotten it out of his system, and out of the corner of his eye, saw something he had never really picked up on before.

When Kowalski laughed, perhaps for too long, or maybe a little too much, or he just didn’t want anyone to pick up on it, he went to cover his mouth with his hand. It helped to mask the emotion somewhat, and it wasn’t the first time Rico picked up on the motion as a way to maintain a pokerface, but he saw it in a somewhat new light, so to speak.

He just had to be casual about it.

“Y-you do that every time?”

“What? Oh.” Kowalski said, hiding a smile behind his fist, though to call it hiding was generous in its own right, if not inaccurate. It was more of a self-soothing gesture. A comforting gesture, more than anything else. “Well, we can’t let you get too egotistical, huh.”

Then it took Rico a moment to think, and Kowalski used the time to grab the remote and select the documentary. When Kowalski pressed play, that’s when he realized it, “you mean this morning you-!?”

“Shh! It’s starting.”

———

“They didn’t even wait for the popcorn.” Private pouted, his arms wrapped around the largest bowl they could find in the kitchen.

“Did you hear how they were dancing around each other? Get a clue, am I right?” Skipper muttered as he grabbed a handful of popcorn from the bowl.

Despite their misgivings and their grumblings, they too soon could be found in front of the television for a movie night, even for a movie like this.

(I didn’t want to genuinely write out some sort of ass-clapping joke, but that’s probably the kind of joke Rico told. I know it in my heart, but with the ambiguity there you can kill the author who killed the previous author, so to speak and say what kind of joke he made. I capitalized the parts of the elements that spell out the secret message. You learn something new every day, but nobody ever said you learned something useful every day. You just happened to today. )

#cartoons-tothemoon #fics #submission #pom #yells into the void #KOWALSKI AND RICO ARE SO SMITTEN WITH EACH OTHER #and they are the ONLY ones in the house that are smitten no one else #jsdflsd i love the insight as to how rico #is the only one who's capable of maintaining a romantic relationship #he may be insane but he doesn't bullshit around #also i got so giddy at the twist in the end there #rico you need to wake up and realize just how 'in' with kowalski you actually are #the only thing left to do is make out

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laces-of-life · 3 years

Text

Spoilers for A Court of Silver Flames

Enjoy this extra scene featuring Azriel from the BAM! edition of A Court of Silver Flames.

The river house had finally fallen quiet after the raucous Winter Solstice party, the faelights dimming to cast little pools of gold amid the deep shadow of the longest night of the year. Amren, Mor, and Varian had finally gone to bed, but Azriel found himself lingering downstairs. He knew he should get some sleep. He’d need it come dawn, for the snowball battle up at the cabin. Cassian had mentioned no less than six times tonight that he had a secret plan regarding his so-called impending victory. Az had let his brother boast. Especially since Azriel had been planning his own victory for a year now. Cassian wouldn’t know what was coming for him. And Az fully planned on capitalizing on the fact that Nesta likely wouldn’t let Cassian sleep much tonight. Az snickered to himself, to the listening shadows around him. Sleep, they seemed to whisper in his ear. Sleep. I wish I could, he answered silently. But sleep so rarely found him these days, Too many razor-sharp thoughts sliced him any time he grew still long enough for them to strike. Too many wants and needs left his skin overheated and pulling taut across his bones. So he slept only when his body gave out, and even then only for a few hours. Azriel surveyed the empty family room, presents and ribbons littering the furniture. Cassian and Nesta hadn’t reappeared downstairs, though that came as no surprise. He was elated for his brother, and yet... Azriel couldn’t stop it. The envy in his chest. Of Cassian, and Rhys. He knew he’d be swallowed by it if he went up to his bedroom, so he’d remained down here by the dying light of the fire. But even the silence weighed too heavily, and though the shadows kept him company, as they always had, as they always would, he found himself leaving the room. Entering the foyer. Soft steps padded from under the stair archway, and there she was. The faelights gilded Elain’s unbound hair, making her glow like the sun at dawn. She halted, her breath catching in her throat. “I...” He watched her swallow. She clutched a small gift in her hands. “I was coming to leave this on your pile of presents. 1 forgot to give it to you earlier.” Lie. Well, the second part was a lie. He didn’t need his shadows to read her tone, the slight tightening of her face. She’d waited until everyone was asleep before venturing back down, where she’d leave her gift amongst his other, opened presents, subtle and unnoticed. Elain closed the distance, and her breathing quickened as she again paused, now a scant foot away. She extended the wrapped gift, her hand shaking. “Here.” Az tried not to look at his scarred fingers as they took the gift. She hadn’t bought her mate a present. But she’d gotten Azriel one last year—a headache powder he kept on his nightstand at the House of Wind. Not to use, but just to look at. Which he'd done every night he’d slept there. Or attempted to sleep there. Azriel unwrapped the box, glancing at the card that merely said, You might find these useful at the House these days, and then opened the lid. Two small, bean-shaped fabric blobs lay within. Elain murmured, “you put them in your ears, and they block any sound. With Nesta and Cassian living there with you...” He chuckled, unable to suppress the impulse. “No wonder you didn’t want me to open it in front of everyone.” Elain’s mouth twitched into a smile. “Nesta wouldn’t appreciate the joke.” He offered her a smile back. “I wasn’t sure if I should give you your present.” He left the rest unspoken. Because her mate was here, sleeping a level up. Because her mate had been in the family room and Azriel had needed to stay by the door the whole time because he couldn’t stand the sight of it, the scent of their mating bond, and needed to have the option of leaving if it became too much. Elain’s large brown eyes flickered, well aware of all that. Just as he knew she was well aware of why Azriel so rarely came to family dinners these days. But tonight, here in the dark and quiet, with no one to see... He pulled the small velvet box from the shadows around him. Opened it for her. Elain sucked in a soft breath that whispered over his skin. His shadows skittered back at the sound. They’d always been prone to vanish when she was around. The golden necklace seemed ordinary—its chain unremarkable, the amulet tiny enough that it could be dismissed as an everyday charm. It was a small, flat rose fashioned of stained glass, designed so that when held to the light, the true depth of the colors would become visible. A thing of secret, lovely beauty. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered, lifting it from the box. The golden faelight shone through the little glass facets, setting the charm glowing with hues of red and pink and white. Azriel let his shadows whisk away the box as she said softly, “Put it on me?” His head went quiet. But he took the necklace, opening the clasp as she exposed her back, sweeping her hair up in one hand to bare her long, creamy neck. He knew it was wrong, but there he was, sliding the necklace around her. Letting his scarred fingers touch her immaculate skin. Letting them brush the side of her throat, savoring the velvet-soft texture. Elain shivered, and he took a damn long time fastening the clasp. Azriel’s fingers lingered at her nape, atop the first knob of her spine. Slowly, Elain pivoted into his touch. Until his palm lay flat against her neck. It had never gone this far. They’d exchanged looks, the occasional brush of their fingers, but never this. Never blatant, unrestricted touching. Wrong—it was so wrong. He didn’t care. He needed to know what the skin of her neck tasted like. What those perfect lips tasted like. Her breasts. Her sex. He needed her coming on his tongue Azriel’s cock strained behind his pants, aching so fiercely he could hardly think. He prayed she didn’t peer down. Prayed she didn’t understand the shift in his scent. He had only allowed himself these thoughts in the dead of night. Had only allowed his hand to fist his cock and think about her then, when even his shadows had gone to sleep. How that beautiful face might appear as he entered her, what sounds she’d make. Elain bit her lower lip, and it took every ounce of Azriel’s restraint to keep from putting his own teeth there. “I should go,” Elain said, but made no move to leave. “Yes,” he said, his thumb sweeping in long strokes along the side of her throat. Her arousal drifted up to him, and his eyes nearly rolled back in his head at the sweet scent. He’d beg on his knees for a chance to taste it. But Azriel just stroked her neck again.

Elain shuddered, drifting closer. So close one deep breath would brush her breasts against his chest. She looked up at him, her face so trusting and hopeful and open that he knew she had no idea that he had done unspeakable things that sullied his hands far beyond their scars.

Such terrible things that it was a sacrilege for his fingers to touch her skin, tainting her with his presence.

But he could have this. This one moment, and maybe a taste, and that would be it.

“Yes,” Elain breathed, like she read the decision. Just this taste in the dead of the longest night of the year, where only the Mother might witness them.

Azriel’s hand slid up her neck, burying in her thick hair. Tilting her face the way he wanted it. Elain’s mouth parted slightly, her eyes scanning his before fluttering shut. Offer and permission. He nearly groaned with relief and need as he lowered his head toward hers. Azriel. Rhys’s voice thundered through him, halting him mere inches from Elain’s sweet mouth. Azriel. Unrelenting command filled his name, and Azriel looked up. Rhysand stood atop the staircase. Glowering down at them. My office. Now. Rhys vanished, and Azriel was left standing before Elain, who still awaited his kiss. His stomach twisted as he pulled his hand from her hair and stepped back. Forced himself to say, “This was a mistake.” She opened her eyes, hurt and confusion warring there before she whispered, “I’m sorry.” “You don’t — Don’t apologize,” he managed to say. “Never apologize, It’s | who should...” He shook his head, unable to stand the bleakness he'd brought to her expression. “Goodnight.” Azriel winnowed into shadows before she could say anything, appearing at the doors to Rhys’s study a heartbeat later. His shadows whispered in his ear that Elain had gone upstairs. Rhys sat at his desk, fury a moonless night across his face. He asked softly, “Are you out of your mind?” Azriel donned the frozen mask he’d perfected while in his father’s dungeon. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Rhys’s power rippled through the room like a dark cloud. “I’m talking about you, about to kiss Elain, in the middle of a hall where anyone could see you,” he snarled. “Including her mate.” Azriel stiffened. Let his cold rage rise to the surface, the rage he only ever let Rhysand see, because he knew his brother could match it. “What if the Cauldron was wrong?” Rhysand blinked. “What of Mor, Az?”

Azriel ignored the question. “The Cauldron chose three sisters. Tell me how it’s possible that my two brothers are with two of those sisters, yet the third was given to another.” He had never before dared speak the words aloud.

Rhys’s face drained of color. “You believe you deserve to be her mate?”

Azriel scowled. “I think Lucien will never be good enough for her, and she has no interest in him, anyway.”

“So you'll what?” Rhys’s voice was pure ice. “Seduce her away from him?” Azriel said nothing. He hadn’t gotten that far with his planning, certainly not beyond the fantasies he pleasured himself to. Rhys growled, “Allow me to make one thing very clear. You are to stay away from her.” “You can’t order me to do that.”

“Oh, I can, and I will. If Lucien finds out you’re pursuing her, he has every right to defend their bond as he sees fit. Including invoking the Blood Duel.”

“That’s an Autumn Court tradition.” The battle to the death was so brutal that it was only enacted in rare cases. Despite being an outsider, Azriel had wanted to invoke it when he'd found Mor all those years ago. Had been ready to challenge both Beron and Eris to Blood Duels and kill them both. Only Mor’s right to claim their heads in vengeance had kept him from doing so. “Lucien, as Beron’s son, has the right to demand it of you.” “I'll defeat him with little effort.” Pure arrogance laced every word, but it was true. “I know.” Rhys’s eyes flickered. “And your doing so will rip apart any fragile peace and alliances we have, not only with the Autumn Court, but also with the Spring Court and Jurian and Vassa.” Rhys bared his teeth. “So you will leave Elain alone. If you need to fuck someone, go to a pleasure hall and pay for it, but stay away from her.” Azriel snarled softly. “Snarl all you want.” Rhys leaned back in his chair. “But if I see you panting after her again, I’ll make you regret it.” Rhys had rarely threatened punishment or pulled rank. It stunned Azriel enough that it knocked him from his rage. Rhys jerked his chin toward the door. “Get out.” Azriel rucked in his wings and left without another word, stalking through the house and onto the front lawn to sit in the frigid starlight. To let the frost in his veins match the air around him. Until he felt nothing. Was again nothing at all. Then he flew to the House of Wind, knowing that if he slept in the riverside manor, he’d do something he regretted. He’d been so vigilant about keeping away from Elain as much as possible, and had stayed up here to avoid her, and tonight . . . tonight had proved he’d been right to do so.

He aimed for the training pit, giving in to the need to work off the temptation, the rage and frustration and writhing need. He found it already occupied. His shadows had not warned him. It was too late to bank without appearing like he was running. Azriel landed in the ring a few feet from where Gwyn practiced in the chill night, her sword glimmering like ice in the moonlight. She stopped mid-slice, whirling to face him. “I’m sorry. I knew you all were going to the river house, so I didn’t think anyone would mind if I came up here, and—” “It’s fine. I came to retrieve something I forgot.” The lie was smooth and cool, as he knew his face was. His shadows peered over his wings at her. The young priestess smiled—and Azriel thought it might have been directed at his curious shadows. But she just hooked her coppery-brown hair behind an arched ear. “I was trying to cut the ribbon.” She pointed with her sword at the white ribbon, which seemed to glow silver. “Aren’t you cold?” His breath clouded in front of him. Gwyn shrugged. “Once you get moving, you stop noticing it.” He nodded, silence falling. For a heartbeat, their gazes met. He blocked out the bloody memory that flashed, so at odds with the Gwyn he saw before him now. Her head ducked, as if remembering it too. That he’d been the one who'd found her that day at Sangravah. “Happy Solstice,” she said, as much a dismissal as it was a holiday blessing. He snorted. “Are you kicking me out?” Gwyn’s teal eyes flashed with alarm. “No! I mean, I don’t mind sharing the ring. I just... I know you like to be alone.” Her mouth quirked to the side, crinkling the freckles on her nose. “Is that why you came up here?” Sort of. “I forgot something,” he reminded her. “At two in the morning?” Pure amusement glittered in her stare. Better than the pain and grief he’d spied a moment before. So he offered her a crooked smile. “I can’t sleep without my favorite dagger.” “A comfort to every growing child.”

Azriel’s lips twitched. He refrained from mentioning that he did indeed sleep with a dagger. Many daggers. Including one under his pillow.

“How was the party?” Her breath curled in front of her mouth, and one of his shadows darted out to dance with it before twirling back to him. Like it heard some silent music. “Fine,” he said, and realized a heartbeat later that it wasn’t a socially acceptable answer. “It was nice.” Not much better. So he asked, “Did you and the priestesses have a celebration?” “Yes, though the service was the main highlight.” “T see.” She angled her head, hair shining like molten metal. “Do you sing?” He blinked. It wasn’t every day that people took him by surprise, but . . .“Why do you ask?” “They call you shadowsinger. Is it because you sing?” “I am a shadowsinger—it’s not a title that someone just made up.” She shrugged again, irreverently. Az narrowed his eyes, studying her. “Do you, though?” she pressed. “Sing?” Azriel couldn’t help his soft chuckle. “Yes.” She opened her mouth to ask more, but he didn’t feel like explaining. Or demonstrating, since that was surely what she’d ask next. So Az jerked his chin to the sword dangling from her hand. “Try cutting the ribbon again.” “What—with you watching?” He nodded. She considered, and he wondered if she’d say no, but Gwyn blew out a breath, steadied her feet and balance, and sliced. A beautiful, precise blow, but it didn’t sever the ribbon. “Again,” he ordered, rubbing his hands against the cold, grateful for its bracing bite and the distraction of this impromptu lesson.

Gwyn sliced again, but the ribbon remained unyielding.

