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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

Note

Fic were both JZX and Jiang Yanli are trans? I imagine the engagement would get complicated.

The More Things Change - ao3

“My lady,” the midwife said. “Congratulations. You have a daughter.”

Madame Jin shook her head. “I need a son,” she said.

“My lady –”

“I’m not doing that again,” Madame Jin said, her voice getting stronger. “I need a son.”

“But –”

She looked at her loyal maid, who inclined her head.

A knife flashed.

“Congratulations, my lady,” her maid said, pushing aside the midwife’s body with her foot. “You have a son.”

Madame Jin smiled.

“I’m glad you survived the birth of your child,” Madame Yu said to her old childhood friend, wondering why she’d been invited over to visit Lanling City quite so quickly – it hadn’t even been a month. “Were you thinking –”

“I have a son,” her friend said.

“Congratulations.”

“You don’t understand,” her friend said. “There’s a problem.”

“A-Li,” Jiang Yanli’s mother said in a strange tone. “Do you like wearing dresses?”

“Uh-huh,” Jiang Yanli said, trying to see if she could stick her fist into her mouth. She’d always worn frocks, the way all children her age did, but at some point soon her mother had been warning her that she’d need to switch over to wearing proper robes for boys. Jiang Yanli had burst into tears, saying she didn’t want to be a boy at all – that she didn’t want to leave her mother’s side, that she didn’t want to join the world of men, she didn’t, she didn’t.

“And you really don’t want to go be a boy? Really, you’re sure?”

Jiang Yanli nodded.

“What if I said you didn’t have to be? You could be a girl, just the way you like.”

“Really?”

“Mm. But you’d have to be a girl forever.”

“Okay,” Jiang Yanli said happily. “I wanna be a girl forever.”

“Good,” her mother said, and picked her up. “Just keep saying that.”

“What do you think we are,” Jiang Fengmian asked his wife blankly. “Qinghe Nie?”

His wife glared daggers at him.

“Attempt the impossible,” she said stiffly. “A-Li has been claiming to be a girl consistently for a year. Would you deny her the chance to follow her dreams?”

Well, when she put it that way…

Jiang Fengmian hesitated.

“It does create a problem,” his wife said, and he looked at her. She smiled faintly and leaned forward, showing her curves to their best advantage. “If she’s a girl, she’ll marry out, won’t she? We need a boy.”

Jiang Fengmian swallowed. A boy sounded – nice, he thought vaguely, eyes caught on what he was being offered. A little boy, lively and bright, with a happy smile always on his face…yes, that sounded rather nice.

Wei Changze’s letter upstairs said that his wife had announced that they had conceived, and that she had divined that it would be a son – it was frightfully early to make such predictions, less than a month in, but apparently disciples of the immortal mountain were able to determine such things early. A boy like that, who could be friends with their boy, a reason for them to come to visit and maybe even to stay…

Yes, he thought. That sounded rather good.

“All right,” he said. “A-Li can be a girl, I guess.”

Madame Yu and Madame Jin let news of the engagement seep out as rumor for months before telling their husbands. When they did, they took different approaches: Madame Jin pointed out the strategic benefits of an alliance with Yunmeng Jiang and the unlikelihood of Jin Guangshan finding a match for their son that would give him so much more influence in the cultivation world, which had made her husband stop his grumbling and look upon the match with a favorable eye.

Madame Yu stared at her husband, for whom she had just born a son three weeks premature and very nearly died in the process, and said, “What’s your problem?”

“A-Li can’t marry the Jin sect heir! She’s not –” He waved his hands. “The possibility of children –”

“I would have thought that would be a selling point,” Madame Yu said, and he blinked at her. “He’s Guangshan’s son. There will be children enough.”

After some further arguing, Jiang Fengmian begrudgingly backed down.

Madame Yu smiled to herself, and thought of grandchildren.

Everyone said that Jin Zixuan was a spoiled brat and incredibly lucky, but he didn’t think he was. Sure, he was rich and legitimate; his father valued him, while his mother loved him and would defend him against any challengers to his position as heir, but privately…

“Why do I have to work so hard?” Jin Zixuan asked, panting. “I’m already cultivating, and my teachers say I’m not bad with the sword –”

“Not bad isn’t good enough,” his mother said sharply. “You have to keep up with all the rest of them, and that means getting ahead now.”

“The rest of who?” he asked. “Do you mean…”

He hesitated, not knowing if he was also included in his mother’s taboo against mentioning the results of his father’s philandering.

“All of the cultivation world’s young gentlemen,” she said, to his surprise. “You have to keep up with them. No, you need to exceed them. You must!”

“But – why?”

“I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“Mother,” Jiang Yanli said. She was clutching a book in her hands. “Mother, can we talk?”

Her mother frowned at her, looking disapproving – and then she saw the book.

Jiang Yanli thought she would yell at her, but she didn’t; her mother only gestured for her to come into her room, ordering her maids to close the doors and windows.

“Mother,” Jiang Yanli said. “Mother, the book –”

“How did you get a spring book?” her mother asked. She looked tired. “Surely you’re still too young?”

Jiang Yanli bowed her head.

It was true, she was too young. And yet…

“Mother, the pictures in the book…”

“I know.” Her mother sighed. “All right. Let me explain.”

Jin Zixuan stared at his mother. He felt sick.

“But,” he said, and swallowed. “But what about…?”

“I’ve handled it,” she said harshly. “But that is why you must not allow your father to take you to a brothel. Is that understood?”

“Who do you think is the best girl? Zixuan-xiong?”

“Oh, don’t ask him! He has a fiancée, so his answer will be her!”

“A fiancée? Really? What sect is she from? She must be extremely talented!”

“Forget it,” Jin Zixuan said.

“What do you mean by that?” Wei Wuxian exclaimed, and suddenly he was getting into his face. “Say that again if you dare!”

Jin Zixuan opened his mouth, hating him – hating the whole situation, being stuck not making any decisions for himself, his whole life mapped out for him by others – but then hesitated.

Jiang Yanli is the only one fit for you, his mother said. Do you understand? The only one.

“I haven’t met her since I was five,” he said instead of what he wanted, rolling his eyes. “So how could I dare to boast about her in your presence? You all want to know about her, ask Jiang-gongzi.”

Wei Wuxian blinked at him, the wind suddenly taken out of his sails.

Jin Zixuan escaped.

He felt like shit, thought. She was his fiancée, and he didn’t know anything about her – he didn’t want to hear about her, think about her. And yet…

The only one.

He went back to his room and wrote her a letter. It was a mess, the worst thing he’d ever written, nothing at all like the polite and careful phrasing, elegant and beautiful, that he’d been trying to put together, something worthy of his name.

He sent it before he could think better of it.

Jiang Yanli held the letter to her chest and smiled.

They’d exchanged a few dozen letters. Jin Zixuan knew that his intended was smart and witty, empathetic and kind, observant and well-meaning, but he didn’t know that she was beautiful until after they escaped from the indoctrination camp and the cave with the Xuanwu of Slaughter.

He’d just accompanied Jiang Cheng for the entire seven days it took to get to the Lotus Pier, collapsing right alongside him, and while Jiang Cheng had – somehow – gotten back on his feet and immediately led his father and mother out the door to go rescue Wei Wuxian, he’d stayed down on the floor until someone knelt down in front of him and smiled.

“Can I get you something to eat, Jin-gongzi?” Jiang Yanli asked.

“Uh,” Jin Zixuan said, and turned bright red. He could sure think of some things he’d like to eat – living as his father’s son had certainly given him an education (however theoretical) about that.

“Food,” Jiang Yanli clarified, giggling into her sleeve. “Let me get you some food.”

This was probably a bad idea, Jiang Yanli thought, looking down at the head tucked against her chest. I probably should’ve just stuck to food. What if he gets with child? What will we do then?

She couldn’t quite bring herself to regret it, though.

“A-Xuan,” she whispered, and Jin Ziuxan stirred a little. “Can we do it again?”

“You’re insatiable.”

That wasn’t a refusal.

“A-Li!” Jin Zixuan shouted, rushing forward. “A-Li, A-Li…!”

She collapsed into his arms.

He looked at the retainers from Meishan Yu, stubborn but pale. “It’s all right,” he said. “She’s my fiancée. I can take care of her.”

“The Jin sect walks in the center path,” one of the retainers said. “Never quite committing to the Sunshot Campaign. How do we know this isn’t a trick to get into the Wen sect’s good books?”

Jin Zixuan bit his lip. He’d pushed his father time and time again, and even that had only gotten them to participate half-heartedly in the fight against the Wen sect. What could he say? What worth was his word?

“It’s all right,” Jiang Yanli said. “I trust him.”

“You could do so much better, you know,” Wei Wuxian said. “It’s not too late!”

Jiang Yanli smiled down at her wedding outfit, but thinking instead of the panicked expression on Jin Zixuan’s face a week before when he’d unexpectedly thrown up in the morning when he was supposed to be preparing for the Phoenix Mountain hunt.

“Oh, it’s too late,” Jiang Cheng grumbled. “On that note, you pick the name.”

“The name…?”

“For our upcoming nephew.”

“Shijie! You didn’t!”

Jiang Yanli’s grin widened.

“Wei Wuxian has committed a crime in attacking our camp and taking the Wen remnants,” Jin Zixuan’s father announced. “We should –”

“Let it go, Father.”