“You’re turning the blade a fraction as it comes parallel to the ground,” Azriel explained, drawing his Illyrian blade from down his back. “Watch.” He slowly demonstrated, rotating his wrist where she did. “You see how you open up right here?” He corrected his position. “Keep your wrist like that. The blade is an extension of your arm.” Gwyn tried the movement as slowly as he had, and he watched her self-correct, fighting against the urge to open up her wrist and rotate the blade. She did it three times before she stopped falling into the bad habit. “I blame Cassian for this. He’s too busy making eyes at Nesta to notice such mistakes these days.” Azriel laughed. “I’ll give you that.” Gwyn smiled broadly. “Thank you.” Azriel dipped his head in a sketch of a bow, something restless settling in him. Even his shadows had calmed. As if content to lounge on his shoulders and watch. But—sleep. He needed to at least attempt to get some. “Happy Solstice,” Azriel said before aiming for the archway into the House. “Don’t stay out too much longer. You'll freeze.” Gwyn nodded her farewell, again facing the ribbon. A warrior sizing up an opponent, all traces of that charming irreverence gone. Azriel entered the warmth of the stairwell, and as he descended, he could have sworn a faint, beautiful singing followed him. Could have sworn his shadows sang in answer. He slept as well as could be expected, but when Azriel returned to the river house to gather his presents before dawn, he found Elain’s necklace amid the pile. He pocketed it. Spent the rest of his day, even the blasted snowball fight, with every intention of returning it to the shop in the Palace of Thread and Jewels. But when he returned from the cabin in the mountains, he didn’t go to the market square. Instead, he found himself at the library beneath the House of Wind, standing before Clotho as the clock chimed seven in the evening. He slid the small box across her desk. “If you see Gwyn, would you give this to her?” Clotho angled her hooded head, and her enchanted pen wrote on a piece of paper, A Solstice gift from you? Azriel shrugged. “Don’t tell her it came from me.” Why? “Does she need to know? Just tell her it was a gift from Rhys.” That would be a lie. He avoided the urge to cross his arms, not wanting to look intimidating. He blocked out the memory that flashed—of his mother cringing before his father, the male standing with crossed arms in such a way that made his displeasure known before he opened his hateful mouth. “Look, I. . .” Az searched for the words, his voice becoming quiet. “If there’s another priestess here who might appreciate it, give it to them. But I’m not taking that necklace with me when I leave.” He waited for Clotho’s pen to finish writing. Your eyes are sad, Shadowsinger. He offered her a grim smile. “I lost the snowball fight today.” Clotho was smart enough to see through his deflection. She wrote, I'll give it to Gwyneth. Tell her a friend left it for her. He wouldn’t go so far as to call Gwyn a friend, but . . . “Fine. Thank you.” Clotho’s pen moved once more. She deserves something as beautiful as this. I thank you for the joy it shall bring to her. Something sparked in Azriel’s chest, but he only nodded his thanks and left. He could picture it, though, as he ascended the stairs back to the House proper. How Gwyn’s teal eyes might light upon seeing the necklace. For whatever reason . . . he could see it. But Azriel tucked away the thought, consciously erasing the slight smile it brought to his face. Buried the image down deep, where it glowed quietly. A thing of secret, lovely beauty.

#a court of silver flames #acosf #special edition #bam edition #extra scene #a court of silver flames special edition #azriel #elain #gwyn #rhysand

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hayleysstark · 4 years

Text

Doppelganger

Words: 2255 Warnings: Swearing Summary: "Merlin," Arthur says, "has split himself into nine Merlins." / "Jesus Christ," Elyan says blankly.

Read on Fanfiction or AO3.

"Right," Arthur says, finally, into the absolute silence of Gaius' wrecked chamber—all the tables and chairs overturned, all the big, dusty books open on the floor, torn pages and stained papers still fluttering around and around in the air like tiny white birds. "So." He lets himself think, for one long and happy moment, of the moment he sees Merlin again. He can't wait to drag the idiot down to the kitchens and tell the cook to chop him up and serve him for dinner.

"Now, Sire," Gaius says, like Arthur has just opened up his mouth and actually said I'm going to chop Merlin up and serve him for dinner out loud, except, Arthur's really very certain he didn't, so maybe Gaius really can read minds, like Gwaine always wants to bet thirty pounds on, "—mustn't be too hard on Merlin, surely, you know that, it was merely an accident—"

"Right," Arthur says, again. It'll be a tricky thing to boil Merlin. He's all skinny and stringy. He'll get chewy very fast. "Wouldn't dream of it, Gaius."

And maybe Gaius really can read minds, because he sees through that in less than half a moment—damn it, Gwaine wins, doesn't he, Arthur's going to have to hand thirty pounds over to the drunken fool tonight—

"—Sire, please, Merlin merely misunderstood the intent of the incantation—I cannot deny, he ought to have proceeded with far more caution, and of course, he must shoulder some of the blame, but it is not entirely his fault—"

All right. No. Absolutely not. Arthur cannot listen to that any longer. "Not entirely his fault?" He doesn't mean to shout it. That just sort of happens all on its own. "He's gone and split himself into eight! This is entirely his—!"

"Nine," Gaius says, gently, and reaches over, and pats Arthur lightly on the back of his hand. "Actually."

"Oh! Right! Yes! Of course!" Arthur yanks his hand away, and he thinks he might actually still be shouting a little bit. Maybe. "Of course! Nine! Why didn't I think of that! Eight would be too easy, I expect!"

"—Sire—"

"And God forbid Merlin ever make anything easy! He can't just go and have magic, oh, no, he's got to go and be a dragonlord, and have a dragon, and be married to a lake, and be the king of the druids and split himself into eight!"

"Nine," Gaius says, again. It feels very unhelpful right now.

The door swings open, with a long, low creak—a good thing, because if Gaius had got one more word out of his mouth, Arthur would have actually exploded—and the knights rush in, with a great swirl and swish of scarlet cloaks, and a heavy clatter of silver mail, and Guinevere follows on their heels, her red velvet skirt bunched up in her fists so she can run.

"Sire," Leon bows low, and flicks his sweat-soaked curls out of his eyes with the back of his hand, "Gaius," he nods at the old man, "we all came as soon as we heard—what's happened, what is it, what's—?"

"Merlin," Arthur says, at once, because it's like when Gaius rips out stitches after the wound has healed, the quicker, the better, the quicker, the less it will hurt, "has split himself into eight Merlins."

"Nine," Gaius says.

"Nine," Arthur amends with a little huff.

"Jesus Christ," Elyan says blankly.

Percival nods fervently.

"Nine Merlins?" Guinevere echoes, incredulously, and her brows arch up a bit, and she looks at Arthur like she thinks this is all a joke he wants to play on them, like any moment now, Merlin will pop out from behind one of the overturned tables, or come down the dark, narrow stairs at the back of the room, and laugh his idiot head off and say not really!

Arthur should be so lucky. Arthur really, really should be so damn lucky. "Nine Merlins." He nods.

"Fuck," Gwaine says, frankly.

Percival nods fervently again.

"Thank you, Gwaine," Gaius says dryly.

"Well, there has to be a way to fix him," Arthur says impatiently—honestly, yes, all right, he knows this is a bit of a shock, but it really doesn't take that long to come 'round to Merlin is an absolute idiot and he lost control of his magic and mucked up and now we have to go fix it, sounds like Tuesday in Camelot, huh, "can't we just—I don't know—" he doesn't know, actually, he doesn't know very much about magic at all, because magic lives in the lovely little place he likes to call Merlin's Problem, Not Mine, but Merlin's not here right now to make it his problem, so it looks like it's going to be Arthur's problem instead, "—can't we just take all the Merlins and shove them back into one Merlin, or something?"

"Shove them back into one?" Guinevere whirls around to scowl at Arthur. "No! No, we are not going to hurt him!"

"If we can get all the variants of Merlin together," Gaius says, calmly, but he's already raising that damned brow, "there is, indeed, a spell that will—gently—" his brow jumps a bit higher, "merge the facets back into one cohesive whole. But I need hardly tell you, I do not possess the power to even attempt such a thing, Sire. Merlin himself must do it."

"Great," Arthur says flatly. "Why do we always need Merlin for everything?" It's not like the idiot doesn't deserve it—might even do him some good, actually, to clean up his own messes—but Arthur thinks, sometimes, he would give his sword arm just to have a crisis in his kingdom he can solve without magic, and gold eyes, and a whole lot of odd gibberish.

"Hey," Gwaine says, "question."

"Yes, Gwaine," Arthur snaps, "you have to help." If he can't get out of this, his knights aren't getting out of this. "I don't care how many taverns have got a half-price deal going, or if that barmaid finally lost her last rational thought and decided to roll in the hay with you, but—"

"'Have to help'?" Gwaine echoes, like Arthur's just said a truly obscene swear. "Try and stop me, Princess. It's Merlin." Like that explains everything.

(It does, actually, because Arthur feels the same—if Merlin needs him, that's it, that's just it, end of story, nothing else matters, so long as he's there when Merlin needs him—but he would cut out his own tongue and chop it up for dinner before he would ever, ever say that out loud.)

"Please, Sir Gwaine," Gaius says, "I fear there's not much time. If Merlin remains in this disparate state for much longer, the facets will, gradually, begin to fade, and the Merlin we know will disappear from this realm forever."

"Disappear?!" Arthur snaps back around to look at Gaius. "Why the hell didn't you come right out and say that before now?!" It hits like ice in the bottom of his stomach—disappear, forever, Merlin will disappear from this realm forever, the Merlin we know will disappear from this realm forever, and what will I do without him, what will I do without him, I can't, I can't, I need him, I need him here, I can't do this without him, I can't, we haven't done all the things we're meant to do, and I need him here, so we can do them, I need him here to call me a prat and trip over absolutely everything and cry when he sees baby rabbits and hold a sword all the wrong ways because he's rubbish with a blade and I need him here to smile too much and say good morning too loudly and talk about druids and dragons and magic for hours if I don't shut him up and just be Merlin—

"All right, all right, so, just—one thing, then," Gwaine hastily holds up a broad, black-gloved hand, "just one thing, yeah? So, if Merlin tried a weird spell, and turned himself into nine—"

"Yes," Arthur huffs—maybe he should chop Gwaine up, and serve him for dinner, then, "wonderful job, Gwaine, truly phenomenal, now, come on, we have to find him—"

"—wait, wait," Gwaine says, "wait, now, just hang on, Princess, if Merlin tried a weird spell, and turned himself into nine—"

"Gwaine, if you don't sober up and take this seriously, I swear to God, I'll have Percival toss you in the horse trough!" Arthur snarls.

"Um," Percival says, "actually, I would rather not toss Gwaine in the horse trough."

"No need to hide it," Elyan says. "We all kind of want to toss Gwaine in the horse trough."

"—if Merlin tried a weird spell and turned himself into nine, which one is supposed to merge him back?!"

Oh. A hard, heavy stone drops down in Arthur's stomach, right next to the ice. God, Gwaine's actually got a point—would wonders never cease, and all of that, but no, this is not the time, because Gwaine's actually got a damn good point, if Merlin isn't just one Merlin any longer, if he's a whole lot of Merlins all running 'round the castle, is there a way to get one of them to—to do it, to put him back, to put him right, to make him Merlin again—?

"Oh," Gaius doesn't look even half so horrified as Arthur feels, "now that is very simple, Sir Gwaine. You must find the one that is truly Merlin."

Gaius' idea of "simple" looks very, very different from Arthur's.

"Right, thanks," Gwaine says. "One more thing, though. What the actual fuck does that mean?"

"Gwaine!" Elyan reaches up and cuffs his friend, hard, 'round the head.

"I'm sorry," Gaius says, seriously, "I'm afraid I don't know that. I suppose you will know the true Merlin once you find him."

Great. Arthur's stomach sinks, under the weight of all that ice and stone. So he has to track down nine magical idiots, because just one apparently isn't magical or idiotic enough, and he's got to work out which one is actually, truly his magical idiot. Wonderful. Can't wait.

"All right, well," Guinevere bites her bottom lip, and turns to look at the others, a wrinkle in her dark brow, "well, then, we have to find him first." She shakes her head—her thick, brown curls bounce a bit, up and down. "Them. We have to find them. Where do you think they'd have gone?"

"Perhaps," Leon speaks up before Arthur's got the chance to even think about it, "perhaps he's gone to the king's chambers? That's usually where he goes every morning, so, maybe—"

Oh. The ice and stone in Arthur's stomach lifts a little. That's actually not a bad idea. No, that's—that's a good idea, actually, that's a very good idea, that is where Merlin goes every day, and where else does Merlin go every day? Where else would Merlin be at this time?

It hits Arthur hardly half a moment later. "The armory!" He glances over at Leon. "And the training field—he's usually down there with me right now, we usually spar 'round this time—"

"Spar?" Gwaine snorts. "No, you don't 'spar', you just hit him over and over until he can't stand up. That's not a spar. That's a beating."

"Shut up, Gwaine."

"Oh! The kitchens!" Guinevere's face lights up. "He goes there all the time to fetch Arthur's meals! And to steal food," she adds, with a little scowl, "honestly, you'd think he doesn't hear me at all, I've tried a hundred times to tell him not to—"

"What d'you expect?" Gwaine cocks a dark brow. "Princess hardly gives the poor guy time to breathe. It'd be a miracle if he ever got to actually sit down and eat a proper meal."

"Gwaine," Arthur says, "the horse trough is still very much on the table right now." Of course Merlin has time to eat. Plenty of time. Loads of time, even. The idiot knows how to talk—unfortunately—and he certainly knows how to whine and whinge if he ever gets too hungry.

"Oh!" Percival brightens. "Maybe that's where Merlin's gone!"

"The horse trough?" Elyan arches a doubtful brow at Percival.

"No, no," Percival waves him off, "the stables! He has to see to the horses every day, right? And he'll hang 'round sometimes to spoil his old nag, I've seen him at it."

"Excellent idea, Percival!" Guinevere beams at him. "Thank you!"

A tiny little bit of relief stirs in Arthur's stomach. Maybe this won't be nearly as hard as he thinks. "All right, everyone, let's all fan out. Sir Percival, you'll take the stables, since you thought of it, Guinevere, if you could see to the kitchens, Sir Elyan, the armory and the training field, Sir Leon, check the throne room, it's worth a look, and Sir Gwaine, get yourself down to the archives—"

"I really don't think there's a Merlin in the archives," Gwaine breaks in. "Pretty sure if he ever picked up a book that wasn't just magic cover-to-cover, Gaius might actually cry of joy."

"It is a long-cherished dream of mine," Gaius admits.

"Shut up, Gwaine," Arthur says, again, "just check the archives. Maybe he's there, maybe he's not, but we just can't take the risk. We can't miss one of him. We have to find all of them. Quickly."

#merlin #bbc merlin #emrys' spellbook

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chrysalispen · 4 years

Text

Prompt #29 - Paternal

set the night before last year’s fill #27, “palaver.”

AO3 Link HERE

=========================

Eighty-nine. Ninety.

The bristles dragged through her hair in a soothing rhythm, marking a routine she'd once kept daily and all but forgotten.

She'd been lulled into a half-dozing state by the sound of the wind as it whistled around the eaves of the manor - it was very cold but there was no snow or ice for once - and every northerly burst made her feel as though she'd stepped back in time a good ten years.

A knot from one of the logs popped in the hearth-fire. She started and exhaled, then raised the brush again.

Ninety-one. Ninety-two.

There were differences, of course. No rattle from a nearby ceruleum space heater, and no worry that her aunt might come knocking for one of her talks. But she was no longer that girl of eighteen summers and this was not the borrowed guest-chamber her aunt and uncle had assigned her in the family compound in Garlemald. This was Ishgard and over a decade had passed since she had been that girl. If anyone in her family spoke her name now it was to curse it for the shame her actions had undoubtedly brought upon them.

But she had no regrets. Things had happened that no reasonable person could have foreseen, and she had done the best she could under the circumstances.

Ninety-three.

When one thought of it in that light, Aurelia supposed she hadn't done so poorly. Granted, hers was something of an extraordinary case, but even Warriors of Light weren't invincible and before all of this had started, she had just been a normal woman no different from any other on the star. If she had known what she-

A rap on the heavy door.

"Mistress Aurelia? Are you awake?"

She set her brush down. "I am," she said. "What do you need, Saulette?"

"The Co-- er, Lord Edmont's asked for you."

"Give me one moment." Aurelia reached for her soft house coat and stepped into her slippers, then made her way to the door. It opened with a creak and the girl on the other side looked distressed to see that she was still fumbling with the belt at her waist.

"Oh, miss, you should have said-"

"It's fine," she said, smiling. "I hardly need assistance to put on a robe, and Lord Edmont will likely have been winding down himself. Where is he?"

"The parlor, miss."

She padded down the hallway and up the stairs at Saulette's heels. The young maid opened the door and bowed, stepping aside to allow Aurelia entry. Edmont de Fortemps sat in his customary chair, warming himself at the hearth and dressed in bedclothes of his own, careworn features drawn and pensive, silver-streaked dark hair perhaps a touch less neat than he might have allowed during daytime hours. It was a rare look at a man who was as controlled and dignified as her own father had been.

"Mistress Aurelia, my lord."

"Thank you, Saulette. Pray excuse us. I would like to speak with her alone."

The girl bowed. "Of course, my lord."

The door clicked softly shut at her back. Lord Edmont was smiling at her in a way her own father had never done, and gesturing at the chair nearest him.

"Well, come in, my dear," he said. "It's too cold to stand in the stairwell, you'll catch a cold from that draft." She smiled in return, drawing closer to the fire and curling up in the plush upholstered chair. "Are you nervous?"

"About tomorrow? A bit, but in that public speaking sort of way, you know."

"I do know, as it happens! Between you and me: that is the one bit about being the official head of the House that I have not missed." He reached for a porcelain teapot sitting on a tray at the nearby end table. "All the heres and wherefores and endless worry about my public image and how it might or might not reflect poorly upon the family as a whole."

"Indeed."

"I wish Artoirel joy of it. He's been chomping at the bit but I suspect reality will set in soon enough."

"I think he'll do well," Aurelia said, watching him pour the cup.

"He will. I love the boy, you know. Very much his mother's child. A bit stuffy at times, but he's a good man with a good head on his shoulders, and he's not mired in Church politics the way some of his peers are. He'll do the Fortemps name justice, I think." Edmont's dark eyes shone with cheer as he lifted the filled teacup and offered it to her. "...You had a great deal of influence there, you know."

"You give me far too much credit that I cannot claim, Lord Edmont. Artoirel is his own man."

"So he is. But you've always led by example, and you taught him some valuable lessons I think he might not otherwise have learned. Cream and sugar?"

"Just a bit of cream. And one lump." She paused, cup halfway to her lips. "...You really don't miss it at all?"

"There are some habits I miss. But it's rather like losing a tooth, you know. Strange at first but then everything falls into place over time and you barely notice that part of the routine was ever missing at all. No," he said, watching her sip, "I think it will be no great effort to make the adjustment. Being a private citizen does have its perks. And I'm still the family patriarch. That hasn't changed."

"No," Aurelia smiled over the rim of the cup. "No, it hasn't."

"Which brings me to the reason why I had Saulette bring you to me."

"What? Oh dear. That sounds rather serious," she said, trying to keep her tone lighthearted as she set the cup aside. "Tataru didn't ring you in the middle of the night for some emergency or other, did she?"

"Fury forbid!" he guffawed. "No, nothing like that. I have something I want to show you, but first I must beg your forgiveness."

"What? Why?" Aurelia was honestly curious. He set his cup aside and reached for a small, varnished spruce box sitting upon his ottoman, grunting softly with the effort. "Why would you need to apologize to me for anything?"

Edmont paused, one hand caressing the grain of the wood. That pensive expression had returned to his face, the one she had caught just before Saulette had announced her presence.

"I've little idea what to do for something like this. I only ever had sons, you see," he said. "I have loved all three of them. Now I don't delude myself into thinking I have been a perfect father, or even a particularly good one, but I like to think I have done well enough by them. ...Two of them, at least. At any rate, I'm told that in Garlemald, the tradition is for the bride to take with her into the ceremony something old, something new-"

"-something borrowed, and something blue," Aurelia finished. "Yes, it's an old wedding custom the Empire never saw fit to dismantle. Just a sort of mnemonic, for good luck. But I would hardly say it's a requirement."

"Be that as it may," he said, his fingers working the catch on the box open, "I would very much like you to wear these tomorrow."

Within the box lay a delicate lace-trimmed handkerchief of sky-blue linen, faded and discolored in places with age, folded into a neat triangle and lying atop what appeared to be a bundle of old letters. Edmont unfolded the corners with as much care as if the cloth was some priceless artifact, and within lay a small, simple pendant, an aquamarine cut into the shape of a teardrop. Firelight reflected upon the individual facets until the jewel sparkled.

"It's stunning and I'm honored that you would trust me with it. Did these pieces belong to the late countess?"

His smile trembled. "No," Edmont said. "They belonged to Haurchefant's mother."

"Oh..."

"My wife would have destroyed all of it, so I concealed this box within my personal effects. I intended to give all of this to him when he married, but-"

Aurelia bowed her head, staring into her cup.

"It bears repeating," his tone was gentle, "that I do not blame you for his death. I have never blamed you."

"But-"

"I grieve him, as does any parent who has had to bury their child, but I have never blamed you. I would give anything to have him back. Yet I cannot deny my pride in having raised a son who would be selfless enough to-" He swallowed, the bob in his throat swift and almost violent in its movement. "...Well, we'll never get through this if I start crying. Take it."

He passed her the box. She stared down at the pendant.

"Lord Edmont, I-"

"No titles necessary, my dear. I think at this point we've moved well beyond formality." He cleared his throat and glanced into the fire. "Well, I'm certain your own parents would be very proud of you."

Oh hells. Her throat felt hot and tight and her vision blurred.

"I very much doubt that," she said, her voice even but only just. "Oh, I doubt that."

"Why so?"

Aurelia's fingers clutched the edges of the box until they dug into her palms.

"...I shouldn't burden you with this-"

"By all means, my dear. Go on."

"It's... my background is much like Haurchefant's, in truth." She sighed. "My mother was a musician and an actress. She had top billing in one of His Radiance's personal favorite troupes, in fact. She enjoyed a good deal of renown when she still toured the imperial playhouses. But fame or no, she came from common stock and my uncle wouldn't have the match. Father broke a betrothal and defied his family to marry her. He even left the capitol at their request."

Edmont had leaned against the armrest of his chair to listen, his expression patient and focused. She glanced into the mirror over the mantelpiece and saw her face, as ever, staring back. Her father's broad nose and high cheekbones and golden hair, her mother's eyes. No matter where she went, she could look in a mirror and always see her mother's eyes. Usually, it was a comfort, in its own way. Tonight-

She chewed on her lower lip.

"They didn't know about her weak heart until I came along. It took so much out of her, and she never recovered from my birth. To say that my father was unable to deal with the loss would be putting things kindly."

"I can well imagine."

"There were so many times over the years I would see him looking at me and the expression he had on his face when he looked away, it- ...I used to think that he hated me. Knowing what I know now, I can see his side of things better than I ever wanted to. He lost himself in his own despair and had no time for anything else. But I think that if he had been given a choice, he would have taken my mother without a shadow of a doubt. I'm certain I'm not the only child to have ever been in this situation, neither the first nor the last. But his greatest sin, his greatest failure as a father, was letting me know it."

Something hot trickled down her cheek but she forced herself to keep talking.

"He wasn't a father to me. How could he possibly have been a good father? The moment she left us he gave up on everything."

Edmont said nothing, and she could see nothing of his face through her tears. But she heard the sound of the chair scraping as he stood, and the tap of his cane upon the floor. A warm hand descended upon her shoulder and squeezed. Gently he plucked the box from her hands, set it on the table, and pulled her to her feet.

"Any parent should be proud to have raised a child like you," he said, "and I doubt your mother would have held any of your choices against you. You are an exceptional woman - not just by your deeds, but by your heart - and even if she had known beforehand what would happen to her I suspect that much like Haurchefant, she would not have changed a thing about her decision. Sometimes our sorrows are so great in scale and so close together we think the world will never be anything else. But there is joy, great joy, in living." He tucked a stray sheaf of her hair behind her ear. "And there is joy in the hope you bring to others and in your presence in their lives. Let that be her enduring gift to you- as you are to us."

Smiling, albeit with a great sadness in his eyes, he opened his free arm and let her come to him.

"Had I ever been fortunate enough to raise a daughter," he said, "I like to think she would have been a great deal like you. If you can ever bring yourself to say it, it would greatly honor this old man to be your father in truth as well as bureaucracy."

Wrapped in his embrace, she smelled cloves, coffee, aged paper, and the earthy sweetness of pipe tobacco. She inhaled on a choked sob and nodded, unable to speak. Tomorrow would be for joy and joy alone. Tonight, she wept for the father she had lost years before he had left her, and for the gift of another.

And before the warmth of the great hearth, basking in the warmth of the parental love she had always wished to know for herself, she let the last ancient tatters of her grief burn away to cinders.

#ffxivwrite 2020 #prompt 29: paternal #edmont is a good dad despite everything tbh #aurelia laskaris #edmont de fortemps #cw: pregnancy mention

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aboveallarescuer · 4 years

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Dany's empathy, compassion, compromises and sacrifices for other people

As I was rereading ASOIAF, I made it my goal to compile ALL* the book passages showcasing either certain key attributes of Daenerys Targaryen (e.g. that she's compassionate and smart) or aspects of hers that are usually overstated (e.g. that she's ambitious and prophecy-driven). Doing such a task may seem exaggerated, but I'd argue it's not, for many, many misconceptions about Dany have become widespread in light of the show's final season's events (and even before).

It must be acknowledged that it can be tricky to reference, say, ADWD passages to counter-argument how she was depicted in season eight (which allegedly follows ADOS events). Dany will have had plenty of character development in the span of two books. However, whatever happens to Dany in the next two books, I would argue that there is more than enough material to conclude that her show counterpart was made to fall for flaws that she (for the most part) never had and actions that she (for the most part) would never take. (and that's not even considering the double standards and the contradictions with what had been shown from show!Dany up until then, but that's obviously out of the scope of these lists)

Another objection to the purpose of these lists is that Game of Thrones is different from A Song of Ice and Fire and should be analyzed on its own, which is a fair point. However, the show is also an adaptation of these books, which begs the questions: why did they change Dany's character? Why did they overfocus on negative traits of hers or depicted them as negative when they weren't supposed to be or gave her negative traits that were never hers to begin with? Another fact that undermines the show=/=books argument is that most people think that the show's ending will be the books', albeit only in broad strokes and in different circumstances. As a result, people's perception of Dany is inevitably influenced by the show, which is a shame.

I hope these lists can be useful for whoever wants to find book passages to defend (or even simply explore different facets of) Dany's character in metas or conversations.

*Well, at least all the passages that I could find in her chapters, which is of course no guarantee that it is perfect, but I did my best.

Also, people can interpret certain passages differently and then come up with a different collection of passages if they ever attempted to make one, so I'm not saying that this list is completely objective (nor that there could ever be one).

Also, some passages have been cut short according to whether they were, IMO, relevant to the specific topic of the list they're in, so the context surrounding them may not always be clear (always read the books and use asearchoficeandfire!). Many of them appear in different lists, sometimes fully referenced, sometimes not.

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

To justify the existence of this list, let's see examples of widespread opinions that I feel misrepresent Daenerys Targaryen:

Along her way Daenerys has convinced herself that she wants to rule for the people and created a utopian ideology around herself as a benevolent freedom fighter -- while on a repressed, involuntary emotional level, the Iron Throne is actually a symbol to her of pain and trauma. So even though she doesn’t understand this herself, all this time her inner dragon wasn’t really driven by hope or the promise of change, but by rage and the will to avenge the abuse she endured at the hands of her enemies. (x)

Dany makes big, risky offensive plays, while Cersei -- surrounded by treacherous snakes and haunted by a prophecy that’s outlined how much she will lose - plays defensively. In light of all this, it makes sense why Dany views everything as positive opportunity and Cersei sees the negative angle. Daenerys wins hearts along her way not just because she’s a humanitarian, but also because she has to. (x)

[Dany] is a great and terrible leader who is spreading bloodshed and pain in their path. Entire civilizations have been burned at their whim. And her all-consuming desire to rule Westeros? She’s not particularly fussed about the rights of the smallfolk or worried about the impending frozen hell creeping its way from the North. She wants that Iron Throne because it’s her birthright. It’s hers, gosh darn it! Woe to the men and women who stand in her path. (x)

It’s likely the idea of Dany as queen would feel more applause-worthy if she stopped burning people alive and avoiding tough chats in favor of actually meeting the people of Westeros. Think about the end of season 3 finale “Mhysa,” when the dragon queen allowed herself to be enveloped by the freed slaves of Yunkai. Although the scene had a distinct and uncomfortable white savior feel, at least we saw Daenerys actually interact with the people she claims to care about so much. None of that behavior has been seen since Dany stepped foot on Westeros, only giving credence to some lords’ claim she is a “foreign” royal, despite her birth on Dragonstone. Instead of getting out and meeting her prospective subjects for a minute, Dany has spent season 7 either holed up in her castle with her advisors or riding her favorite dragon into battle. These are not the actions of someone determined to lift up the common folk. (x)

Daenerys isn't bothered by the idea of taking lives to achieve her goal[.] (x)

Dany isn't driven by hope or promise of change? Dany wins hearts because she "has to"? Dany isn't "fussed about the rights of the smallfolk"? Dany doesn't get out and meet her people? Dany isn't bothered by the idea of taking lives to achieve her goal?

I would argue these claims certainly cannot be made after reading the books (some can't even after watching the show's first 71 episodes, but it can be all over the place and .... I digress), so take a look at these passages.

A Dance with Dragons

ADWD Daenerys X

A girl might spend her life at play, but she was a woman grown, a queen, a wife, a mother to thousands. Her children had need of her. Drogon had bent before the whip, and so must she. She had to don her crown again and return to her ebon bench and the arms of her noble husband.

Hizdahr, of the tepid kisses.

No, Dany told herself. If I look back I am lost. She might live for years amongst the sunbaked rocks of Dragonstone, riding Drogon by day and gnawing at his leavings every evenfall as the great grass sea turned from gold to orange, but that was not the life she had been born to. So once again she turned her back upon the distant hill and closed her ears to the song of flight and freedom that the wind sang as it played amongst the hill’s stony ridges. The stream was trickling south by southeast, as near as she could tell. She followed it. Take me to the river, that is all I ask of you. Take me to the river, and I will do the rest.