“…what?!”

“I’m getting married, and he’s A-Li’s shidi,” Jin Zixuan reminded his father. “It would be inauspicious to start a marriage by breaking such a relationship.”

His father looked like he was planning on ignoring that, so Jin Zixuan used his trump card.

“We can’t afford anything inauspicious right now,” he said. “Not when there’s a child on the way.”

His mother dropped her cup.

“I have to go,” Jin Zixuan said. “You don’t understand. I have to.”

Jiang Yanli rubbed his hair. “You’re supposed to be in seclusion,” she reminded him. “As am I.”

“I’ve been throwing up every morning for two months, A-Li,” Jin Zixuan pleaded. “I can order them to clear the kitchen. No one would know we were there!”

Jiang Yanli laughed a little. “The craving’s that bad, huh?”

“Yes!”

“Oh, all right. We’ll give it a shot…”

It would have worked, too, if Jin Guangyao hadn’t noticed that too many people were in the wrong place and taken it upon himself to investigate.

“…Jiang-guniang?” He stared at her flat waist, then turned his eyes slowly towards the roundness at Jin Zixuan’s. “Jin-gongzi…?!”

“It’s all right, it’s A-Yao,” Jin Zixuan said to Jiang Yanli. “He won’t tell anyone. Right?”

Jin Guangyao shook his head mutely.

“Seclusion,” he muttered. “No wonder…everyone said it was bad timing that you went into seclusion right before Mistress Jiang announced her pregnancy. But it wasn’t, was it..?” He shook his head. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell.”

“We’re in your debt,” Jin Zixuan said, and thought Jin Guangyao’s eyes upon him were softer than they’d ever been before. “You’ll be a good uncle.”

Jin Guangyao smiled. “Perhaps,” he allowed. “One question, if I may. Who’s the father?”

Jiang Yanli wrapped an arm around Jin Zixuan’s shoulders and beamed.

Jin Guangyao’s jaw dropped again.

“Your son needs you,” Jiang Yanli said to Madame Jin. “Go.”

“Jin Ling,” Madame Jin said, looking down at the baby in her arms. A son, her grandson…a miracle. “Well. You’re – not what I expected.”

If her husband ever found out…

Well.

She’d just have to make sure he wouldn’t, now, wouldn’t she?

#mdzs #jin zixuan #jiang yanli #madame jin #yu ziyuan #my fic #my fics #the more things change #misaligned

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imjeralee · 3 years

Note

Not the same anon but I really liked your adhd hcs! Could you the same but with Diluc, Kaeya and Xiao please? (could you also add the fact s/o absolutely can't focus for shit on anything more than 5s before zoning out and they tend to be overstimulated very easily by their environment lol)

hi anon!! thank you so much! I’m glad you enjoyed it :) Not a problem, I guess this can be a part 2 ehe. I hope you like this one too. Please see below -

Diluc

You’re actually one of the best workers he has in Dawn Winery, because you’re efficient and smart and bustling around like ♪~ ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ

But you do tend to zone out a lot and sometimes you end up working so late into night and you don’t realise it but you had forgotten to eat dinner so you go to the kitchen and it’s like 3am and Diluc is there because he works late too and he’s also just finally getting the chance to eat so you are always having food together whilst everyone else is asleep :3

At work though, if you had forgotten to do something such as paying the bills, no worries, Diluc has a backup plan - the maids usually help with this

You usually ramble away to Diluc about anything you think of, even when he’s working at his desk. He’ll just be sitting silently and occasionally throwing you glances every now and then as you pace the study up and down and gesture with your hands. You know he’s listening.

You may be messy, but the maids help clean up after you

If you can’t focus, Diluc will help organise your day because he is organised himself and has lots of deadlines and also he has trustworthy employees like Adelinde and Connor who can help come up with a schedule for you on a daily basis but Diluc keeps you close by his side which also means you most likely do a lot of things together and you work/stay very closely with him

In order to help you stay focused and on task, he wants you to accomplish one thing at a time and often Diluc will do this with you personally

If he was in the middle of doing something else, he will pause to head over to assist you. If he’s not able to, he’ll get Connor or Adelinde to help

When you’re overstimulated because there’s too many people visiting the Winery or feeling really uncomfortable in general and your thoughts are darting all over the place, Diluc will take your hand and lead you away and to your special, quiet place where you can just focus on him and look at his face which helps you gradually relax and calm down

You might zone out a bit when he starts talking but then you notice the intricate details on the buttons of his shirt and the buckle on his belt and you’re like ‘cool’…. And start pressing your fingers over them and he’s like “…….”

He still loff you a lot though

Kaeya

Somehow everything you lose always end up in his possession??? Like you might go up to him and go ‘Kaeya! I lost my sword! I don’t know what happened to it! Its just disappeared!!” And he will just whip it out from behind his back and be like “You mean.... this sword?” And you’ll be like “YESSSS gimme.”

“Nuh-uh, not yet.”

“Whaaaat?”

“You have to give me a kiss first.”

“Okay.”

It’s actually pretty cool and reassuring because you have no idea how he does it

And this is the kind of relationship you have with him so you’re never bored around him because of how unpredictable he is

You tend to zone out a lot so he likes making up little puzzles and brain teasers for you whenever you’re with him and keeping you guessing all the time

If you ask a question he’ll answer your question with a question. Can be either infuriating or very stimulating. Hmm.

Also enjoys telling you ghost stories

I suspect you and Kaeya may actually be a pretty messy duo because you’re both busy with knightly duties and shit and your house will be utter chaos. Kaeya has arranged for a knight to come around twice a week to clean up tho

He loves to act as your own personal assistant and remind you of things so you don’t forget, usually by coming up behind you and leaning down to whisper in your ear

If you zone out again, he’ll feed you some candy or hold your hand so you can play with his long fingers and the studs on his gloves or he’ll make little ice crystals with unique patterns and make them float around in the air for you

He’ll also allow you to play with his ponytail

He’s quiet on his own so he’ll be a good listener

When you are experiencing sensory overload, Kaeya will usually sort it out for you one way or another. You’re in good hands. Then you will go and take a nap together.

Xiao

Xiao is your mentor. He speaks so fluently and to the point and also expects you to be clear and concise when dealing with him and so unceremoniously end up helping you organise your own thoughts

Otherwise, you might zone out often and very easily because there’s too many things going on in Wangshu Inn and it’s too much to handle but then the smell of almond tofu being cooked in the kitchen helps kick you back to reality and you’ll realise Xiao was standing there by your side the entire time

Ok ok so we know from Ganyu that Xiao is punctual and hates tardiness so he’s good at reminding you about appointments/deadline if needed.

I mean he will drill this into your brain with an iron fist. Defy him if you dare

It also means he will inevitably come up with some practises and teach you how to be mindful, how to increase your awareness and also various breathing exercises

Aside from that, he will notice you lose things a lot esp when he finds random stuff littering the Wangshu Inn ranging from cheese and vials of whopperflower nectar so he will keep an eye on you from now on.

Or if he’s not around, he will ask Verr Goldet to take note of what you lost so she can easily and quickly replace it thanks to Wangshu Inn’s connections

Xiao observes what you do on a regular basis from the shadows and then returns to the inn and also ask Verr Goldet to check up on you every now and then and remind you when it’s time to eat because he noticed you often forget to eat

One day you might return to your room and discover that he’s actually left some food for you and there this note on it with the word “EAT” scribbled on it

Your impulsiveness and the hectic and chaos that surrounds you works well with him because it’s not like he has a schedule either, I mean he often turns up in your room at 4am after fighting so many demons after 3 days straight and he’s in agony from all that bad karma but there’s you and you’re awake because obv you forgot to do something and went back to it hours later but now that he’s here and in your presence and you want to talk to him about your day and he’ll be listening to everything

And listening to your voice and the way you speak is actually really soothing/comforting to him and even makes his pain goes away

Then you’ll remember what you were doing and rush off and he’ll be back up and running and go off to destroy more demons so the world can sleep better at night

or if he’s free, you drag him outside to go on an adventure and explore the area around the inn and beat up some hilichurls

If you have some trivial task to do and need his help, he’ll just offer his assistance at no cost, quite simple as that

During his free time, he’ll try to find out more about stim toys to help you.

Xiao will learn what triggers your overstimulation and purposefully help you avoid it or get rid of the problem before it actually happens.

#xiao #diluc #kaeya #genshin impact #genshin impact imagines #genshin impact headcanons #Xiao x reader #Xiao x you #Kaeya x you #Kaeya x reader #Diluc x reader #Diluc x you #genshin headcanons #genshin imagines #xiao headcanons #diluc headcanons #kaeya headcanons

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solalunar-eclipse · 3 years

Text

A Gift To Remember

Summary: Shadow receives a gift for his birthday that causes a series of very interesting (and often cute) events.

Word count: about 7500 words

Author’s Note: I didn’t realize today was Shadow’s birthday! At the moment I’m more than a little confused because the release dates for SA2 say everything from the 18th to the 23rd, but this seems to be the one, so here this is!

Also, to that one anon whose question about this fic I never quite managed to answer- sorry about that and I do hope you’re still here to read this!

...

The main room of Team Dark’s home was, on a normal day, at least somewhat clean- which was in and of itself surprising, considering the fact that three teenagers lived there. (It was, of course, slightly less surprising when it was noted that one of these teenagers was a giant robot, one was already a businesswoman, and one had grown up in an incredibly clean environment.)

At the moment, however, said room was currently rather less clean, instead covered in various colorful signs, streamers, balloons, and other such decorations. After all, today was a very special day.

When Shadow and Rouge had discovered they shared a birthday (or creation day for Shadow, technically), they both became infinitely more determined to celebrate it for the other’s sake. This had actually, interestingly enough, also ended up making them enjoy their own festivities more than they had in quite some time.

Omega, meanwhile, had officially decided that this was his favorite day of the year.

Over the past few days, Rouge had already received a few presents from various people she knew in the line of clothes, makeup, or jewelry- but as much as she loved gems, her favorites so far were definitely the ones Omega and Shadow had gotten for her: a laser cutter that could slice through anything and a pair of (stylish) infrared goggles, respectively.

Shadow had just opened his present from Omega, which happened to be a sword that looked very cool...but was also longer than his actual body. This wasn’t actually as big of a problem for him as might be expected, as he’d gotten used to handling weapons several times his size during the alien invasion a little while back.

He had, however, been told rather quickly by Rouge to put it away ‘before you slice the wall in half, this place does cost money, you know!’.

Next, Rouge placed her present in his hands, but at first all Shadow could do was just stare at it. This was likely because the gift wasn’t actually wrapped, but instead consisted of a box made of wood slats and filled, oddly enough, with paper shavings. There were quite a few ribbons on it, though, in an attempt to make up for the lack of other decorations.

“I couldn’t wrap it, or else the present wouldn’t have worked.” she explained, sitting back down to watch him open it.

After prying off the top and shifting aside some of the paper pieces, the hedgehog froze.

Inside, there sat a single white chao egg.

Carefully lifting the egg out of the box, Shadow held it gingerly, as though he were afraid it might try to bite him if he wasn’t gentle enough.

“Rouge…” he began nervously. “Don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate this, but...are you sure I’m the best person to be taking care of a chao?”

“Of course, hon!” she said. “You’ve taken care of them before, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but…” Shadow protested, “...are you sure I’ll be able to do as well at home? The garden is their natural habitat…”

Omega folded his arms. “YOU ARE THE ULTIMATE LIFEFORM. OF COURSE YOU CAN RAISE A CHAO.”

“That’s right!” Rouge added. “The chao are always happy when you take care of them- this time isn’t going to be any different.”

“…I suppose so.” Shadow conceded, taking a deep breath. He began to rock the egg slowly from side to side. “Here we go-”

A crack appeared across the pristine white surface. The split spread rapidly while Shadow sat and watched, making sure not to move the egg about much. Chao had to hatch their eggs on their own- it was the way they first began to strengthen themselves.

Rouge laughed. “See? You know exactly what you’re doing!”

Shadow studiously ignored her and continued to focus on the egg. Then, suddenly, a chirp came from inside and the whole top half came flying off.

The hybrid looked at his newborn chao...and his heart (though he’d never admit it) immediately melted. Soft, big eyes gazed up at him, an overjoyed smile on the creature’s face. It cooed happily upon seeing him give a small smile back, and he reached out and began to gently pat its head.

The chao broke into an even wider smile as its eyes closed blissfully, the little sphere above its head popping into a heart. Shadow continued to pet it, offering gentle words of praise, and might have continued like that for the next ten minutes had a camera noise from Omega not made him look up in alarm.

“ADDING IMAGE TO FILE: SHADOW BEING SOFT.” he declared, while Rouge looked on with a giant grin.

“You will do nothing of the sort-” Shadow growled, jumping to his feet, before a soft whimper from his chao stopped him. Its eyes were watery, wide and distressed, and the hybrid immediately scooped it up in his arms, holding it close. It relaxed quickly, snuggling into his chest fluff, and he shot Omega one last semi-serious glower before turning his attention back to the newborn.

Omega promptly took another picture.

…

Later that day, at the party that all of their friends had thrown for them, the chao and Shadow were nearly inseparable. It tended to rest in his lap when he was sitting or rode in between his ears whenever he stood up to get something. Eventually, though, the excitement of a new environment overwhelmed its initial nervousness, which unfortunately led to Shadow returning from the dining room with his hands full of plates of food to discover his chao crawling along the precarious edge of a bookshelf.

Suddenly, the chao’s footing slipped, and Shadow froze, unable to move or do anything- but then Sonic of all people noticed and was already there, leaping up and catching the chao before resting it snugly in his arms. “Looks like someone’s already progressed to the giving-their-owner-a-heart-attack stage, hm?” he asked, smirking at the little creature.

“Thank you.” Shadow said as his chao was returned to him, trying very hard to ignore the way his hands and Sonic’s brushed in the process.

(He’d been nursing a bit of a crush on the hero for a while now, but had decided to ignore it until it wore off. Sonic had admirers from all across the globe vying for his attention- it was absurd to think that anything could happen between them.)

…

Over the coming weeks, all three members of Team Dark made sure to rework their schedules so that someone was always home to watch over the chao- no more climbing on bookcases for the little one now. Shadow did most of the caretaking, feeding, training, cleaning, and providing Chaos Drives (mostly green) to the chao. Rouge did, however, occasionally claim she could ‘handle the extra work’ to give him some spare time and Omega even took it upon himself to watch it every so often.

Sometimes, Shadow and his chao would even cook together in the kitchen (a hobby he’d discovered he enjoyed after finding out that Rouge tended to eat takeout all the time- “You can’t live off that day in and day out- you’re not me, Rouge!”). The sight of a tiny pale blue creature determinedly lifting a bag of flour and flying it across the room was awfully cute- especially after Shadow bought it a tiny apron in what he unconvincingly claimed was an accidental purchase.

Shadow never made accidental purchases.

As much as the hybrid took care of it, though, the chao also seemed to be helping him. He smiled more, glowered less, and generally seemed more tolerant of mistakes than he had been in the past. Nowadays, errors that would once have caused him to go off on a rant or huff about were now met with a calmer ‘it’s okay’ or an offer for help fixing it.

He often laid a hand on it in his sleep or curled around it protectively, and could easily be seen patting its head, carrying it around, or even- when he thought he was alone- nuzzling it gently. The amount of time and care he put into making sure that his chao was happy would have been astonishing to anyone who hadn’t already seen how much he cared about his friends.

It was no surprise then that, before long, Rouge and Omega woke up one morning to find the chao inside a cocoon (and also a very stressed-out Shadow).

The hedgehog promptly called in sick for the entire week- an incredible occurrence for him. He’d originally sworn that since he couldn’t get ill, he’d give his sick days to others when they needed it, but now that was all out the window. He wanted nothing more than to stay home and essentially sit and stare at the cocoon until it hatched.

While the two other members of Team Dark managed to convince him to eat, sleep, and do chores on regular intervals, whenever Shadow had a spare moment he’d stay in his room, watching and waiting. Their friends got so worried that Rouge and Omega had used everything in their power to coax him out of the house twice over those five days, but he refused to do any more. Even then his outings had to come with the promise that they’d both stay home, check it every five minutes, and call him the absolute moment something happened.

On the sixth day of waiting, the cocoon began to hatch while Shadow was attempting to discreetly read out loud to the chao from one of his favorite books. The moment he saw the split, he dropped the novel, jumped up, and shouted louder than he had in months- “Rouge! Omega! It’s HAPPENING!”

He hovered so closely around the cocoon that Omega had to physically pull him back as Rouge reminded him to give the chao more space. Within moments, the split had widened enough for a single black paw to poke out, feeling around carefully for some sort of purchase to pull itself the rest of the way outside. Soon enough, it had succeeded, earning- impressively enough- widened eyes from Omega and a gasp from both Shadow and Rouge.

Frowning light blue eyes were set in an equally grumpy (albeit adorable) face, with two little black ears and three tiny quills on the chao’s head. The ears and quills both had red stripes, as did the arms, legs, and even its tail. A red crescent shape sat on its chest, and two tiny purple bat wings flapped slowly behind it.

In short, it looked a lot like a tiny Shadow.

The hedgehog in question reached out carefully and began to pet his chao, offering some quiet words of praise, but before long it flew up and settled in its favorite spot in between his ears. When Shadow turned around to face his friends, they were met with the sight of a little glowering creature settled on top of his head…which really did look far too similar to the hybrid himself when he was irritated.

Rouge covered a smile with both of her hands. “Shadow...hon…”

He frowned at her, only serving to make the resemblance more obvious. “What?”

“It looks exactly like you!”

“Not really- it has blue eyes and...bat wings…” He looked up at her suddenly. “Rouge...how much time have you been spending with Spark again?”

“Oh, just a little- wait, Spark?” she said quickly, redirecting his attention.

Shadow flushed a bright green at that. “I might’ve already picked out a name...does it sound alright?” he asked, studiously looking anywhere but at his friends.

The chao chirped at the name and snuggled a little further into the fur on his head, seemingly pleased with the title.

He began to smile at that. “You like that name, do you?” he asked teasingly.

“It sure looks like it! I think it’s a lovely name, hon.” Rouge added.

The chao cooed, cementing its name with all of the team (whether Omega would admit it or not).