The hours passed slowly. The stream bent this way and that, and Dany followed, beating time upon her leg with the whip, trying not to think about how far she had to go, or the pounding in her head, or her empty belly. Take one step. Take the next. Another step. Another. What else could she do?

Dragonstone was still visible above the grasslands. It looks so close. I must be leagues away by now, but it looks as if I could be back in an hour. She wanted to lie back down, close her eyes, and give herself up to sleep. No. I must keep going. The stream. Just follow the stream.

Dany took a moment to make certain of her directions. It would not do to walk the wrong way and lose her stream. “My friend,” she said aloud. “If I stay close to my friend I won’t get lost.”

“Drogon killed a little girl. Her name was ... her name ...” Dany could not recall the child’s name. That made her so sad that she would have cried if all her tears had not been burned away. “I will never have a little girl. I was the Mother of Dragons.”

I gave you good counsel. Save your spears and swords for the Seven Kingdoms, I told you. Leave Meereen to the Meereenese and go west, I said. You would not listen.

“I had to take Meereen or see my children starve along the march.” Dany could still see the trail of corpses she had left behind her crossing the Red Waste. It was not a sight she wished to see again. “I had to take Meereen to feed my people.”

You took Meereen, he told her, yet still you lingered.

“To be a queen.”

You are a queen, her bear said. In Westeros.

“It is such a long way,” she complained. “I was tired, Jorah. I was weary of war. I wanted to rest, to laugh, to plant trees and see them grow. I am only a young girl.”

ADWD Daenerys IX

She pushed herself to her feet, splashing softly. Water ran down her legs and beaded on her breasts. The sun was climbing up the sky, and her people would soon be gathering. She would rather have drifted in the fragrant pool all day, eating iced fruit off silver trays and dreaming of a house with a red door, but a queen belongs to her people, not to herself.

“How should Meereen ever come to trust the Brazen Beasts if I do not? There are good brave men beneath those masks. I put my life into their hands.” Dany smiled for him. “You fret too much, ser. I will have you beside me, what other protection do I need?”

“He would be willing to wait, the woman Meris suggested. Until we march for Westeros.”

And if I never march for Westeros?

“Have you ever seen such an auspicious day, my love?” Hizdahr zo Loraq commented when she rejoined him. [...]

“Auspicious for you, perhaps. Less so for those who must die before the sun goes down.”

A palanquin lay overturned athwart their way. One of its bearers had collapsed to the bricks, overcome by heat. “Help that man,” Dany commanded. “Get him off the street before he’s stepped on and give him food and water. He looks as though he has not eaten in a fortnight.”

“Those bearers were slaves before I came. I made them free. Yet that palanquin is no lighter.”

“True,” said Hizdahr, “but those men are paid to bear its weight now. Before you came, that man who fell would have an overseer standing over him, stripping the skin off his back with a whip. Instead he is being given aid.”

It was true. A Brazen Beast in a boar mask had offered the litter bearer a skin of water. “I suppose I must be thankful for small victories,” the queen said.

“One step, then the next, and soon we shall be running. Together we shall make a new Meereen.” The street ahead had finally cleared. “Shall we continue on?”

What could she do but nod? One step, then the next, but where is it I’m going?

Her lord husband stood and raised his hands. “Great Masters! My queen has come this day, to show her love for you, her people. By her grace and with her leave, I give you now your mortal art. Meereen! Let Queen Daenerys hear your love!”

Ten thousand throats roared out their thanks; then twenty thousand; then all. They did not call her name, which few of them could pronounce. “Mother!” they cried instead; in the old dead tongue of Ghis, the word was Mhysa! They stamped their feet and slapped their bellies and shouted, “Mhysa, Mhysa, Mhysa,” until the whole pit seemed to tremble. Dany let the sound wash over her. I am not your mother, she might have shouted, back, I am the mother of your slaves, of every boy who ever died upon these sands whilst you gorged on honeyed locusts.

“A boy,” said Dany. “He was only a boy.”

“Six-and-ten,” Hizdahr insisted. “A man grown, who freely chose to risk his life for gold and glory. No children die today in Daznak’s, as my gentle queen in her wisdom has decreed.”

Another small victory. Perhaps I cannot make my people good, she told herself, but I should at least try to make them a little less bad. Daenerys would have prohibited contests between women as well, but Barsena Blackhair protested that she had as much right to risk her life as any man. The queen had also wished to forbid the follies, comic combats where cripples, dwarfs, and crones had at one another with cleavers, torches, and hammers (the more inept the fighters, the funnier the folly, it was thought), but Hizdahr said his people would love her more if she laughed with them, and argued that without such frolics, the cripples, dwarfs, and crones would starve. So Dany had relented.

It had been the custom to sentence criminals to the pits; that practice she agreed might resume, but only for certain crimes. “Murderers and rapers may be forced to fight, and all those who persist in slaving, but not thieves or debtors.”

Beasts were still allowed, though. Dany watched an elephant make short work of a pack of six red wolves. Next a bull was set against a bear in a bloody battle that left both animals torn and dying. “The flesh is not wasted,” said Hizdahr. “The butchers use the carcasses to make a healthful stew for the hungry. Any man who presents himself at the Gates of Fate may have a bowl.”

“A good law,” Dany said. You have so few of them. “We must make certain that this tradition is continued.”

The battle was followed by the day’s first folly, a tilt between a pair of jousting dwarfs, presented by one of the Yunkish lords that Hizdahr had invited to the games. One rode a hound, the other a sow. Their wooden armor had been freshly painted, so one bore the stag of the usurper Robert Baratheon, the other the golden lion of House Lannister. That was for her sake, plainly. Their antics soon had Belwas snorting laughter, though Dany’s smile was faint and forced. When the dwarf in red tumbled from the saddle and began to chase his sow across the sands, whilst the dwarf on the dog galloped after him, whapping at his buttocks with a wooden sword, she said, “This is sweet and silly, but …”

“Be patient, my sweet,” said Hizdahr. “They are about to loose the lions.”

Daenerys gave him a quizzical look. “Lions?”

“Three of them. The dwarfs will not expect them.”

She frowned. “The dwarfs have wooden swords. Wooden armor. How do you expect them to fight lions?”

“Badly,” said Hizdahr, “though perhaps they will surprise us. More like they will shriek and run about and try to climb out of the pit. That is what makes this a folly.”

Dany was not pleased. “I forbid it.”

“Gentle queen. You do not want to disappoint your people.”

“You swore to me that the fighters would be grown men who had freely consented to risk their lives for gold and honor. These dwarfs did not consent to battle lions with wooden swords. You will stop it. Now.”

The boar buried his snout in Barsena’s belly and began rooting out her entrails. The smell was more than the queen could stand. The heat, the flies, the shouts from the crowd … I cannot breathe. She lifted her veil and let it flutter away. She took her tokar off as well. The pearls rattled softly against one another as she unwound the silk.

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

“Taking off my floppy ears.” A dozen men with boar spears came trotting out onto the sand to drive the boar away from the corpse and back to his pen. The pitmaster was with them, a long barbed whip in his hand. As he snapped it at the boar, the queen rose. “Ser Barristan, will you see me safely back to my garden?”

Hizdahr looked confused. “There is more to come. A folly, six old women, and three more matches. Belaquo and Goghor!”

“Belaquo will win,” Irri declared. “It is known.”

“It is not known,” Jhiqui said. “Belaquo will die.”

“One will die, or the other will,” said Dany. “And the one who lives will die some other day. This was a mistake.”

“Magnificence, the people of Meereen have come to celebrate our union. You heard them cheering you. Do not cast away their love.”

“It was my floppy ears they cheered, not me. Take me from this abbatoir, husband.” She could hear the boar snorting, the shouts of the spearmen, the crack of the pitmaster’s whip.

ADWD Daenerys VIII

“...They can close their fingers around our throat again whenever they wish. They have opened a slave market within sight of my walls!”

“Outside our walls, sweet queen. That was a condition of the peace, that Yunkai would be free to trade in slaves as before, unmolested.”

“In their own city. Not where I have to see it.”

So Daenerys sat silent through the meal, wrapped in a vermilion tokar and black thoughts, speaking only when spoken to, brooding on the men and women being bought and sold outside her walls, even as they feasted here within the city. Let her noble husband make the speeches and laugh at the feeble Yunkish japes. That was a king’s right and a king’s duty.

No queen has clean hands, Dany told herself. She thought of Doreah, of Quaro, of Eroeh … of a little girl she had never met, whose name had been Hazzea. Better a few should die in the pit than thousands at the gates. This is the price of peace, I pay it willingly. If I look back, I am lost.

When the gluttony was done and all the half-eaten food had been cleared away—to be given to the poor who gathered below, at the queen's insistence—tall glass flutes were filled with a spiced liqueur from Qarth as dark as amber.

“If it please you, Yurkhaz will be pleased to give us the singers, I do not doubt,” her noble husband said. “A gift to seal our peace, an ornament to our court.”

He will give us these castrati, Dany thought, and then he will march home and make some more. The world is full of boys.

Hard by the bay was the abomination, the slave market at her door. She could not see it now, with the sun set, but she knew that it was there. That just made her angrier.

“It would please me if he had turned up with these fifty thousand swords he speaks of. Instead he brings two knights and a parchment. Will a parchment shield my people from the Yunkai’i? If he had come with a fleet ...”

[...] “Dorne is too far away. To please this prince, I would need to abandon all my people. You should send him home.”

“Bring him to me. It is time he met my children.”

[...] She smiled. “My prince. It is a long way down. Are you certain that you wish to do this?”

“If it would please Your Grace.”

“Then come.”

Broken chains clanked and clattered about his legs. Quentyn Martell jumped back a foot.

A crueler woman might have laughed at him, but Dany squeezed his hand and said, “They frighten me as well. There is no shame in that. My children have grown wild and angry in the dark.”

“They are ... they are fearsome creatures.”

“They are dragons, Quentyn.” Dany stood on her toes and kissed him lightly, once on each cheek. “And so am I.”

ADWD Daenerys VII

Her foes were all about her. [...] They would not try to take Meereen by storm. They would wait behind their siege lines, flinging stones at her until famine and disease had brought her people to their knees.

Hizdahr will bring me peace. He must.

“Dorne is fifty thousand spears and swords, pledged to our queen’s service.”

“Fifty thousand?” mocked Daario. “I count three.”

“Enough,” Daenerys said. “Prince Quentyn has crossed half the world to offer me his gift, I will not have him treated with discourtesy.”

“Your Grace does not love the noble Hizdahr. This one thinks you would sooner have another for your husband.”

I must not think of Daario today. “A queen loves where she must, not where she will.”

“The day is too hot to be shut up in a palanquin,” said Dany. “Have my silver saddled. I would not go to my lord husband upon the backs of bearers.”

“Your Grace,” said Missandei, “this one is so sorry, but you cannot ride in a tokar.”

The little scribe was right, as she so often was. The tokar was not a garment meant for horseback. Dany made a face. “As you say. Not the palanquin, though. I would suffocate behind those drapes. Have them ready a sedan chair.” If she must wear her floppy ears, let all the rabbits see her.

“...This match will save our city, you will see.”

“So we pray. I want to plant my olive trees and see them fruit.” Does it matter that Hizdahr’s kisses do not please me? Peace will please me. Am I a queen or just a woman?

Galazza Galare awaited them outside the temple doors, surrounded by her sisters in white and pink and red, blue and gold and purple. There are fewer than there were. Dany looked for Ezzara and did not see her. Has the bloody flux taken even her?

ADWD Daenerys VI

“...Let us distribute the food, Your Grace.”

“On the morrow. I am here now. I want to see.”

The Astapori stumbled after them in a ghastly procession that grew longer with every yard they crossed. Some spoke tongues she did not understand. Others were beyond speaking. Many lifted their hands to Dany, or knelt as her silver went by. “Mother,” they called to her, in the dialects of Astapor, Lys, and Old Volantis, in guttural Dothraki and the liquid syllables of Qarth, even in the Common Tongue of Westeros. “Mother, please … mother, help my sister, she is sick … give me food for my little ones … please, my old father … help him … help her … help me …”

I have no more help to give, Dany thought, despairing.

It was growing harder to find drivers willing to deliver the food as well. Too many of the men they had sent into the camp had been stricken by the flux themselves. Others had been attacked on the way back to the city. Yesterday a wagon had been overturned and two of her soldiers killed, so today the queen had determined that she would bring the food herself. Every one of her advisors had argued fervently against it, from Reznak and the Shavepate to Ser Barristan, but Daenerys would not be moved. “I will not turn away from them,” she said stubbornly. “A queen must know the sufferings of her people.”

Their eyes followed her. Those who had the strength called out. “Mother … please, Mother … bless you, Mother …”

Bless me, Dany thought bitterly. Your city is gone to ash and bone, your people are dying all around you. I have no shelter for you, no medicine, no hope. Only stale bread and wormy meat, hard cheese, a little milk. Bless me, bless me.

What kind of mother has no milk to feed her children?

“Food should not be wasted on the dying, Your Worship. We do not have enough to feed the living.”

He was not wrong, she knew, but that did not make the words any easier to hear.

The queen surveyed the scene around her. “If we were to share our food equally …”

“… the Astapori would eat through their portion in days, and we would have that much less for the siege.”

Dany gazed across the camp, to the many-colored brick walls of Meereen. The air was thick with flies and cries. “The gods have sent this pestilence to humble me. So many dead … I will not have them eating corpses.”

“I cannot heal them, but I can show them that their Mother cares.”

There was an old man on the ground a few feet away, moaning and staring up at the grey belly of the clouds. She knelt beside him, wrinkling her nose at the smell, and pushed back his dirty grey hair to feel his brow. “His flesh is on fire. I need water to bathe him. Seawater will serve. Marselen, will you fetch some for me? I need oil as well, for the pyre. Who will help me burn the dead?”

By the time Aggo returned with Grey Worm and fifty of the Unsullied loping behind his horse, Dany had shamed all of them into helping her. Symon Stripeback and his men were pulling the living from the dead and stacking up the corpses, while Jhogo and Rakharo and their Dothraki helped those who could still walk toward the shore to bathe and wash their clothes. Aggo stared at them as if they had all gone mad, but Grey Worm knelt beside the queen and said, “This one would be of help.”

Before midday a dozen fires were burning. Columns of greasy black smoke rose up to stain a merciless blue sky. Dany’s riding clothes were stained and sooty as she stepped back from the pyres. “Worship,” Grey Worm said, “this one and his brothers beg your leave to bathe in the salt sea when our work here is done, that we might be purified according to the laws of our great goddess.”

The queen had not known that the eunuchs had a goddess of their own. “Who is this goddess? One of the gods of Ghis?”

Grey Worm looked troubled. “The goddess is called by many names. She is the Lady of Spears, the Bride of Battle, the Mother of Hosts, but her true name belongs only to these poor ones who have burned their manhoods upon her altar. We may not speak of her to others. This one begs your forgiveness.”

“As you wish. Yes, you may bathe if that is your desire. Thank you for your help.”

“These ones live to serve you.”

“No ruler can make a people good,” Selmy had told her. “Baelor the Blessed prayed and fasted and built the Seven as splendid a temple as any gods could wish for, yet he could not put an end to war and want.” A queen must listen to her people, Dany reminded herself. “After the wedding Hizdahr will be king. Let him reopen the fighting pits if he wishes. I want no part of it.” Let the blood be on his hands, not mine.