Now, if anything, Shadow and his chao were even more close than before. Rouge even bought it a tiny leather jacket to match his style, which was quickly deemed by everyone (especially their friends, to whom she’d sent about fifty photos) the most adorable thing ever.

...

One day, Shadow came home from lunch out with Silver and Blaze only to discover a quite unexpected scene- though he really should have seen it coming, considering what he’d noticed after his chao had hatched. Rouge was kneeling next to the sofa, scratching Spark behind the ears and saying in what could only be described as a baby voice, “Who’s your favorite momma? Me, that’s right. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Uh….” he interrupted, feeling more than a little uncertain as to how to respond to this. He was torn between “I didn’t know you had a baby voice” and “I’m glad to see you and Spark getting along” and wasn’t entirely sure which one to go with here.

The bat, on the other hand, jumped a good three feet in the air at the sound before glaring at Shadow furiously. “Don’t startle me like that!” she shouted, more than a little tense...and also a bit worried?

The hybrid didn’t react, instead saying “It’s nice to see you spending time with Spark too, Rouge.” with a smile.

She relaxed a little at that, and Shadow sighed. “Rouge, I wouldn’t make fun of you- I do the same kind of thing, don’t I?”

“You’re right, you’re right.” the bat admitted. “I just had to! It looks like me- it even has my wings! How could I not?”

Shadow moved to sit down on the sofa at that, reaching out to pat the chao as well. Rouge smiled at him gratefully, and then they both looked down at the cute creature in between them, who was promptly staring up at both with a confused look on its face. After a moment, though, it seemed to realize that everything was alright and nuzzled both Mobians before curling up on the couch happily.

…

Another time, the entire team was out grocery shopping at their favorite store when Spark’s eye was caught by the soft, warm cinnamon buns sitting behind a glass case. After a minute or two of desperate pulling at the seams- to no avail- it flew over to Shadow and began to poke at his shoulder until he turned to look at it.

“Yes? What is it?” he asked, giving the chao a little scratch under the chin.

The chao pointed excitedly at the sweet treats, but its expression melted into one of dismay upon hearing him say “No, Spark, that’s not very good for you- and it’s too big for you to finish all by yourself, too.”

It mimed a clock insistently- they didn’t go to the store that often, after all- its frown deepening all the while. Shadow felt a little uncertain- he enjoyed giving the chao treats, but was now really the best time to feed it so much sugar? It could end up flying all over the place, and he really didn’t feel like getting banned from yet another grocery store. (The last one had been because Omega got a little too excited while messing around with the shopping cart and had melted it and twisted it into a knot...somehow. They were rapidly escorted out after that.)

Suddenly, though, the chao shuffled forward, took one of his fingers in between its tiny paws, and stared up at him with the softest, most pleading look it could possibly manage, its eyes wide and mouth quivering. “No...no, come on…” Shadow protested weakly, but already his resistance was melting away. It practically seemed to be saying haven’t I been good all week? Can’t I please just have this one treat? and the hybrid was in no condition to fight back.

Within moments, Spark was holding a cinnamon roll and dug into it with glee, only pausing once to nuzzle Shadow happily and offer him a quick bite as thanks. He accepted the gesture of appreciation easily (even though now his face had sugar on it after the chao’s affectionate thank-you) and was more than happy to see his chao smiling broadly with the treat in its hands.

…

The chao was, of course, still a great help to Shadow as well. One night in particular, it woke up to the sounds of quiet whimpering and began to look around, startled. For a moment, it turned to its caretaker for help- and then discovered that he was the one in trouble.

Shadow was curled up on his side, his brow creased in distress and his whole body shaking terribly. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut and occasionally the most terribly saddening sounds would escape his mouth. Once or twice, a tear escaped and trickled down his face.

Spark crawled up to his face gently, licking away the tear and nuzzling his cheek. Shadow shuddered briefly, but seemed to relax almost infinitesimally when the dark chao pressed itself against his chest for a moment. Eventually, the creature managed to get him to roll onto his back, at which point it crawled onto his chest, hoping that this would help him begin to relax.

It really did work- within moments, the small, warm weight on his chest made Shadow’s breathing even out and his shivers ease as the nightmare that was plaguing him began to fade.

Spark curled up, pleased with itself, and fell back asleep not long after.

…

There was just one problem amongst all this newly-discovered happiness that came with the chao. Ever since it had evolved out of its cocoon, Omega seemed as though he were hardly willing to interact with it.

Rouge or Shadow would hand it over to him, only to get it back less than a minute later. He spent the least amount of time with it out of the three, but when he was asked if he didn’t like the chao, he never said as much.

Omega didn’t tend to lie...but then why wouldn’t he do anything with it?

Once or twice, they’d caught him merely staring at Spark as the little creature sat on the couch, his optics clicking but otherwise utterly silent. The two Mobians hardly knew what to make of it- he’d never acted like this before.

They finally had the opportunity to discover why he was behaving strangely several days later, though, entirely due to an accident on Shadow’s part. Rouge and Omega had been answering a distress call regarding some rogue G.U.N. robots and needed to call in the hybrid to help. He’d driven his motorbike directly to the scene and leapt straight into battle…

...and hadn’t noticed Spark peeking out of the bag he’d left on his bike.

The chao- while fast, to be sure- was in no way prepared for a full-on battle. While at first it had hoped to help its little family, flying about uncertainly in hopes of doing something, it quickly discovered that the only thing it could really do was to hide behind an upended concrete slab and hope it wasn’t noticed.

That, unfortunately, didn’t quite work out.

It didn’t take long before one of the rogue drones spotted a fourth heat signature aside from the three it was fighting and began to stalk towards it, charging its laser cannon in the process. Shadow, confused at first, felt his stomach drop in horror upon seeing his tiny chao shaking in fear as the machine advanced on its hiding spot. He hadn’t thought to bring a Chaos Emerald, believing this would be an easy battle- and Rouge was busy in the air.

The laser cannon on the drone was almost fully charged, and Shadow fired up his skates in a futile attempt to somehow reach Spark before-

A white hot blast lit up the area.

Shadow couldn’t have stopped the strangled cry that came from his mouth if he had wanted to. The smoke began to clear, and he almost couldn’t look…

Something stirred within the haze, and as it cleared away, Shadow felt his whole body sag with relief upon seeing Omega shifting to an upright position from where he’d shielded the chao with the back of his chassis, blocking the full force of the laser. He let out a sigh as he caught a glimpse of Spark held safely in Omega’s hand as the other one retracted to reveal a flamethrower.

“MY TURN.”

Within moments, the drone was just so much melted slag on the floor and the battle’s tide was turned. Shadow and Rouge dispatched the other robots and then rushed to Omega, who had held onto the chao this entire time.

“Omega...thank you.” Shadow said, taking Spark from his friend and holding it tightly.

“IT WAS- zzzt- NOTHING.” Omega said, a sudden staticky buzz splitting his sentence in two.

“Omega?” Rouge asked, her eyes narrowing. “What happened to you?”

“NOTHING.” he said hurriedly, his voice still glitching. “WAIT- DON’T YOU D-DARE-”

The three had already begun looking to see what had happened...but then froze when they saw the damage his back panel had taken while shielding Spark from the blast. A giant, smoking hole of warped and fused metal was burned into his chassis, revealing a bunch of melted and sparking wiring that definitely needed urgent attention.

“Omega…” Shadow looked horrified.

Rouge frowned, confused. “Why would you do this to yourself? I know how much you hate having to go get repairs.”

The robot let out a burst of static that sounded almost like a resigned sigh. Turning around, he muttered, “IT’S LI-LITERALLY YOU. AND ROUGE. BUT TINY. THAT APPEARS TO HAVE… STRANGE EFFECTS- zzzt- ON MY BEHAVIOR.”

“Do you...not like those effects?” Rouge asked, now clearly shifting into ‘I’m figuring things out’ mode. “Is that why you’ve been avoiding it so often?”

“I AM A ROBOT OF MASS DESTRUCTION. I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO CARE FOR TINY CREATURES SUCH AS THIS ONE. I SHOULD NOT FEEL ANY ‘WORRY’ ABOUT IT- AND YET-” Omega cut off there with a frustrated crackle.

Shadow still didn’t understand. “You’ve always been a robot of mass destruction, but you never thought it was weird to worry about us before.”

“THAT WAS DIFFERENT!” Omega insisted. “YOU BOTH ARE POWERFUL. IT IS NATURAL THAT RESPECT AND CONSEQUENTLY OTHER THINGS SHOULD COME FROM THAT. BUT THIS-! IT HAS NO DESTRUCTIVE QUALITIES! BUT STILL I...YOU KNOW...”

“It’s official, Omega.” Rouge said at that, a smirk growing on her face. “You’re becoming more and more like us...organics are always weak for cute things.”

“IT IS SHAMEFUL THAT I SHOULD COME TO THIS.” he grumbled.

“It’s not so bad, really.” Shadow said, placing a hand on his arm.

“And that’s coming from the guy who never used to admit he cares about people!” Rouge insisted. “Omega, you know you don’t have to be embarrassed about that kind of thing here- you’d never make fun of Shadow for not being tough all the time, would you?”

“I GUESS NOT…” he said, still seeming irritated.

At this point, Spark flew up to sit in Omega’s hand, looking up at the robot with its little frowning face, before reaching out and patting a single finger solemnly with its paw.

“OH NO.”

“Oh yes.” Rouge answered, grinning. “Let’s get you to Tails now though, okay? Then once you’re fixed up you can come home and pet the chao.”

Omega turned his head away and refused to dignify that with a response.

(He did, however, pet the chao when he got home. Nobody teased him about it, for which- while he’d never say it- he was rather grateful.)

…

It was inevitable, eventually, that Team Dark’s schedule wouldn’t be perfect and that they’d all have to be out and busy at some point. This, of course, meant that Spark would have to be dropped off at the chao daycare.

Shadow had managed to force himself to reconcile with that fact, but the chao wasn’t nearly as good at that sort of thing.

On the day of, it was sobbing desperately, clinging to Shadow’s jacket with a tight grip as though it’d been handed a horrible punishment instead of a day spent at the warm, welcoming building in front of it. “It’s going to be alright. You’ll be okay, it’s just for a day. See, the Mobians who run it are very nice- won’t you look?” the hybrid whispered in a soothing voice, gently rubbing Spark’s head.

Omega stepped forward. “DON’T YOU...WANT TO SHOW HOW BRAVE YOU CAN BE?” he said awkwardly. Talking to the chao was still taking some getting used to for him, but he was definitely trying his best.

Rouge smiled warmly at that. “Of course! We’ll all be so proud of you, don’t you know that?”

“We can make a cake especially for you when you get home too, alright?” Shadow said, and that was the final thing the chao needed to hear. Wiping its eyes with a final few sniffles, it flew over to the little walkway towards the entrance and stood up tall, its body shaking slightly with leftover stress and its attempts not to cry.

“We love you!” Rouge called, blowing it a quick kiss.

“See you soon.” Shadow said gently, waving with a smile.

“YOU’LL BE THE BEST ONE THERE.” Omega added, shuffling in place a little.

The chao whimpered briefly, but then turned away and bounded into the daycare before it could lose its nerve.

Throughout the morning, it remained relatively antisocial- a bit like the hedgehog whose appearance it had taken- during the music and karate lessons. The other chao all babbled and played together, being mostly neutral and hero-types, and the few dark chao that were there wanted to cause an awful lot more trouble than Spark was in the mood for.

One thing that it noticed very clearly, though, was the extraordinarily frustrating presence of a royal blue hero and speed-type chao.

This chao didn’t seem to think even once (let alone twice) about anything it did. It banged on the drums until Spark’s ears were sore during music class and then somehow managed to smack it in the face during karate lessons twice, and all the while it chatted away with about five other chao all around it.

Needless to say, by midday, when it was playtime, Spark had just about had enough.

When the blue chao rushed directly through the little sand city that it had been carefully building, swiping everything away with a single dash, Spark growled, picked up the plastic shovel it had been playing with, and threw it so hard it whacked the other creature in the arm.

Snarling, it began to stomp off when it felt a hand on its shoulder. The blue chao darted away and began hurriedly to try and rebuild the city, occasionally glancing up at Spark with an apologetic expression in its eyes.

It...looked awfully sad, actually.

Suddenly, the dark chao remembered how it had quickly stopped banging on the drums when the teacher had told it to, and how it had looked rather guilty when it had smacked Spark in the face, and how excited it was when talking with the other chao…

Maybe it was just a little clumsy sometimes.

Spark sighed a little. The other meant well, it decided, as its anger began to fade. It appreciated the apology...but now the sculptures were gone and it couldn’t get them back. Then, though, its gaze fell upon a pair of toy cars sitting nearby.

Pulling the blue chao over to a strip of flat, packed earth nearby, it gave one car to its surprised companion and then set its own down at a line that could work quite well as the start of a race.

Soon enough, the other creature worked out the idea and began to cheer with delight, and before long they were racing cars like they’d been friends since the start. Eventually, they even switched to running races themselves, over and over again until they were all worn out and collapsed on the cool grass in a heap. Before long, though, they were up and at it again, only this time they started with a building game, and then had a little fun with the musical instruments, and soon enough Spark couldn’t help but wonder how they had ever fought in the first place.

Eventually, they decided that their next activity would be a race to the top of the jungle gym they noticed nearby. Spark was determined not to lose as it scrambled up the bars. It pulled itself paw over paw up the structure, getting closer and closer to the top, until-

Suddenly, a bar that it had been sure existed in front of it only a moment ago was now clearly just a little too far away, and the mistake caused it to reel forward, desperately clinging to the slippery bar it sat on. It twisted head over heels until it slid and fell all the way back to the ground, the wind slammed forcefully out of its little lungs.

Spark gasped soundlessly, trying and failing to pull air back into itself. After several agonizing seconds, it finally caught its breath- and then nearly got it knocked back out again by the impact of its new friend.

Regaining focus, the dark chao realized with a start that its friend was practically wailing into its chest, the soft blue creature shaking with desperate, panicked sobs. It looked up quickly, its eyes swollen and teary, and then reached out with its paws and hurriedly patted Spark’s body down, as though to reassure itself that the dark chao was still there.

The creature in question sat up and pulled its friend into a tight hug, feeling nothing less than awful as the blue chao sniffled and whimpered worriedly in its arms. Eventually, it managed to calm down enough to amble over to a small nest made of blankets especially for tired chao and lay down there next to Spark. The two chao curled up together, nuzzling gently as the shaky breaths of the blue one finally evened out.

Spark felt the little ball over its head pop into a heart shape, and noticed briefly that its friend had done the same. They remained curled up like that for the last half-hour or so of their time in the daycare, alternately simply cuddling or talking about their respective owners.

Spark hoped they’d get to spend more time with this friend of theirs soon.

…

Shadow pulled up to the daycare on his motorcycle at closing time, doing his best to smooth out his frazzled quills. It wouldn’t be very good to let his chao know that he’d been nearly as worried about it as it had felt itself.

He sighed, making his way towards the entrance of the building- and instantly felt the last wisps of his composure vanish upon seeing Sonic standing just inside. Before he could panic and flee the area at top speed, his legs (which didn’t seem to have received the message just yet) carried him through the door and inside.

Almost immediately, the blue hedgehog turned to face him with a bright smile. “Oh! Hey, Shadow!” Sonic said happily. “I didn’t know you brought your chao here, too! I’ve gotta say hi to the little guy again sometime!”

“This is my first time bringing it here. If it’s alright with that…I suppose you may.” the hybrid said, trying his best to sound coherent and cool (but actually just seeming stiff and awkward).

They talked for a little while as they waited for their chao to come out, chatting about their lives and friends. More than once, Shadow had to pinch himself in order to stay focused. His mind kept threatening to wander off into dreamland when he was around the hero, ready to admire his many great qualities (and wonderful appearance) at the drop of a hat.

Eventually, though, he became a bit worried by the fact that chao after chao were wandering out through the playroom door, being collected, and leaving…but neither Spark nor Sonic’s chao had even showed up. Soon enough, the two decided to walk into the room and find their tiny charges themselves.

“Uh, hi, mixter!” Sonic greeted the leopard who ran the daycare. “Didja see my lil’ buddy somewhere around here?”

“Oh, hello Sonic!” they said brightly- clearly the hero had been to this place quite a few times before. “Yes, your chao is over there in that nest there, sorry. I just hated to disturb those two…”

Shadow frowned. Those two?

His question was promptly answered when Sonic whisked aside the blanket covering the nest, only for both of them to stare at the sight inside.

Two purring chao, one clearly Sonic’s and the other obviously Shadow’s, were snuggled up together with big hearts floating over their heads. Even the hybrid’s dark chao, notorious for its ever-present frown, looked completely at peace with a small smile on its face.

He tried his best not to freak out.

“Erm…” Shadow began eloquently.

“Uh…” Sonic replied.

The two chao perked up at this, looking happily at their owners before nuzzling gently together in a manner that made Shadow’s stomach leap into his throat and then crash straight through the floor. In a further twist (both in events and in the striped hedgehog’s internal organs), Sonic’s chao then leapt happily into his arms, leaving Shadow to stare at the tiny version of his crush cuddling into his chest fur.

He sincerely hoped there was a convenient couch nearby for him to sit down on.

“Blu- come on-” Sonic began, looking oddly panicked for some reason, but then Spark sprang eagerly onto his shoulder and the hero rapidly fell silent as the dark chao nudged his cheek.

The two hedgehogs stared at each other for a long time. Shadow tried to move or do something other than just stand there, but it was awfully difficult when the hero was looking at him with those wide, soft green eyes….

“Er…Sonic?” Shadow finally choked out, in an odd, strained sort of tone.

“Yeah?”

“I think I’d like my chao back now.”

“Yeah.”

They each handed over their respective creatures, though Shadow felt rather reluctant to let such a tiny version of Sonic out of his arms. And for a moment he could almost have sworn that the hero held Spark a little longer than necessary, too…

…

Once he got home, the hybrid collapsed onto the couch and covered his eyes briefly with a hand. Spark, who had at first rushed into the kitchen (not having forgotten the promise of cake), came back and began to tug on his arm briefly before realizing that maybe Shadow wasn’t quite up to doing much of anything at the moment.

Rouge and Omega walked in just a moment later, their work having ended a little after Shadow’s. Upon seeing him slumped on the furniture, though, their greetings were cut short and instead replaced by worried questions.