“Daenerys, my queen, I will gladly wash you from head to heel if that is what I must do to be your king and consort.”

“To be my king and consort, you need only bring me peace.[”]

Would she never have a friend that she could trust? What good are prophecies if you cannot make sense of them? If I marry Hizdahr before the sun comes up, will all these armies melt away like morning dew and let me rule in peace?

“I thought you would be the one to betray me. Once for blood and once for gold and once for love, the warlocks said. I thought … I never thought Brown Ben. Even my dragons seemed to trust him.” She clutched her captain by the shoulders. “Promise me that you will never turn against me. I could not bear that. Promise me.”

ADWD Daenerys V

Daenerys received them in the grandeur of her hall as tall candles burned amongst the marble pillars. When she saw that the Astapori were half-starved, she sent for food at once.

“I’m no maester, mind you, but I know you got to keep the bad apples from the good.”

“These are not apples, Ben,” said Dany. “These are men and women, sick and hungry and afraid.” My children. “I should have gone to Astapor.”

“You want me to loot Meereen and flee? No, I will not do that.[”]

Daenerys looked at the faces of the men around her. The Shavepate, scowling. Ser Barristan, with his lined face and sad blue eyes. Reznak mo Reznak, pale, sweating. Brown Ben, white-haired, grizzled, tough as old leather. Grey Worm, smooth-cheeked, stolid, expressionless. Daario should be here, and my bloodriders, she thought. If there is to be a battle, the blood of my blood should be with me. She missed Ser Jorah Mormont too. He lied to me, informed on me, but he loved me too, and he always gave good counsel.

“I cannot fight two enemies, one within and one without. If I am to hold Meereen, I must have the city behind me. The whole city. I need … I need …” She could not say it.

“Your Grace?” Ser Barristan prompted, gently.

A queen belongs not to herself but to her people.

“I need Hizdahr zo Loraq.”

ADWD Daenerys IV

Two of Dany’s favorite hostages served the food and kept the cups filled—a doe-eyed little girl called Qezza and a skinny boy named Grazhar. They were brother and sister, and cousins of the Green Grace, who greeted them with kisses when she swept in, and asked them if they had been good.

“They are very sweet, the both of them,” Dany assured her. “Qezza sings for me sometimes. She has a lovely voice. And Ser Barristan has been instructing Grazhar and the other boys in the ways of western chivalry.”

The cowards broke in on some weavers, freedwomen who had done no harm to anyone. All they did was make beautiful things. I have a tapestry they gave me hanging over my bed.[”]

“...You have not harmed any of the noble children you hold as hostage.”

“Not as yet, no.” Dany had grown fond of her young charges. Some were shy and some were bold, some sweet and some sullen, but all were innocent. [...]

Dany pushed her food about her plate. She dare not glance over to where Grazhar and Qezza stood, for fear that she might cry. [...] Hazzea was enough. What good is peace if it must be purchased with the blood of little children? “These murders are not their doing,” Dany told the Green Grace, feebly. “I am no butcher queen.”

Only then would her womb quicken once again …

… but Daenerys Targaryen had other children, tens of thousands who had hailed her as their mother when she broke their chains. She thought of Stalwart Shield, of Missandei’s brother, of the woman Rylona Rhee, who had played the harp so beautifully. No marriage would ever bring them back to life, but if a husband could help end the slaughter, then she owed it to her dead to marry.

“...Meereen cannot endure another war, Your Radiance.”

That was a good answer, and an honest one. “I have never wanted war. I defeated the Yunkai’i once and spared their city when I might have sacked it. I refused to join King Cleon when he marched against them. Even now, with Astapor besieged, I stay my hand. And Qarth … I have never done the Qartheen any harm …”

“...I would sooner perish fighting than return my children to bondage.”

“There may be another choice. The Yunkai’i can be persuaded to allow all your freedmen to remain free, I believe, if Your Worship will agree that the Yellow City may trade and train slaves unmolested from this day forth. No more blood need flow.”

“Save for the blood of those slaves that the Yunkai’i will trade and train,” Dany said, but she recognized the truth in his words even so. It may be that is the best end we can hope for.

“So,” she said to him, “it seems that I may wed again. Are you happy for me, ser?”

“If that is your command, Your Grace.”

“Hizdahr is not the husband you would have chosen for me.”

“It is not my place to choose your husband.”

“It is not,” she agreed, “but it is important to me that you should understand. My people are bleeding. Dying. A queen belongs not to herself, but to the realm. Marriage or carnage, those are my choices. A wedding or a war.”

“You are fighting shadows when you should be fighting the men who cast them,” Daario went on. “Kill them all and take their treasures, I say. Whisper the command, and your Daario will make you a pile of their heads taller than this pyramid.”

“If I knew who they were—”

“Zhak and Pahl and Merreq. Them, and all the rest. The Great Masters. Who else would it be?”

He is as bold as he is bloody. “We have no proof this is their work. Would you have me slaughter my own subjects?”

“Your own subjects would gladly slaughter you.”

He had been so long away, Dany had almost forgotten what he was. Sellswords were treacherous by nature, she reminded herself. Fickle, faithless, brutal. He will never be more than he is. He will never be the stuff of kings. “The pyramids are strong,” she explained to him. “We could take them only at great cost. The moment we attack one the others will rise against us.”

“Then winkle them out of their pyramids on some pretext. A wedding might serve. Why not? Promise your hand to Hizdahr and all the Great Masters will come to see you married. When they gather in the Temple of the Graces, turn us loose upon them.”

Dany was appalled. He is a monster. A gallant monster, but a monster still. “Do you take me for the Butcher King?”

ADWD Daenerys III

The cedars that had once grown tall along the coast grew no more, felled by the axes of the Old Empire or consumed by dragonfire when Ghis made war against Valyria. Once the trees had gone, the soil baked beneath the hot sun and blew away in thick red clouds. “It was these calamities that transformed my people into slavers,” Galazza Galare had told her, at the Temple of the Graces. And I am the calamity that will change these slavers back into people, Dany had sworn to herself.

“I want no slave. I free you.” His jeweled nose made a tempting target. This time Dany threw an apricot at him.

Xaro caught it in the air and took a bite. “Whence came this madness? Should I count myself fortunate that you did not free my own slaves when you were my guest in Qarth?”

I was a beggar queen and you were Xaro of the Thirteen, Dany thought, and all you wanted were my dragons. “Your slaves seemed well treated and content. It was not till Astapor that my eyes were opened. Do you know how Unsullied are made and trained?”

He was too eloquent for her. Dany had no answer for him, only the raw feeling in her belly. “Slavery is not the same as rain,” she insisted. “I have been rained on and I have been sold. It is not the same. No man wants to be owned.”

“My dragons have grown, my shoulders have not. They range far afield, hunting.” Hazzea, forgive me.

Dany wondered how many men thirteen galleys could hold. It had taken three to carry her and her khalasar from Qarth to Astapor, but that was before she had acquired eight thousand Unsullied, a thousand sellswords, and a vast horde of freedmen. And the dragons, what am I to do with them? “Drogon,” she whispered softly, “where are you?” For a moment she could almost see him sweeping across the sky, his black wings swallowing the stars.

"As you say, Your Grace. Still. I will be watchful."

She kissed [Barristan] on the cheek. "I know you will. Come, walk me back down to the feast."

One of her young hostages brought her morning meal, a plump shy girl named Mezzara, whose father ruled the pyramid of Merreq, and Dany gave her a happy hug and thanked her with a kiss.

“We are all dead, then. You gave us death, not freedom.” Ghael leapt to his feet and spat into her face.

Strong Belwas seized him by the shoulder and slammed him down onto the marble so hard that Dany heard Ghael’s teeth crack. The Shavepate would have done worse, but she stopped him.

“Enough,” she said, dabbing at her cheek with the end of her tokar. “No one has ever died from spittle. Take him away.”

Dany would gladly have sent the rest of the petitioners away … but she was still their queen, so she heard them out and did her best to give them justice.

Late that afternoon Admiral Groleo and Ser Barristan returned from their inspection of the galleys. Dany assembled her council to hear them. Grey Worm was there for the Unsullied, Skahaz mo Kandaq for the Brazen Beasts. In the absence of her bloodriders, a wizened jaqqa rhan called Rommo, squint-eyed and bowlegged, came to speak for her Dothraki. Her freedmen were represented by the captains of the three companies she had formed—Mollono Yos Dob of the Stalwart Shields, Symon Stripeback of the Free Brothers, Marselen of the Mother’s Men. Reznak mo Reznak hovered at the queen’s elbow, and Strong Belwas stood behind her with his huge arms crossed. Dany would not lack for counsel.

Reznak mo Reznak gave a piteous moan. “Then it is true. Your Worship means to abandon us.” He wrung his hands. “The Yunkai’i will restore the Great Masters the instant you are gone, and we who have so faithfully served your cause will be put to the sword, our sweet wives and maiden daughters raped and enslaved.”

“Not mine,” grumbled Skahaz Shavepate. “I will kill them first, with mine own hand.” He slapped his sword hilt.

Dany felt as if he had slapped her face instead. “If you fear what may follow when I leave, come with me to Westeros.”

“Those left behind in Meereen would envy them their easy deaths,” moaned Reznak. “They will make slaves of us, or throw us in the pits. All will be as it was, or worse.”

“Where is your courage?” Ser Barristan lashed out. “Her Grace freed you from your chains. It is for you to sharpen your swords and defend your own freedom when she leaves.”

“Brave words, from one who means to sail into the sunset,” Symon Stripeback snarled back. “Will you look back at our dying?”

“Your Grace—”

“Magnificence—”

“Your Worship—”

“Enough.” Dany slapped the table. “No one will be left to die. You are all my people.” Her dreams of home and love had blinded her. “I will not abandon Meereen to the fate of Astapor. It grieves me to say so, but Westeros must wait.”

“My lord, I will gladly have those ships, but I cannot give you the promise that you ask.” She took his hand. “Give me the galleys, and I swear that Qarth will have the friendship of Meereen until the stars go out. Let me trade with them, and you will have a good part of the profits.”

Xaro’s glad smile died upon his lips. “What are you saying? Are you telling me you will not go?”

“I cannot go.”

ADWD Daenerys II

“Who is that weeping?”

“Your slave Missandei.” Jhiqui had a taper in her hand.

“My servant. I have no slaves.”

“Magnificence,” murmured Reznak mo Reznak, “we cannot know that these great nobles mean to join your enemies. More like they are simply making for their estates in the hills.”

“They will not mind us keeping their gold safe, then. There is nothing to buy in the hills.”

“They are afraid for their children,” Reznak said.

Yes, Daenerys thought, and so am I. “We must keep them safe as well. I will have two children from each of them. From the other pyramids as well. A boy and a girl.”

“Hostages,” said Skahaz, happily.

“Pages and cupbearers. If the Great Masters make objection, explain to them that in Westeros it is a great honor for a child to be chosen to serve at court.”

“[...] Will you hear my friends? There are seven of them as well. [...] They have come to add their voices to mine own, and ask Your Grace to let our fighting pits reopen.”

[...] Dany had no answer for that. If this is truly what my people wish, do I have the right to deny it to them? It was their city before it was mine, and it is their own lives they wish to squander. “I will consider all you've said. Thank you for your counsel.” She rose. “We will resume on the morrow.”

Safe. The word made Dany’s eyes fill up with tears. “I want to keep you safe.” Missandei was only a child. With her, she felt as if she could be a child too. “No one ever kept me safe when I was little. Well, Ser Willem did, but then he died, and Viserys … I want to protect you but … it is so hard. To be strong. I don’t always know what I should do. I must know, though. I am all they have. I am the queen … the … the …”

“… mother,” whispered Missandei.

“Mother to dragons.” Dany shivered.

“No. Mother to us all.” Missandei hugged her tighter. “Your Grace should sleep. Dawn will be here soon, and court.”

“We’ll both sleep, and dream of sweeter days. Close your eyes.” When she did, Dany kissed her eyelids and made her giggle.

Somewhere beneath those roofs, the Sons of the Harpy were gathered, plotting ways to kill her and all those who loved her and put her children back in chains. Somewhere down there a hungry child was crying for milk. Somewhere an old woman lay dying. Somewhere a man and a maid embraced, and fumbled at each other’s clothes with eager hands. But up here there was only the sheen of moonlight on pyramids and pits, with no hint what lay beneath. Up here there was only her, alone.

She was the blood of the dragon. She could kill the Sons of the Harpy, and the sons of the sons, and the sons of the sons of the sons. But a dragon could not feed a hungry child nor help a dying woman’s pain. And who would ever dare to love a dragon?

“The freedmen work too cheaply, Magnificence,” Reznak said. “Some call themselves journeymen, or even masters, titles that belong by rights only to the craftsmen of the guilds. The masons and the bricklayers do respectfully petition Your Worship to uphold their ancient rights and customs.”

“The freedmen work cheaply because they are hungry,” Dany pointed out. “If I forbid them to carve stone or lay bricks, the chandlers, the weavers, and the goldsmiths will soon be at my gates asking that they be excluded from those trades as well.”

“Hizdahr swears that the winners shall share half of all the coin collected at the gates,” said Khrazz. “Half, he swears it, and Hizdahr is an honorable man.”

No, a cunning man. Daenerys felt trapped. “And the losers? What shall they receive?”

The guilt …” The word caught in her throat. Hazzea, she thought, and suddenly she heard herself say, “I have to see the pit,” in a voice as small as a child’s whisper. “Take me down, ser, if you would.”

What sort of mother lets her children rot in darkness?

If I look back, I am doomed, Dany told herself … but how could she not look back? I should have seen it coming. Was I so blind, or did I close my eyes willfully, so I would not have to see the price of power?

[...] On the road to Yunkai, when Daario tossed the heads of Sallor the Bald and Prendahl na Ghezn at her feet, her children made a feast of them. Dragons had no fear of men. And a dragon large enough to gorge on sheep could take a child just as easily.

Her name had been Hazzea. She was four years old. Unless her father lied. He might have lied. No one had seen the dragon but him. His proof was burned bones, but burned bones proved nothing. He might have killed the little girl himself, and burned her afterward. He would not have been the first father to dispose of an unwanted girl child, the Shavepate claimed. The Sons of the Harpy might have done it, and made it look like dragon’s work to make the city hate me. Dany wanted to believe that … but if that was so, why had Hazzea’s father waited until the audience hall was almost empty to come forward? If his purpose had been to inflame the Meereenese against her, he would have told his tale when the hall was full of ears to hear.

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

Mother of dragons, Daenerys thought. Mother of monsters. What have I unleashed upon the world? A queen I am, but my throne is made of burned bones, and it rests on quicksand. Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros? I am the blood of the dragon, she thought. If they are monsters, so am I.

ADWD Daenerys I

“Your Grace,” said Ser Barristan Selmy, the lord commander of her Queensguard, “there is no need for you to see this.”

“He died for me.”

“Grey Worm, why was this man alone? Had he no partner?” By her command, when the Unsullied walked the streets of Meereen by night they always walked in pairs.

“My queen,” replied the captain, “your servant Stalwart Shield had no duty last night. He had gone to a ... a certain place ... to drink, and have companionship.”

“A certain place? What do you mean?”

“A house of pleasure, Your Grace.”

[...] “What could a eunuch hope to find in a brothel?”

“Even those who lack a man’s parts may still have a man’s heart, Your Grace,” said Grey Worm. “This one has been told that your servant Stalwart Shield sometimes gave coin to the women of the brothels to lie with him and hold him.”