Shadow sighed. “Spark...just spent a bunch of time cuddling with Sonic’s chao. And he noticed.”

“And that’s a good thing, hon.” Rouge shot back, having resisted a facepalm the moment she realized what all this was about.

“It is not!” the hedgehog cried out, before realizing that Spark was more than a little stressed by his tone of voice. “I’m not mad at you, don’t worry, it’s just...I already make enough of a fool of myself around him on my own. He’ll figure it out soon enough if we keep this up.”

“SO LET HIM.” Omega said. “EITHER HE STARTS DATING YOU OR HE’S AN IDIOT.”

Shadow blushed furiously. “It doesn’t work like that!”

“EXCEPT WHEN IT DOES.”

“Why don’t you tell him, hon?” Rouge asked. “I mean…” and here she developed a devious smile, “...didn’t his chao technically also act all affectionate with yours?”

The hybrid’s ears were bright green by now. “He’s nice to everyone, Rouge.”

At this point, Spark- who had left temporarily to get a pencil and paper- held up a drawing it had made of the scene at the jungle gym earlier. Shadow, of course, immediately began fussing over his chao, checking for any bruises or scrapes, but the bat in particular saw something entirely different.

“Kinda...reminds me of what happened on Space Colony ARK.” she mused.

Shadow’s head shot up at that. “What?”

Rouge smirked, but it was bittersweet this time. “Your fall...it really hurt him too, y’know? He didn’t go out in public for a long time after that.”

“He...he never mentioned that to me…”

“He wouldn’t have!” she said. “Sonic isn’t the type to ‘bother’ others with his feelings.” Rouge explained, doing air quotes at one point.

“HE ALSO STARES AT YOU WHEN YOU ARE NOT LOOKING.”

“He what?!” By now Shadow had been reduced to just looking back and forth between his two friends.

Spark flew in front of Shadow’s face and began to mime something. First pointing at Shadow, then a heart, then talking, then a hedgehog with all its quills pointed down…

“No! I can’t just tell him!”

“We’re hanging out with his team next week at the park- you should do it then.” Rouge replied, ignoring the last thing he’d just said.

“Did you not hear me, I can’t-”

“YOU WILL NEED SOMETHING NICE TO WEAR.” Omega said loudly over the rest of his sentence.

Spark cheered approvingly.

“So...you three have just decided for me whether or not I’m going to confess to Sonic.” Shadow sighed, beginning to resign himself to the fact.

“Absolutely, hon!” Rouge said brightly, slipping an arm around his shoulders.

He glowered at all three of them, but it lacked any real malice. “Alright, I’ll play along...for now.” he grumbled.

“EXCELLENT. LET THE PLANNING COMMENCE.”

…

One week later, Shadow was standing in the middle of a patch of grass, feeling like his knees were about to buckle as sweat trickled through his quills. He was no longer resigned to telling Sonic about his feelings and was in fact considering jumping into the nearby lake and hiding there for the duration of the hangout. His stomach- along with whatever scraps of resolve he may have had- were currently all the way back at their house.

On top of all that, he was frankly surprised he didn’t just spontaneously burst into flames when the other three Mobians showed up, Sonic in the lead.

“Hey guys!” he said excitedly. “Long time no see!”

Rouge snickered a bit at his catchphrase (it was one of many) but Shadow just felt his ears burn. He was just so cute and cheesy and already the hybrid’s mind was devolving into a mushy mess.

“Rouge, Omega.” he greeted them each, but he seemed to pause for a second on the last name. “...Shadow.”

The hedgehog in question thankfully managed a reply, and then the fun began in earnest. Knuckles and Shadow competed in several arm-wrestling matches with narration from Tails (“...aaaand Knuckles looks like he’s in the lead!”) and commentary from Omega (“YOU’RE LUCKY I DON’T ARM-WRESTLE OR ELSE BOTH OF YOUR ARMS WOULD BE BROKEN.”). Rouge and Sonic were busy pranking other innocent people, though once in a while the latter would look over at the competition, distracted.

Eventually, Tails and Omega got bored- which of course meant Knuckles and Shadow had to play the role of caretaker (“No, you can’t blow up trees. No, not even for ‘science’.”) for a little while.

At one point, though, Rouge got bored with the pranks and had dragged the echidna off to a park bench and was now flirting with him enough to turn his face as red as his spines. Tails had promised to behave- which now meant that he was halfheartedly attempting to convince Omega not to modify his cannon to launch ducks from the nearby pond- leaving Sonic and Shadow to themselves. Blu and Spark had been playing in the grass all this time (since both of them had brought their chao without really realizing that the other would do the same), and Shadow had very definitely not been thinking about how lucky his chao was that emotions were easy for it.

He remembered the talk his friends had given him before this outing then and wondered if maybe, just maybe, it could be that easy. Before he could stop himself, he’d already spoken.

“...Sonic?”

“Yeah?” the hero asked, turning to face Shadow.

“I...wanted to talk to you about something.” he said, regretting everything already because look how stupid he was about to seem...yet Shadow Robotnik the Hedgehog had never been one to do things by halves.

“Oh, really?” Sonic said, and now he almost looked relieved, for some reason. “I, uh, was actually hoping to do the same. That’s cool, what is it?”

“No, no, you go first.” Shadow urged him, hoping that he’d take the offer.

Unfortunately, today was not his lucky day. “No, man, you asked first! Go ahead, what was it?”

“Really- it’s fine.”

“No, you had something you wanted to say!” Sonic insisted.

“It’s okay, I swear-”

“Well, I guess-”

“I mean, if you want-”

“Okay-”

“You see-”

“I like you!”

Both hedgehogs shouted the words at the exact same time, before freezing and staring at each other.

“Wait…” Shadow began.

Sonic’s eyes were wide. “You like me back?!?” he gasped, hands flying up to his mouth.

“...yes.” he admitted, looking off to the side in embarrassment. Then it hit him. “Wait. You like me back?”

“Of course! How could I not?” Sonic asked incredulously. “You’re smart, funny, nice-” He’d begun listing off attributes while counting on his fingers, but cut himself off upon noticing Shadow’s confusion.

“Yes, but you’re a hero. The world’s hero.” Shadow began to frown, staring at the grass. “Why would you settle for someone like-”

“No.” Sonic growled, and the hybrid looked up suddenly to see his face twisted in anger. “Don’t ever say that.”

“But everyone thinks it…” Shadow protested weakly.

“Yeah, well, ‘everyone’ isn’t part of my love life.” Sonic assumed a slightly less aggressive stance, placing a hand on his hip. “Whoever’s been telling you that can either leave you alone or get their face introduced to my sneakers.”

Shadow blushed. “Nobody needed to. I just assumed...but perhaps I shouldn’t have.” he added quickly, seeing the hero begin to glower again.

“That’s right!” he said, zipping over to stand directly in front of Shadow. “No assumptions here- talk to me from now on if something’s worryin’ you, ‘kay?”

Then, he seemed to notice the sudden stiffness in the hybrid’s posture, as well as the green flush slowly creeping up his ears. Sonic leaned forward with a smirk, resting his forearm on Shadow’s shoulder. “Thinkin’ about something?”

Shadow gulped.

For once, he decided that he could do what he wanted. So, he slowly reached up a hand and touched the peach fur on Sonic’s arm gently, like it was the most delicate thing in the world.

Rather more quickly, Sonic turned a shade of bright red to rival Omega’s paint job.

“So, uh…” he began, his voice shaky. “Erm...do ya feel like sitting under that tree? Together?”

Shadow agreed, and the two walked over to the shady patch, sitting down and resting against each other. Soon enough, though, Sonic turned to face Shadow, a little nervous. “Do we, like, need to talk about this? Figure out...what to do about…us?” He started turning pink again.

“Maybe later. We have a lot of time, after all.” Shadow said, trying to contain the soaring feeling inside when Sonic said ‘us’- until he realized that he didn’t have to any longer.

“What’re you smiling about?”

“You. And me. Together.” Shadow said simply, making Sonic laugh and snuggle up against him, resting his head on a black-furred shoulder.

“Wow. That’s, uh….that’s new. I really like it though.”

Then, the hero looked up at him. “I really like you, too.”

At this point, a loud whistle could be heard from Rouge, who was standing not too far off and had likely heard a lot of what they’d said. Sonic just giggled, while Shadow shot her a death glare. She just winked and mouthed I’ll keep them occupied, at which point the hybrid tried not to show how very much he appreciated that and failed miserably.

And Sonic was purring now. Which of course meant that every single brain cell in Shadow’s head was promptly dead for the next five minutes.

After he’d recovered from that, Shadow wrapped his arms tightly around his...boyfriend? Maybe? He thought for a moment. “Hey, Sonic?”

“Yeah?”

“How do you feel about being my-” Shadow paused briefly to cough, trying to get the words out- “-boyfriend?”

“I think I like that a lot.”

Shadow smiled warmly, feeling the beginnings of a purr rise up in his own chest.

“I like that a lot, too. Almost as much as I like you.”

#shadow the hedgehog #rouge the bat #e 123 omega #sonic the hedgehog #happy birthday shadow and rouge!!#these two are the best #i swear i panicked when i realized that their birthday was today and not the 21st haha #me: has never actually fully raised a chao in-game #also me: *throws in made-up chao facts like i know what i'm talking about*#also all names for shadow's chao are valid this is just the one that i personally picked #hopefully everyone enjoyed being blasted by 7500 words of fluff :)#(and hurt/comfort of course)#i liked writing the part where it was like #blu and spark: *speedrun enemies to friends*#sonic and shadow: *PANIC*#just checking: is the term 'mixter' alright for a lengthened version of 'mx.'? i've seen it before but don't know for sure #this is my second attempt writing proper sonadow hopefully it was alright #:D #as always suggestions for how to improve my writing are more than appreciated!#sol's fanfiction

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dreadwulf · 3 years

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prompt #1: The Green Knight

(Warning: Major Character Death. Not the Major Character you think. Be warned.)

The Green Chapel stands still and silent when the Golden Knight arrives.

Once he had expected a fine cathedral to await him at the of his journey, but by now he is unsurprised to find a crumbled ruin overgrown with ivy. Only the stone walls remain of this “chapel”. The sunken paving stones admit dirt and weeds between them enough that it is barely distinguishable from the forest floor, and the roof is long since fallen in. Everywhere it is overgrown with thick green leaves and vines, and surrounded by a canopy of trees that opens only enough to admit a slice of night sky directly above.

Ser Jaime Lannister enters watchfully, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

The Green Knight is nearly invisible to him at first: concealed in greenery, grown into the landscape as though part of it. The bark of his skin is encrusted with moss, leaving no visible gap between himself and the plants around him. Judging from the growth, the Knight has not moved in a long, long while.

Has he stood exactly here for the entire year, waiting for him? It looks more like a statue, or a tree carving. Something long abandoned. Much longer than a single year.

“Ser Knight,” he announces, “I have arrived per our agreement.”

Silence.

There is only him here, and a tree that looks only a little like a man.

He is early, Ser Jaime realizes. Will be it dawn of the day, or the very hour of their meeting? He may be here for some time. It will be hours to dawn, and it had been another sundown after that when the Green Knight had ridden into Robert’s court on his enormous steed.

One year hence, the Knight had said. Well, at least he is not late.

The pre-dawn hours are quiet here, and the grove is peaceful. The trees overhead open out onto a pretty sprinkling of stars, and all the noise of the forest and the brook which has lead him here has faded away. He can see why the locals call this the Green Chapel. It is the sort of place that encourages one to pray, and to contemplate, at least if one is given to introspection and piety.

Which he is usually not.

The Golden Knight quickly grows restless. Waiting is not a skill of his. He is impatient by nature, impetuous and impulsive. Faced with delay he will rush things ahead, or abandon his course. Unless, as in this case, he has no choice but to wait, and then he will be overcome with unease.

He paces. His fingers twitch. His gaze darts around, landing on this and that.

There is no sign of movement from the Green Knight.

If he had not seen him walking and talking, he might assume this to be only a sculpture, and not a living being. He might wonder if he had been tricked, and if some unseen enemy hovered nearby laughing at his predicament. But he has seen the Green Knight up close, and ran him through with his own blade, and watched as the great gnarled hands pulled the greatsword from his own breast as casually as a thorn from his finger, and tossed the weapon aside as though it were a child’s plaything.

His hands curl around the same greatsword at his belt. He has carried it for a year, this sword. It was his prize for accepting the Green Knight’s challenge, and ostensibly he is here to return it. When he does, the knight will return him the same blow, and stab him through the heart.

Was it worth it? What, after all, did he do with his fine sword?

Ser Jaime sighs and sits on the wet ground. He can grow no more muddy and disheveled than he is already. He left King’s Landing in his extravagant golden armor, wearing his lion’s helm, and riding the finest horse in his stable. But he arrives in the Green Chapel on foot, with no helm, dressed in shabby clothing and battered bits of armor. Even his golden hair is shorn, and only a thin growth of hair remains of his famous golden curls.

The only thing of value remaining to him is the sword. And to be quite honest, the Green Knight is welcome to it. If he could, he would exchange it for something much more valuable that he had found, and then lost, along the way.

It had taken many weeks to get him here. There were some diversions - misadventures, a strange episode in a Keep, and a good deal of wandering around lost - but he has come a very long way from Robert’s Court to find himself here. He had managed the journey only with the help of his squire.

The girl had joined him on the road on the very first day. She was part of the crowd that had followed him from the gates, those knight-hopefuls who so frequently followed his footsteps around the city. Most wanted some of his glory, hoped for it to spill onto them by mere proximity. Some wanted merely to see him meet his fate, others to be part of that tale if they could. But there was very little glory in this journey. They had been beset by bandits, wild animals, bad weather, and strange side-tracks from almost the very start

There had been six, even eight of them at a time, during the ride through the Westerlands, but as he traveled further and further from the capital and the weather worsened their number dwindled, and by the tenth night there was only her. Her name was Brienne. If she had another he has already forgotten it.

She was a strange girl, ungainly large, and dressed all in armor, in imitation of a knight. She had a face like rotten fruit, softly misshapen. Her straw-blonde hair, ruddy and pox-marked skin, and stubborn pout completed the picture. Her very presence proved subtly irritating. If a maid cannot be beautiful she might at least keep herself out of sight; or else be a servant, who are barely women to begin with.

His followers quickly decided to make a servant of her. This did not go well. Ser Jaime came upon her fighting three of the men on the third night. One of them had blood streaming from his nose already, another was sitting on the ground looking dazed from a blow to the head. The last was seemingly unfazed by the fate of the other two, and Ser Jaime observed him take a good punch to the chin that left him spitting out teeth. They were trying to steal her supper, she said. The girl should be cooking for us all, the men said.

“She is my squire”, Ser Jaime told them, deciding upon it at that very moment. “She will cook supper for only me.”

“Like hell I will,” the ungrateful wench spat at him.

Ser Jaime raised an eyebrow. “Do you wish to be a knight or not? First you must be a squire.”

She did at that. She did wish it, very much. He can see it in her eyes -- striking blue eyes, with a determined gaze.

Brienne did cook his supper, the next night, over the campfire. Not very well, and he did not insist again. But she also tended his armor and sword, and that she did very well indeed. She handled his greatsword with tremendous respect and care, such that it touched him to see. He had long since stopped being impressed by the blade, after carrying it for a year.

Brienne proved a loyal squire, if not the most typical one. When wolves attacked she proved herself courageous, stood herself well in front of older and more experienced men. When there was work to be done she would be first to do it, and without being asked: gathering firewood, tending the horses. Drudgery she avoided, but practical, necessary things she performed without complaint.

She had very blue eyes. Sky eyes, clear and bright. He would have liked to look at them, except that she would be looking back, and that seemed to frighten her. She did not like to look him in the face. A shy maid, for all her armor and prickly temperament. He liked to tease her, and tell bawdy jokes with the other men until her face turned a pleasant pink.

A skirmish with the Brave Companions lost three of his would-be-knights and all of their horses,and it lead to their capture for a brief time. When they managed to escape, they were left traveling afoot, and without their supplies. His other followers drifted off then, losing their taste for adventure. Only the girl remained, and walked beside him along the road North uncomplaining through the long days ahead.

She was good with a blade, better than most. Not so good as Ser Jaime, who had a prodigious talent. But on the occasions he challenged her to spar with him, she got his blood up and roaring in a way he had not felt since he was a young man himself, and all his adventures before him.

She was kind. Too reserved to be gregarious, but generous in spirit. She took pity on every foundling, every poor farmer and milkmaid they encountered along the way. She wanted to help them, rescue them all; if he had not restrained her they would have been fighting for the honor of each individual cow from the Westerlands to the Neck. She was much disappointed that they hadn’t. What is a knight for, if not that?

She would learn, as he once had. The Knights of Robert’s Kingdom were more tarnished than a starry-eyed squire suspected. Heroes and legends in tales were only men in the flesh, and men with a bit of money and renown all went the same way. Given the best of everything they would indulge themselves, would grow greedy, would came to expect what had once been freely given. They fought not for gods and country but for glory, and mainly fought each other. They plundered wealth and women, sat by roaring fires, went slow, went soft, forgot hunger and killing cold.

Honor was a facade, nothing more. To become a knight was to learn it. It made him glad she would never be knighted, and fail that lesson.

“Entertain me, squire,” he said to her as they rode side-by-side, needling her. “I have heard all of the songs and stories of this land, and they bore me. Tell me a tale of yourself, Squire Brienne. What adventures set you on this course to become a knight?”

She bowed her head. “I have no tales to tell, my lord. It is only a wish, and an aspiration. But I have no adventures but the one we are on now. But you, my lord, are a famous knight, and must have many stories to tell. I would be honored to hear them from your own lips.”

Ser Jaime had hundreds of tales. He has boasted of his adventures to innumerable audiences as they looked on him admiringly, the great Golden Knight. Wins at tourney, duels with other knights, riding to war for King Robert. But for some reason, as he turned them over in his mind, he discarded each of his favorite stories one by one. He did not want to tell them now; those stories are not for her.

“I also have no tales to tell,” he said.

“Are you not on a quest, my lord?” She looked over at him quizzically, her blue eyes innocent. “I hear tell you are riding to the Green Chapel in the north…”

“I am, and to meet the Green Knight. But even I am not so bold as to tell that tale when I do not yet know its ending. But it sounds like you could, Squire Brienne.”