The blood of the dragon does not weep. “Stalwart Shield,” she said, dry-eyed. “That was his name?”

“If it please Your Grace.”

“It is a fine name.” The Good Masters of Astapor had not allowed their slave soldiers even names. Some of her Unsullied reclaimed their birth names after she had freed them; others chose new names for themselves. [...]

Dany said a silent prayer that somewhere one of the Harpy’s Sons was dying even now, clutching at his belly and writhing in pain. “Why did they cut open his cheeks like that?”

“Gracious queen,” said Grey Worm, “his killers had forced the genitals of a goat down the throat of your servant Stalwart Shield. This one removed them before bringing him here.”

[...] Shrugging off the lion pelt, she knelt beside the corpse and closed the dead man’s eyes, ignoring Jhiqui’s gasp. “Stalwart Shield shall not be forgotten. Have him washed and dressed for battle and bury him with cap and shield and spears.”

To rule Meereen I must win the Meereenese, however much I may despise them.

The hall had filled. Unsullied stood with their backs to the pillars, holding shields and spears, the spikes on their caps jutting upward like a row of knives. The Meereenese had gathered beneath the eastern windows. Her freedmen stood well apart from their former masters. Until they stand together, Meereen will know no peace. “Arise.” Dany settled onto her bench. The hall rose. That at least they do as one.

“What was the name of the old weaver?”

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

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

Reznak would have summoned another tokar next, but Dany insisted that he call upon a freedman. Thereafter she alternated between the former masters and the former slaves.

“Some men have brought burnt bones.”

“Men make fires. Men cook mutton. Burnt bones prove nothing. Brown Ben says there are red wolves in the hills outside the city, and jackals and wild dogs. Must we pay good silver for every lamb that goes astray between Yunkai and the Skahazadhan?”

“No, Magnificence." Reznak bowed. "Shall I send these rascals away, or will you want them scourged?”

Daenerys shifted on the bench. “No man should ever fear to come to me.” Some claims were false, she did not doubt, but more were genuine. Her dragons had grown too large to be content with rats and cats and dogs. The more they eat, the larger they will grow, Ser Barristan had warned her, and the larger they grow, the more they'll eat. Drogon especially ranged far afield and could easily devour a sheep a day. “Pay them for the value of their animals,” she told Reznak, “but henceforth claimants must present themselves at the Temple of the Graces and swear a holy oath before the gods of Ghis.”

A Storm of Swords

ASOS Daenerys VI

“I am going to take you home one day, Missandei,” Dany promised. If I had made the same promise to Jorah, would he still have sold me? “I swear it.”

“This one is content to stay with you, Your Grace. Naath will be there, always. You are good to this—to me.”

“And you to me.”

“The city bleeds. Dead men rot unburied in the streets, each pyramid is an armed camp, and the markets have neither food nor slaves for sale. And the poor children! King Cleaver’s thugs have seized every highborn boy in Astapor to make new Unsullied for the trade, though it will be years before they are trained.”

The thing that surprised Dany most was how unsurprised she was. She found herself remembering Eroeh, the Lhazarene girl she had once tried to protect, and what had happened to her. It will be the same in Meereen once I march, she thought.

“Any man who wishes to sell himself into slavery may do so. Or woman.” She raised a hand. “But they may not sell their children, nor a man his wife.”

“Aegon the Conqueror brought fire and blood to Westeros, but afterward he gave them peace, prosperity, and justice. But all I have brought to Slaver’s Bay is death and ruin. I have been more khal than queen, smashing and plundering, then moving on.”

“There is nothing to stay for,” said Brown Ben Plumm.

“Your Grace, the slavers brought their doom on themselves,�� said Daario Naharis.

“You have brought freedom as well,” Missandei pointed out.

“Freedom to starve?” asked Dany sharply. “Freedom to die? Am I a dragon, or a harpy?” Am I mad? Do I have the taint?

“A dragon,” Ser Barristan said with certainty. “Meereen is not Westeros, Your Grace.”

“But how can I rule seven kingdoms if I cannot rule a single city?” He had no answer to that. Dany turned away from them, to gaze out over the city once again. “My children need time to heal and learn. My dragons need time to grow and test their wings. And I need the same. I will not let this city go the way of Astapor. I will not let the harpy of Yunkai chain up those I’ve freed all over again.” She turned back to look at their faces. “I will not march.”

“What will you do then, Khaleesi?” asked Rakharo.

“Stay,” she said. “Rule. And be a queen.”

ASOS Daenerys V

Her host numbered more than eighty thousand after Yunkai, but fewer than a quarter of them were soldiers. The rest ... well, Ser Jorah called them mouths with feet, and soon they would be starving.

The Great Masters of Meereen had withdrawn before Dany’s advance, harvesting all they could and burning what they could not harvest. Scorched fields and poisoned wells had greeted her at every hand. Worst of all, they had nailed a slave child up on every milepost along the coast road from Yunkai, nailed them up still living with their entrails hanging out and one arm always outstretched to point the way to Meereen. Leading her van, Daario had given orders for the children to be taken down before Dany had to see them, but she had countermanded him as soon as she was told. “I will see them,” she said. “I will see every one, and count them, and look upon their faces. And I will remember.”

By the time they came to Meereen sitting on the salt coast beside her river, the count stood at one hundred and sixty-three. I will have this city, Dany pledged to herself once more.

“Strong Belwas needs liver and onions.”

“You shall have it,” said Dany. “Strong Belwas is hurt.” His stomach was red with the blood sheeting down from the meaty gash beneath his breasts.

“It is nothing. I let each man cut me once, before I kill him.” He slapped his bloody belly. “Count the cuts and you will know how many Strong Belwas has slain.”

But Dany had lost Khal Drogo to a similar wound, and she was not willing to let it go untreated. She sent Missandei to find a certain Yunkish freedman renowned for his skill in the healing arts. Belwas howled and complained, but Dany scolded him and called him a big bald baby until he let the healer stanch the wound with vinegar, sew it shut, and bind his chest with strips of linen soaked in fire wine. Only then did she lead her captains and commanders inside her pavilion for their council.

Daario Naharis gave Grey Worm a smile. “Perhaps the Unsullied should wield the axes. Boiling oil feels like no more than a warm bath to you, I have heard.”

“This is false.” Grey Worm did not return the smile. “These ones do not feel burns as men do, yet such oil blinds and kills. The Unsullied do not fear to die, though. Give these ones rams, and we will batter down these gates or die in the attempt.”

“You would die,” said Brown Ben. At Yunkai, when he took command of the Second Sons, he claimed to be the veteran of a hundred battles. “Though I will not say I fought bravely in all of them. There are old sellswords and bold sellswords, but no old bold sellswords.” She saw that it was true.

Dany sighed. “I will not throw away Unsullied lives, Grey Worm.”

“...You stopped at Astapor to buy an army, not to start a war. Save your spears and swords for the Seven Kingdoms, my queen. Leave Meereen to the Meereenese and march west for Pentos.”

“Defeated?” said Dany, bristling.

[...] Dany set great store by Ser Jorah’s counsel, but to leave Meereen untouched was more than she could stomach. She could not forget the children on their posts, the birds tearing at their entrails, their skinny arms pointing up the coast road. “Ser Jorah, you say we have no food left. If I march west, how can I feed my freedmen?”

“You can’t. I am sorry, Khaleesi. They must feed themselves or starve. Many and more will die along the march, yes. That will be hard, but there is no way to save them. We need to put this scorched earth well behind us.”

Dany had left a trail of corpses behind her when she crossed the red waste. It was a sight she never meant to see again. “No,” she said. “I will not march my people off to die.” My children. “There must be some way into this city.”

The grove of burnt olive trees in which she’d raised her pavilion stood beside the sea, between the Dothraki camp and that of the Unsullied. When the horses had been saddled, Dany and her companions set out along the shoreline, away from the city. Even so, she could feel Meereen at her back, mocking her. When she looked over one shoulder, there it stood, the afternoon sun blazing off the bronze harpy atop the Great Pyramid. Inside Meereen the slavers would soon be reclining in their fringed tokars to feast on lamb and olives, unborn puppies, honeyed dormice and other such delicacies, whilst outside her children went hungry. A sudden wild anger filled her. I will bring you down, she swore.

ASOS Daenerys IV

Dany considered. The slaver host seemed small compared to her own numbers, but the sellswords were ahorse. She’d ridden too long with Dothraki not to have a healthy respect for what mounted warriors could do to foot. The Unsullied could withstand their charge, but my freedmen will be slaughtered.

One of the first things Dany had done after the fall of Astapor was abolish the custom of giving the Unsullied new slave names every day. Most of those born free had returned to their birth names; those who still remembered them, at least. Others had called themselves after heroes or gods, and sometimes weapons, gems, and even flowers, which resulted in soldiers with some very peculiar names, to Dany’s ears. Grey Worm had remained Grey Worm. When she asked him why, he said, “It is a lucky name. The name this one was born to was accursed. That was the name he had when he was taken for a slave. But Grey Worm is the name this one drew the day Daenerys Stormborn set him free.”

“If battle is joined, let Grey Worm show wisdom as well as valor,” Dany told him. “Spare any slave who runs or throws down his weapon. The fewer slain, the more remain to join us after.”

“This one will remember.”

“I know he will. Be at my tent by midday. I want you there with my other officers when I treat with the sellsword captains.” Dany spurred her silver on to camp.

Within the perimeter the Unsullied had established, the tents were going up in orderly rows, with her own tall golden pavilion at the center. A second encampment lay close beyond her own; five times the size, sprawling and chaotic, this second camp had no ditches, no tents, no sentries, no horselines. Those who had horses or mules slept beside them, for fear they might be stolen. Goats, sheep, and half-starved dogs wandered freely amongst hordes of women, children, and old men. Dany had left Astapor in the hands of a council of former slaves led by a healer, a scholar, and a priest. Wise men all, she thought, and just. Yet even so, tens of thousands preferred to follow her to Yunkai, rather than remain behind in Astapor. I gave them the city, and most of them were too frightened to take it.

The raggle-taggle host of freedmen dwarfed her own, but they were more burden than benefit. Perhaps one in a hundred had a donkey, a camel, or an ox; most carried weapons looted from some slaver’s armory, but only one in ten was strong enough to fight, and none was trained. They ate the land bare as they passed, like locusts in sandals. Yet Dany could not bring herself to abandon them as Ser Jorah and her bloodriders urged. I told them they were free. I cannot tell them now they are not free to join me. She gazed at the smoke rising from their cookfires and swallowed a sigh. She might have the best footsoldiers in the world, but she also had the worst.

“I cannot sleep when men are dying for me, Whitebeard,” she said.

“Our own losses?”

“A dozen. If that many.”

Only then did she allow herself to smile.

“Sellsword or slave, spare all those who will pledge me their faith. If enough of the Second Sons will join us, keep the company intact.”

“Mhysa! Mhysa!”

Dany looked at Missandei. “What are they shouting?” “It is Ghiscari, the old pure tongue. It means ‘Mother.’”

Dany felt a lightness in her chest. I will never bear a living child, she remembered. Her hand trembled as she raised it. Perhaps she smiled. She must have, because the man grinned and shouted again, and others took up the cry. “Mhysa!” they called. “Mhysa! MHYSA!” They were all smiling at her, reaching for her, kneeling before her. “Maela,” some called her while others cried “Aelalla” or “Qathei” or “Tato,” but whatever the tongue it all meant the same thing. Mother. They are calling me Mother.

The chant grew, spread, swelled. It swelled so loud that it frightened her horse, and the mare backed and shook her head and lashed her silver-grey tail. It swelled until it seemed to shake the yellow walls of Yunkai. More slaves were streaming from the gates every moment, and as they came they took up the call. They were running toward her now, pushing, stumbling, wanting to touch her hand, to stroke her horse’s mane, to kiss her feet. Her poor bloodriders could not keep them all away, and even Strong Belwas grunted and growled in dismay.

Ser Jorah urged her to go, but Dany remembered a dream she had dreamed in the House of the Undying. “They will not hurt me,” she told him. “They are my children, Jorah.” She laughed, put her heels into her horse, and rode to them, the bells in her hair ringing sweet victory. She trotted, then cantered, then broke into a gallop, her braid streaming behind. The freed slaves parted before her. “Mother,” they called from a hundred throats, a thousand, ten thousand. “Mother,” they sang, their fingers brushing her legs as she flew by. “Mother, Mother, Mother!”

ASOS Daenerys III

“All,” growled Kraznys mo Nakloz, who smelled of peaches today. The slave girl repeated the word in the Common Tongue of Westeros. “Of thousands, there are eight. Is this what she means by all? There are also six centuries, who shall be part of a ninth thousand when complete. Would she have them too?”

“I would,” said Dany when the question was put to her. “The eight thousands, the six centuries ... and the ones still in training as well. The ones who have not earned the spikes.”

Dany let them argue, sipping the tart persimmon wine and trying to keep her face blank and ignorant. I will have them all, no matter the price, she told herself. The city had a hundred slave traders, but the eight before her were the greatest. When selling bed slaves, fieldhands, scribes, craftsmen, and tutors, these men were rivals, but their ancestors had allied one with the other for the purpose of making and selling the Unsullied. Brick and blood built Astapor, and brick and blood her people.

“My need is now. The Unsullied are well trained, but even so, many will fall in battle. I shall need the boys as replacements to take up the swords they drop.” She put her wine aside and leaned toward the slave girl. “Tell the Good Masters that I will want even the little ones who still have their puppies. Tell them that I will pay as much for the boy they cut yesterday as for an Unsullied in a spiked helm.”

The girl told them. The answer was still no. 

Dany frowned in annoyance. “Very well. Tell them I will pay double, so long as I get them all.” 

Two thousand would never serve for what she meant to do. I must have them all. Dany knew what she must do now, though the taste of it was so bitter that even the persimmon wine could not cleanse it from her month. She had considered long and hard and found no other way. It is my only choice. “Give me all,” she said, “and you may have a dragon.”

“When you are ... when you are done with them ... your Grace might command them to fall upon their swords.”

“And even that, they would do?” 

“Yes.” Missandei’s voice had grown soft. “Your Grace.”

Dany squeezed her hand. “You would sooner I did not ask it of them, though. Why is that? Why do you care?”

“This one does not ... I ... Your Grace ... ” 

“Tell me.” 

The girl lowered her eyes. “Three of them were my brothers once, Your Grace.”

Then I hope your brothers are as brave and clever as you.

“Magister Illyrio is not here,” she finally had to tell him, “and if he was, he could not sway me either. I need the Unsullied more than I need these ships, and I will hear no more about it.”

The anger burned the grief and fear from her, for a few hours at the least.

“Do you remember Eroeh?” she asked him. “The Lhazareen girl?”

“They were raping her, but I stopped them and took her under my protection. Only when my sun-and-stars was dead Mago took her back, used her again, and killed her. Aggo said it was her fate.”

“I remember,” Ser Jorah said.

“I was alone for a long time, Jorah. All alone but for my brother. I was such a small scared thing. Viserys should have protected me, but instead he hurt me and scared me worse. He shouldn’t have done that. He wasn’t just my brother, he was my king. Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves?”

“Some kings make themselves. Robert did.” “He was no true king,” Dany said scornfully. “He did no justice. Justice ... that’s what kings are for.”

“Unsullied! Defend us, stop them, defend your masters! Spears! Swords!”

[...] The Unsullied did not so much as look down to watch him die. Rank on rank on rank, they stood.

And did not move. The gods have heard my prayer.

“Unsullied!” Dany galloped before them, her silver-gold braid flying behind her, her bell chiming with every stride. “Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip, but harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see.” She raised the harpy’s fingers in the air ... and then she flung the scourge aside. “Freedom!” she sang out. “Dracarys! Dracarys!”

“Dracarys!” they shouted back, the sweetest word she’d ever heard. “Dracarys! Dracarys!” And all around them slavers ran and sobbed and begged and died, and the dusty air was filled with spears and fire.

ASOS Daenerys II

“Tell her that these have been standing here for a day and a night, with no food nor water. [...] Such is their courage. Tell her that.”

“I call that madness, not courage,” said Arstan Whitebeard, when the solemn little scribe was done. He tapped the end of his hardwood staff against the bricks, tap tap, as if to tell his displeasure. The old man had not wanted to sail to Astapor; nor did he favor buying this slave army. A queen should hear all sides before reaching a decision. That was why Dany had brought him with her to the Plaza of Pride, not to keep her safe.

He stopped before a thickset man who had the look of Lhazar about him and brought his whip up sharply, laying a line of blood across one copper cheek. The eunuch blinked, and stood there, bleeding. “Would you like another?” asked Kraznys.

“If it please your worship.”

It was hard to pretend not to understand. Dany laid a hand on Kraznys’s arm before he could raise the whip again. “Tell the Good Master that I see how strong his Unsullied are, and how bravely they suffer pain.”

“There are other ways to tempt men, besides the flesh,” Arstan Whitebeard objected, when she was done.

“Men, yes, but not Unsullied. Plunder interests them no more than rape. They own nothing but their weapons. We do not even permit them names.”

“No names?” Dany frowned at the little scribe. “Can that be what the Good Master said? They have no names?”

“More madness,” said Arstan, when he heard. “How can any man possibly remember a new name every day?”

“Those who cannot are culled in training, along with those who cannot run all day in full pack, scale a mountain in the black of night, walk across a bed of coals, or slay an infant.”

Dany’s mouth surely twisted at that. Did he see, or is he blind as well as cruel? She turned away quickly, trying to keep her face a mask until she heard the translation. Only then did she allow herself to say, “Whose infants do they slay?”

“To win his spiked cap, an Unsullied must go to the slave marts with a silver mark, find some wailing newborn, and kill it before its mother’s eyes. In this way, we make certain that there is no weakness left in them.”

She was feeling faint. The heat, she tried to tell herself. “You take a babe from its mother’s arms, kill it as she watches, and pay for her pain with a silver coin?”

Dany climbed into her litter frowning, and beckoned Arstan to climb in beside her. A man as old as him should not be walking in such heat.

“Make way!” Jhogo shouted as he rode before her litter. “Make way for the Mother of Dragons!” But when he uncoiled the great silver-handled whip that Dany had given him, and made to crack it in the air, she leaned out and told him nay. “Not in this place, blood of my blood,” she said, in his own tongue. “These bricks have heard too much of the sound of whips.”

“Dog,” he said happily when he saw Dany. “Good dog in Astapor, little queen. Eat?” He offered it with a greasy grin.

“That is kind of you, Belwas, but no.” Dany had eaten dog in other places, at other times, but just now all she could think of was the Unsullied and their stupid puppies.

“How many men do they have for sale?”

“None.” Was it Mormont she was angry with, or this city with its sullen heat, its stinks and sweats and crumbling bricks? “They sell eunuchs, not men. Eunuchs made of brick, like the rest of Astapor. Shall I buy eight thousand brick eunuchs with dead eyes that never move, who kill suckling babes for the sake of a spiked hat and strangle their own dogs? They don’t even have names. So don’t call them men, ser.”

“Khaleesi,” he said, taken aback by her fury, “the Unsullied are chosen as boys, and trained—”

“I have heard all I care to of their training.” Dany could feel tears welling in her eyes, sudden and unwanted. Her hand flashed up and cracked Ser Jorah hard across the face. It was either that, or cry.

Mormont touched the cheek she’d slapped. “If I have displeased my queen—”

“You have. You’ve displeased me greatly, ser. If you were my true knight, you would never have brought me to this vile sty.”

“They have been wild while you were gone, Khaleesi,” Irri told her. “Viserion clawed splinters from the door, do you see? And Drogon made to escape when the slaver men came to see them. When I grabbed his tail to hold him back, he turned and bit me.” She showed Dany the marks of his teeth on her hand.

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

“No, Khaleesi. Drogon breathed his fire, but in the empty air. The slaver men feared to come near him.”

She kissed Irri’s hand where Drogon had bitten it. “I’m sorry he hurt you. Dragons are not meant to be locked up in a small ship’s cabin.”

Dusk had begun to settle over the waters of Slaver’s Bay before Dany returned to the deck. She stood by the rail and looked out over Astapor. From here it looks almost beautiful, she thought. The stars were coming out above, and the silk lanterns below, just as Kraznys’s translator had promised. The brick pyramids were all glimmery with light. But it is dark below, in the streets and plazas and fighting pits. And it is darkest of all in the barracks, where some little boy is feeding scraps to the puppy they gave him when they took away his manhood.

Cheaper than fighting, Dany thought. Yes, it might be. If only it could be that easy for her. How pleasant it would be to sail to King’s Landing with her dragons, and pay the boy Joffrey a chest of gold to make him go away.

“Viserys would have bought as many Unsullied as he had the coin for. But you once said I was like Rhaegar ...”

“I remember, Daenerys.”

“Your Grace,” she corrected. “Prince Rhaegar led free men into battle, not slaves. Whitebeard said he dubbed his squires himself, and made many other knights as well.”

“There was no higher honor than to receive your knighthood from the Prince of Dragonstone.”

“Tell me, then—when he touched a man on the shoulder with his sword, what did he say? ‘Go forth and kill the weak’? Or ‘Go forth and defend them’? At the Trident, those brave men Viserys spoke of who died beneath our dragon banners—did they give their lives because they believed in Rhaegar’s cause, or because they had been bought and paid for?” Dany turned to Mormont, crossed her arms, and waited for an answer.

ASOS Daenerys I

The captain appeared at her elbow. “Would that this Balerion could soar as her namesake did, Your Grace,” he said in bastard Valyrian heavily flavored with accents of Pentos. “Then we should not need to row, nor tow, nor pray for wind.”

“Just so, Captain,” she answered with a smile, pleased to have won the man over. Captain Groleo was an old Pentoshi like his master, Illyrio Mopatis, and he had been nervous as a maiden about carrying three dragons on his ship. Half a hundred buckets of seawater still hung from the gunwales, in case of fires. At first Groleo had wanted the dragons caged and Dany had consented to put his fears at ease, but their misery was so palpable that she soon changed her mind and insisted they be freed. 

Even Captain Groleo was glad of that, now. There had been one small fire, easily extinguished; against that, Balerion suddenly seemed to have far fewer rats than she’d had before, when she sailed under the name Saduleon. And her crew, once as fearful as they were curious, had begun to take a queer fierce pride in “their” dragons. Every man of them, from captain to cook’s boy, loved to watch the three fly ... though none so much as Dany.

“Ser Jorah named Rhaegar the last dragon once. He had to have been a peerless warrior to be called that, surely?”

“Your Grace,” said Whitebeard, “the Prince of Dragonstone was a most puissant warrior, but ...”

“Go on,” she urged. “You may speak freely to me.”

“...A change in the wind may bring the gift of victory.” He glanced at Ser Jorah. “Or a lady’s favor knotted round an arm.”

Mormont’s face darkened. “Be careful what you say, old man.”

Arstan had seen Ser Jorah fight at Lannisport, Dany knew, in the tourney Mormont had won with a lady’s favor knotted round his arm. He had won the lady too; Lynesse of House Hightower, his second wife, highborn and beautiful ... but she had ruined him, and abandoned him, and the memory of her was bitter to him now. “Be gentle, my knight.” She put a hand on Jorah’s arm. “Arstan had no wish to give offense, I’m certain.”

“A queen must listen to all,” she reminded him. “The highborn and the low, the strong and the weak, the noble and the venal. One voice may speak you false, but in many there is always truth to be found.” She had read that in a book.

“It seems to me that a queen who trusts no one is as foolish as a queen who trusts everyone. Every man I take into my service is a risk, I understand that, but how am I to win the Seven Kingdoms without such risks? Am I to conquer Westeros with one exile knight and three Dothraki bloodriders?”

A Clash of Kings

ACOK Daenerys V

“Make way,” Aggo shouted, while Jhogo sniffed at the air suspiciously. “I smell it, Khaleesi,” he called. “The poison water.” The Dothraki distrusted the sea and all that moved upon it. Water that a horse could not drink was water they wanted no part of. They will learn, Dany resolved. I braved their sea with Khal Drogo. Now they can brave mine.

The brass merchant was still rolling on the ground. She went to him and helped him to his feet. “Were you stung?”

“No, good lady,” he said, shaking, “or else I would be dead. But it touched me, aieeee, when it fell from the box it landed on my arm.” He had soiled himself, she saw, and no wonder.

She gave him a silver for his trouble and sent him on his way before she turned back to the old man with the white beard.

ACOK Daenerys III

They must weigh twice what they had in Vaes Tolorro. Even so, it would be years before they were large enough to take to war. And they must be trained as well, or they will lay my kingdom waste. For all her Targaryen blood, Dany had not the least idea of how to train a dragon.

“The Pureborn refused you?”

“As you said they would. Come, sit, give me your counsel.”

ACOK Daenerys II

The Dothraki sacked cities and plundered kingdoms, they did not rule them. Dany had no wish to reduce King’s Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts. She had supped enough on tears. I want to make my kingdom beautiful, to fill it with fat men and pretty maids and laughing children. I want my people to smile when they see me ride by, the way Viserys said they smiled for my father.

But before she could do that she must conquer.

Beneath Dany's gentle fingers, green Rhaegal stared at the stranger with eyes of molten gold. When his mouth opened, his teeth gleamed like black needles. "When does your ship return to Westeros, Captain?"

"Not for a year or more, I fear. From here the Cinnamon Wind sails east, to make the trader's circle round the Jade Sea."

"I see," said Dany, disappointed. "I wish you fair winds and good trading, then. You have brought me a precious gift."

Dany laughed. "And will see more of them one day, I hope. Come to me in King's Landing when I am on my father's throne, and you shall have a great reward."

ACOK Daenerys I

They are not strong, she told herself, so I must be their strength. I must show no fear, no weakness, no doubt. However frightened my heart, when they look upon my face they must see only Drogo’s queen. She felt older than her fourteen years. If ever she had truly been a girl, that time was done.

Dany hungered and thirsted with the rest of them. The milk in her breasts dried up, her nipples cracked and bled, and the flesh fell away from her day by day until she was lean and hard as a stick, yet it was her dragons she feared for.

Jhogo said they must leave her or bind her to her saddle, but Dany remembered a night on the Dothraki sea, when the Lysene girl had taught her secrets so that Drogo might love her more. She gave Doreah water from her own skin, cooled her brow with a damp cloth, and held her hand until she died, shivering. Only then would she permit the khalasar to press on.

A Game of Thrones

AGOT Daenerys X

“You will be my khalasar,” she told them. “I see the faces of slaves. I free you. Take off your collars. Go if you wish, no one shall harm you. If you stay, it will be as brothers and sisters, husbands and wives.” The black eyes watched her, wary, expressionless. “I see the children, women, the wrinkled faces of the aged. I was a child yesterday. Today I am a woman. Tomorrow I will be old. To each of you I say, give me your hands and your hearts, and there will always be a place for you.”

AGOT Daenerys IX

“Eroeh?” asked Dany, remembering the frightened child she had saved outside the city of the Lamb Men.

“Mago seized her, who is Khal Jhaqo’s bloodrider now,” said Jhogo. “He mounted her high and low and gave her to his khal, and Jhaqo gave her to his other bloodriders. They were six. When they were done with her, they cut her throat.”

“It was her fate, Khaleesi,” said Aggo. 

If I look back I am lost. “It was a cruel fate,” Dany said, “yet not so cruel as Mago’s will be. I promise you that, by the old gods and the new, by the lamb god and the horse god and every god that lives. I swear it by the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the World. Before I am done with them, Mago and Ko Jhaqo will plead for the mercy they showed Eroeh.”

The Dothraki exchanged uncertain glances. “Khaleesi,” the handmaid Irri explained, as if to a child, “Jhaqo is a khal now, with twenty thousand riders at his back.”

She lifted her head. “And I am Daenerys Stormhorn, Daenerys of House Targaryen, of the blood of Aegon the Conqueror and Maegor the Cruel and old Valyria before them. I am the dragon’s daughter, and I swear to you, these men will die screaming. Now bring me to Khal Drogo.”

AGOT Daenerys VIII

“He fell from his horse,” Haggo said, staring down. His broad face was impassive, but his voice was leaden.

“You must not say that,” Dany told him. “We have ridden far enough today. We will camp here.”

“We must bathe him,” she said stubbornly. She must not allow herself to despair. “Irri, have the tub brought at once. Doreah, Eroeh, find water, cool water, he’s so hot.” He was a fire in human skin.

[...] While the bath was being prepared, Dany knelt awkwardly beside her lord husband, her belly great with their child within. She undid his braid with anxious fingers, as she had on the night he’d taken her for the first time, beneath the stars. His bells she laid aside carefully, one by one. He would want them again when he was well, she told herself.

“Help him,” Dany pleaded. “For the love you say you bear me, help him now.”

[...] “Your khal is good as dead, Princess.”

“No, he can’t die, he mustn’t, it was only a cut.” Dany took his large callused hand in her own small ones, and held it tight between them. “I will not let him die ...”

Dany hugged herself. “But why?” she cried plaintively. “Why should they kill a little baby?”

“He is Drogo’s son, and the crones say he will be the stallion who mounts the world. It was prophesied. Better to kill the child than to risk his fury when he grows to manhood.”

The child kicked inside her, as if he had heard. Dany remembered the story Viserys had told her, of what the Usurper’s dogs had done to Rhaegar’s children. His son had been a babe as well, yet they had ripped him from his mother’s breast and dashed his head against a wall. That was the way of men. “They must not hurt my son!” she cried. “I will order my khas to keep him safe, and Drogo’s bloodriders will—”

Dany did not want to go back to Vaes Dothrak and live the rest of her life among those terrible old women, yet she knew that the knight spoke the truth. Drogo had been more than her sun-and-stars; he had been the shield that kept her safe. “I will not leave him,” she said stubbornly, miserably. She took his hand again. “I will not.”

“This is your work, maegi,” Qotho said. Haggo laid his fist across Mirri’s cheek with a meaty smack that drove her to the ground. Then he kicked her where she lay.

“Stop it!” Dany screamed.

“So you have saved me once more.”

“And now you must save him,” Dany said. “Please ...”

[...] “All I can do now is ease the dark road before him, so he might ride painless to the night lands. He will be gone by morning.”

Her words were a knife through Dany’s breast. What had she ever done to make the gods so cruel? She had finally found a safe place, had finally tasted love and hope. She was finally going home. And now to lose it all ... “No,” she pleaded. “Save him, and I will free you, I swear it. You must know a way ... some magic, some ...”

She told herself she would die for him, if she must. She was the blood of the dragon, she would not be afraid. Her brother Rhaegar had died for the woman he loved.

She caught him by the shoulder, but Qotho shoved her aside. Dany fell to her knees, crossing her arms over her belly to protect the child within.

Someone threw a stone, and when Dany looked, her shoulder was torn and bloody. “No,” she wept, “no, please, stop it, it’s too high, the price is too high.” More stones came flying. She tried to crawl toward the tent, but Cohollo caught her. Fingers in her hair, he pulled her head back and she felt the cold touch of his knife at her throat. “My baby,” she screamed, and perhaps the gods heard, for as quick as that, Cohollo was dead. Aggo’s arrow took him under the arm, to pierce his lungs and heart.

AGOT Daenerys VII

The town was afire, black plumes of smoke roiling and tumbling as they rose into a hard blue sky. Beneath broken walls of dried mud, riders galloped back and forth, swinging their long whips as they herded the survivors from the smoking rubble. The women and children of Ogo’s khalasar walked with a sullen pride, even in defeat and bondage; they were slaves now, but they seemed not to fear it. It was different with the townsfolk. Dany pitied them; she remembered what terror felt like. Mothers stumbled along with blank, dead faces, pulling sobbing children by the hand. There were only a few men among them, cripples and cowards and grandfathers.

Ogo and his son had shared the high bench with her lord husband at the naming feast where Viserys had been crowned, but that was in Vaes Dothrak, beneath the Mother of Mountains, where every rider was a brother and all quarrels were put aside. It was different out in the grass. Ogo’s khalasar had been attacking the town when Khal Drogo caught him. She wondered what the Lamb Men had thought, when they first saw the dust of their horses from atop those cracked-mud walls. Perhaps a few, the younger and more foolish who still believed that the gods heard the prayers of desperate men, took it for deliverance.

Across the road, a girl no older than Dany was sobbing in a high thin voice as a rider shoved her over a pile of corpses, facedown, and thrust himself inside her. Other riders dismounted to take their turns. That was the sort of deliverance the Dothraki brought the Lamb Men.

I am the blood of the dragon, Daenerys Targaryen reminded herself as she turned her face away. She pressed her lips together and hardened her heart and rode on toward the gate.

“Most of Ogo’s riders fled,” Ser Jorah was saying. “Still, there may be as many as ten thousand captives.”

Slaves, Dany thought. Khal Drogo would drive them downriver to one of the towns on Slaver’s Bay. She wanted to cry, but she told herself that she must be strong. This is war, this is what it looks like, this is the price of the Iron Throne.

“I’ve told the khal he ought to make for Meereen,” Ser Jorah said. “They’ll pay a better price than he’d get from a slaving caravan. Illyrio writes that they had a plague last year, so the brothels are paying double for healthy young girls, and triple for boys under ten. If enough children survive the journey, the gold will buy us all the ships we need, and hire men to sail them.”

Behind them, the girl being raped made a heartrending sound, a long sobbing wail that went on and on and on. Dany’s hand clenched hard around the reins, and she turned the silver’s head. “Make them stop,” she commanded Ser Jorah.

“Khaleesi?” The knight sounded perplexed. 

“You heard my words,” she said. “Stop them.” She spoke to her khas in the harsh accents of Dothraki. “Jhogo, Quaro, you will aid Ser Jorah. I want no rape.”

The warriors exchanged a baffled look.

Jorah Mormont spurred his horse closer. “Princess,” he said, “you have a gentle heart, but you do not understand. This is how it has always been. Those men have shed blood for the khal. Now they claim their reward.”

Across the road, the girl was still crying, her high singsong tongue strange to Dany’s ears. The first man was done with her now, and a second had taken his place.

“She is a lamb girl,” Quaro said in Dothraki. “She is nothing, Khaleesi. The riders do her honor. The Lamb Men lay with sheep, it is known.”

“It is known,” her handmaid Irri echoed.

“It is known,” agreed Jhogo, astride the tall grey stallion that Drogo had given him. “If her wailing offends your ears, Khaleesi, Jhogo will bring you her tongue.” He drew his arakh.

“I will not have her harmed,” Dany said. “I claim her. Do as I command you, or Khal Drogo will know the reason why.”

“Ai, Khaleesi,” Jhogo replied, kicking his horse. Quaro and the others followed his lead, the bells in their hair chiming.

“Go with them,” she commanded Ser Jorah.

“As you command.” The knight gave her a curious look. “You are your brother’s sister, in truth.”

“Viserys?” She did not understand.

“No,” he answered. “Rhaegar.” He galloped off.

Mormont pulled the girl off the pile of corpses and wrapped her in his blood-spattered cloak. He led her across the road to Dany. “What do you want done with her?”

The girl was trembling, her eyes wide and vague. Her hair was matted with blood. “Doreah, see to her hurts. You do not have a rider’s look, perhaps she will not fear you. The rest, with me.” She urged the silver through the broken wooden gate.

It was worse inside the town. Many of the houses were afire, and the jaqqa rhan had been about their grisly work. Headless corpses filled the narrow, twisty lanes. They passed other women being raped. Each time Dany reined up, sent her khas to make an end to it, and claimed the victim as slave. One of them, a thick-bodied, flat-nosed woman of forty years, blessed Dany haltingly in the Common Tongue, but from the others she got only flat black stares. They were suspicious of her, she realized with sadness; afraid that she had saved them for some worse fate.

“You cannot claim them all, child,” Ser Jorah said, the fourth time they stopped, while the warriors of her khas herded her new slaves behind her.

“I am khaleesi, heir to the Seven Kingdoms, the blood of the dragon,” Dany reminded him. “It is not for you to tell me what I cannot do.” Across the city, a building collapsed in a great gout of fire and smoke, and she heard distant screams and the wailing of frightened children.

He started to reach out a hand to Daenerys, but as he lifted his arm Drogo grimaced in sudden pain and turned his head.

Dany could almost feel his agony. The wounds were worse than Ser Jorah had led her to believe. “Where are the healers?” she demanded. [...] “Why do they not attend the khal?”

“The khal sent the hairless men away, Khaleesi,” old Cohollo assured her.

[...] “It is not for Khal Drogo to wait,” she proclaimed. “Jhogo, seek out these eunuchs and bring them here at once.”

“The khal needs no help from women who lie with sheep,” barked Qotho. “Aggo, cut out her tongue.”

Aggo grabbed her hair and pressed a knife to her throat. Dany lifted a hand. “No. She is mine. Let her speak.”

“The Great Shepherd sent me to earth to heal his lambs, wherever I might find them.”

Qotho gave her a stinging slap. “We are no sheep, maegi.” 

“Stop it,” Dany said angrily. “She is mine. I will not have her harmed.”

“Know this, wife of the Lamb God. Harm the khal and you suffer the same.” He drew his skinning knife and showed her the blade.

“She will do no harm.” Dany felt she could trust this old, plainfaced woman with her flat nose; she had saved her from the hard hands of her rapers, after all.

AGOT Daenerys VI

She saw a beautiful feathered cloak from the Summer Isles, and took it for a gift. [...] When Doreah looked longingly at a fertility charm at a magician’s booth, Dany took that too and gave it to the handmaid, thinking that now she should find something for Irri and Jhiqui as well.

AGOT Daenerys V

Dany had not known, had not even suspected. “Then ... he should have them. He does not need to steal them. He had only to ask. He is my brother ... and my true king.”

“He is your brother,” Ser Jorah acknowledged.

“You do not understand, ser,” she said. “My mother died giving me birth, and my father and my brother Rhaegar even before that. I would never have known so much as their names if Viserys had not been there to tell me. He was the only one left. The only one. He is all I have.” ~

A sense of dread closed around her heart. “Go to him,” she commanded Ser Jorah. “Stop him. Bring him here. Tell him he can have the dragon’s eggs if that is what he wants.” The knight rose swiftly to his feet.

“Where is my sister?” Viserys shouted, his voice thick with wine. “I’ve come for her feast. How dare you presume to eat without me? No one eats before the king. Where is she? The whore can’t hide from the dragon.”

Her voice made Viserys turn his head, and he saw her for the first time. “There she is,” he said, smiling. He stalked toward her, slashing at the air as if to cut a path through a wall of enemies, though no one tried to bar his way.

“The blade ... you must not,” she begged him. “Please, Viserys. It is forbidden. Put down the sword and come share my cushions. There’s drink, food ... is it the dragon’s eggs you want? You can have them, only throw away the sword.”

Distantly, as from far away, Dany heard her handmaid Jhiqui sobbing in fear, pleading that she dared not translate, that the khal would bind her and drag her behind his horse all the way up the Mother of Mountains. She put her arm around the girl. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I shall tell him.”

AGOT Daenerys IV

Dany followed on her silver, escorted by Ser Jorah Mormont and her brother Viserys, mounted once more. After the day in the grass when she had left him to walk back to the khalasar, the Dothraki had laughingly called him Khal Rhae Mhar, the Sorefoot King. Khal Drogo had offered him a place in a cart the next day, and Viserys had accepted. In his stubborn ignorance, he had not even known he was being mocked; the carts were for eunuchs, cripples, women giving birth, the very young and the very old. That won him yet another name: Khal Rhaggat, the Cart King. Her brother had thought it was the khal’s way of apologizing for the wrong Dany had done him. She had begged Ser Jorah not to tell him the truth, lest he be shamed. The knight had replied that the king could well do with a bit of shame ... yet he had done as she bid. It had taken much pleading, and all the pillow tricks Doreah had taught her, before Dany had been able to make Drogo relent and allow Viserys to rejoin them at the head of the column.

“So many,” she said as her silver stepped slowly onward, “and from so many lands.”

Viserys was less impressed. “The trash of dead cities,” he sneered. [...] “All these savages know how to do is steal the things better men have built ... and kill.” He laughed. “They do know how to kill. Otherwise I’d have no use for them at all.”

“They are my people now,” Dany said. “You should not call them savages, brother.”

“The dragon speaks as he likes,” Viserys said ... in the Common Tongue.

“I will give my brother his gifts tonight,” she decided as Jhiqui was washing her hair. “He should look a king in the sacred city. Doreah, run and find him and invite him to sup with me.” Viserys was nicer to the Lysene girl than to her Dothraki handmaids, perhaps because Magister Illyrio had let him bed her back in Pentos. “Irri, go to the bazaar and buy fruit and meat. Anything but horseflesh.”

“Horse is best,” Irri said. “Horse makes a man strong.”

“Viserys hates horsemeat.”

[...] While her handmaids prepared the meal, Dany laid out the clothing she’d had made to her brother’s measure: a tunic and leggings of crisp white linen, leather sandals that laced up to the knee, a bronze medallion belt, a leather vest painted with fire-breathing dragons. The Dothraki would respect him more if he looked less a beggar, she hoped, and perhaps he would forgive her for shaming him that day in the grass. He was still her king, after all, and her brother. They were both blood of the dragon.

She was arranging the last of his gifts—a sandsilk cloak, green as grass, with a pale grey border that would bring out the silver in his hair—when Viserys arrived, dragging Doreah by the arm. Her eye was red where he’d hit her. “How dare you send this whore to give me commands,” he said. He shoved the handmaid roughly to the carpet.

The anger took Dany utterly by surprise. “I only wanted ... Doreah, what did you say?”

“Khaleesi, pardons, forgive me. I went to him, as you bid, and told him you commanded him to join you for supper.”

“No one commands the dragon,” Viserys snarled. “I am your king! I should have sent you back her head!”

The Lysene girl quailed, but Dany calmed her with a touch. “Don’t be afraid, he won’t hurt you. Sweet brother, please, forgive her, the girl misspoke herself, I told her to ask you to sup with me, if it pleases Your Grace.” She took him by the hand and drew him across the room. “Look. These are for you.”

Viserys frowned suspiciously. “What is all this?”

“New raiment. I had it made for you.” Dany smiled shyly.

He looked at her and sneered. “Dothraki rags. Do you presume to dress me now?”

“Please ... you’ll be cooler and more comfortable, and I thought ... maybe if you dressed like them, the Dothraki ... ” Dany did not know how to say it without waking his dragon.

“Next you’ll want to braid my hair.”

“I’d never ... ” Why was he always so cruel? She had only wanted to help. “You have no right to a braid, you have won no victories yet.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Fury shone from his lilac eyes, yet he dared not strike her, not with her handmaids watching and the warriors of her khas outside. Viserys picked up the cloak and sniffed at it. “This stinks of manure. Perhaps I shall use it as a horse blanket.”

“I had Doreah sew it specially for you,” she told him, wounded. “These are garments fit for a khal.” “I am the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, not some grass-stained savage with bells in his hair,” Viserys spat back at her. He grabbed her arm. “You forget yourself, slut. Do you think that big belly will protect you if you wake the dragon?”

His fingers dug into her arm painfully and for an instant Dany felt like a child again, quailing in the face of his rage. She reached out with her other hand and grabbed the first thing she touched, the belt she’d hoped to give him, a heavy chain of ornate bronze medallions. She swung it with all her strength.

It caught him full in the face. Viserys let go of her. Blood ran down his cheek where the edge of one of the medallions had sliced it open. “You are the one who forgets himself,” Dany said to him. “Didn’t you learn anything that day in the grass? Leave me now, before I summon my khas to drag you out. And pray that Khal Drogo does not hear of this, or he will cut open your belly and feed you your own entrails.”

Viserys scrambled back to his feet. “When I come into my kingdom, you will rue this day, slut.” He walked off, holding his torn face, leaving her gifts behind him.

Drops of his blood had spattered the beautiful sandsilk cloak. Dany clutched the soft cloth to her cheek and sat cross-legged on her sleeping mats.

“Your supper is ready, Khaleesi,” Jhiqui announced.

“I’m not hungry,” Dany said sadly. She was suddenly very tired.

#daenerys targaryen #a dance with dragons #a storm of swords #a clash of kings #a game of thrones #dany passages

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NOVEMBER’s Chain of Gold Flash Fiction by Cassandra Clare

A Lightwood Christmas Carol, Part 1

LONDON, 1889

Will Herondale was full of Christmas spirit, and Gideon Lightwood found it very annoying.

No wonder some couldn’t bear it, and left for a mundane life. Like Will Herondale’s father Edmund, in fact.

But when Will insisted on taking them all to see the window displays at Selfridge’s, he could not help but worry that perhaps Will had a fundamentally unserious mind after all.

“Oxford Street? Days before Christmas? Are you mad?”

“It will be a lark!” Will said, with the slight lilt into his Welsh accent that meant he was a little too excited for his own good. “I’ll take James, you take Thomas, we��ll have a stroll. Have a drink at the Devil on the way back, what?” He clapped Gideon on the back.

“He isn’t going to get knocked around,” said Will scornfully. “He’ll be fine.”

“Besides,” said Gideon, “we’ll get looks. Mundane fathers don’t usually walk their babies in prams, you know.”

“Fresh London air,” said Gideon dryly, “is thick as molasses and the color of pea soup.” But he acquiesced.

Sighing, he took his son to fetch their coats for their bracing Christmas walk.

Only once they had stopped to purchase some hot cider from a man hawking it down a side street did Will say, “I heard about Tatiana’s son Jesse. Dreadful business. Have you spoken to her?”

Gideon shook his head. “I haven’t spoken to Tatiana in nearly ten years, or been back to the house.”

Will made a sympathetic noise.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” said Gabriel.

“What?” Will said.

“A coincidence,” said Gabriel. “That both her and I have children who are—sickly.”