Again she frowned at him for that title. But she did know the bare outlines of the story, how the strange Green Knight had rode into King Robert’s court and invited the bravest and boldest of his knights to face him in battle, to strike a single blow and receive a blow in return, and for it they would gain his greatsword as a prize. How the Golden Knight had taken up the challenge, and in a blow of great talent and precision stabbed the Golden Knight through the heart, finding the weakest point in his armor on a single try. But instead of falling down dead, the Green Knight had easily pulled the blade from his own chest and mounted his horse. He told the Golden Knight to meet him in one year at the Green Chapel, where he would return his blow.

“And I see you do not hesitate to keep your word,” Brienne concluded the tale. “You are as bold and brave as all the stories say. But what will you do when you get there?”

“Fight him, I suppose.” Ser Jaime’s hand tensed around the ruby-encrusted pommel of his borrowed sword.

“Ser?” She blinked back at him in confusion.

“What, you expected I would meekly bow my head and be murdered? Of course not.” Ser Jaime’s shoulders shook. “Twas not a fair bargain, when he has such dark magic that he can take a sword through the heart and survive. I have no such magic, and it isn’t a fair exchange.”

“But you did not have to strike a deathblow. By the bounds of the agreement you might have only scratched him, and taken only a scratch in return.”

Well, yes. In hindsight, that would have been wiser. If he had taken the time to think it over, he might have put that together. But by nature he rarely takes that time.

“He was a large and fearsome Knight, and I thought only to prevent the return blow. Of course if I had known he would survive it I would have acted differently. I know it now. And when I see the Knight this time I will fight him with everything I have, and he will fight me with everything He has, and we will see who is the victor.”

“But you made a promise…” She sounded faintly disappointed, and it irritated him greatly.

“It was a trick, girl. A trick to snare a knight by his honor. Would you have me die for a trick? What good will that serve? No, I will keep my appointment as promised, but he will have to work to land his blow against me. I’ll have my skill and my wit to defend me, as he had his magic.”

“Are you not afraid, Ser?”

“Afraid to fight? Never. It will be a fine duel, perhaps the finest of my life, and I am eager for it. It will be the battle that will make my legend, the kind that songs are sung of, and I look forward to that.”

Brienne said that she hoped to see it, and let the matter lie.

She did not see it, of course. They came to the Crossroads instead.

An inn stood at the crossroads, and cast-offs from the Riverlands sheltered there. Orphans and strays. Jaime and Brienne arrived only long enough to see a great many helpless faces before bandits came riding, meaning to plunder the kitchens, and carry off the women and children.

Jaime told the girls to run away as best they could, and aimed to do the same. If they were quick about it, the raiders couldn’t catch them all.

Brienne, on the other hand, meant to defend them. They would not survive alone in the forest, she said, and if the bandits took away the food, the little ones would starve.

“Better the bandits take them then, one or the other,” he said quickly, tugging at her. “But we had best retreat. We will not manage another fight in our condition, and not without more men.”

This was entirely reasonable, to him; better knights than he had often advised the same. There was no glory in failure, and certainly none in a pointless death in the middle of nowhere.

“No.” Brienne grew taller under his grasp, and would not be moved. “What good is a knight if he will not defend the innocent?”

“You stupid girl.” He holds her by the shoulders. “There is nothing you and I alone can do against so many men, no matter how skilled you are with a blade. They will surround us and cut us down -- it won’t even buy any time for your orphans. The best we can do is live to fight another day.”

“Someone must do something,” she says stubbornly. “I will not run.”

“Not to no avail! A battle is bravery, but this is suicide. It’s foolish, meaningless. It will make no difference whether you intervene or not - either way the women are taken and the children are killed. You will only add another body.”

“Someone must fight for them,” she insists. “Even if there is no hope. I am not enough, but if there is no one else, then it will be me.”

With that, she had shoved him in the larder, with a sudden and ferocious strength, and barred the door.

“Let me free, you stupid child!” He slammed his weight into the door sharply with his shoulder, enraged.

He could hear her through the door, her voice steady and clear.

“Someone must fight for them. If there is no one else, then it will be me.”

“Damn you,” he swore at her. “Open the door and I will fight with you. Two against a dozen is better odds than one. Open the door!”

“You have an appointment to keep,” she said, and then there was silence.

Jaime could not see what happened after that, but he could hear it. He could hear the disdainful laughter of the brighands, and the drawing of many blades. He could hear for a time the blades clashing, and much shouting, and one unfamiliar cry of pain, and for a brief moment he was hopeful that she might prevail. She was a talented swordfighter. If they fought her one at a time he had no doubt she could best them.

He could tell, even without seeing, that they did not. The fight turned, became a slaughter. He heard a single cry that he knew in his gut was Brienne, taking a blow she would not survive. There came more noise then, more steel and blows, and then the screams of the women and children being dragged from the Inn.

He screamed too. He wept, and clutched at his useless greatsword in a rage, wanting to throw himself through the door and impale himself on them like an arrow, these animals who would dare to touch a true knight. None of them seemed to hear him, or proved interested in the larder.

He didn’t know how long he had been left sitting there on the floor, with tears on his face and the earthy smell of raw meat weighting him down in the cool darkness. He waited for one of them, any of them, to remember him in the kitchens and come back, but no one did, and that was how he knew that no one remained. He wondered if he would be left there to rot. To moulder away with the bits of cheese and bread that remained there until he was nought but bones and a borrowed sword.

Eventually, quietly, a small boy with enormous eyes unbarred the door, having emerged from his hidey-hole only hours after the vicious intruders had left. Seeing Jaime huddled in the dark, he fled again and hid himself away in the Inn.

Jaime emerged into the twilight reluctantly. When he looked down the road, he imagined he could see them. The prisoners being taken away in the back of some wagon, women and children and women who were really children still, huddled together and weeping, down the long road and away. It was all for nothing, all of this. The brigands had taken them anyway.

There was no glory in this defeat. There was only a bloodstreaked trench in the mud where a terrible battle occurred, and in the middle of it a sad heap of metal. She was unrecognizable there, cut to pieces. Only a few strands of pale blonde hair remained to know her by.

The blacksmith’s armory had implements enough to break the cold ground. He dug a hole right beside the crossroads while the rain bucketed down on him. His chest hurt from the strangled sob caught in it. He put her in the hole and blanketed her again with the mud. If there had been flowers anywhere in that season in all the land he would have found them and laid them there above her grave. One day, he hoped, grass would grow.

It was a meaningless gesture, and made no difference to the blue-eyed girl. But it meant something to Jaime.

It was not meaningless to them, the shivering children and the sad-faced women riding away in the wagons. They had looked back, mournfully, at the place in the road where her body lay. Looked back down the long road, into the distance, through the rain and the trees and the tramping feet of the bandits’ horses and out of sight, and they kept looking. They would look back long after the rain and wind had wiped away any traces of what had happened there. They would not forget. When the enemy came for them, someone took up a blade in their cause. Someone thought they mattered. Someone thought they were worth dying for. They did not face their fate alone.

When evil comes, so long as at least one person stands against it, there is still some light left in the world.

He left the shovel there in the road and went back to the Inn. It took some time to locate the boy and persuade him to come out of the trunk where he had hidden himself. He carried the boy with him North to the next village, where he left him wordlessly at the Sept, and turned North again, alone.

The rain never stops now. The ground is crusted with snow and the air is wet and mossy and somehow the rains never wash anything away. It only soaks into the dirt and grime and ice and blood and weighs it down. Makes it heavier. Makes everything impossibly heavy.

There are more strange things that happen to him then: how the road curves and wanders beneath his feet and doubles him back to the start as though trying to throw him off his course. There were strange dreams, and visions, and he walks in a sort of fever. Nothing seems quite real after the Crossroads, nothing except the sword in his hand and his goal: the Green Chapel. He has an appointment to keep.

He grows only more determined to reach his destination.

The nights grow colder. He wakes up shivering, rolling over, trying to wake the embers of the fire, and every time his eyes open they are looking for the foolish girl in her armor. They find only blackness and he remembers then the crossroads and the hole he dug besides the road.

He missed her terribly.

He misses her still, sitting here before the Green Knight. It is a persistent ache, a weight that grows heavier by the day. It makes him feel ancient to contemplate. He sounds like one of the rusty old knights who cluster around Robert, lamenting the roads not taken, the women they might have settled down with. Lost loves. It has been only days and yet it seems like years ago, and a road already overgrown and impassable. He can see it already, the enormity of his mistake. His life might have become something entirely different, improbably better. The opportunity came to him, and he wasted it.

Brienne. The Maiden Knight. She could have been his lady love and his brother-at-arms all at once. Would anything have been so perfectly suited to him as that? He will never find her like again, and even if he did he would not want it; he will only want her, for the rest of his life.

Jaime muses over these memories through the hours. The journey, the past, the world around him. Time seems to settle into a hazy blur.

The sun rises slowly, impossibly slowly. He cannot see it past the trees, but the world gradually brightens, with gentle insistence. The greens grow ever more lush and verdant all around him. The wall where the Green Knight stands turns from grim grey to a lively grass color, the dark ivy wound around in loops that seem to form an altar of deep mossy overgrowth around the still and sleeping form of the Knight.

His hands worry at the hilt of the greatsword that he had come to return. He might leave the blade on the altar and go. Would that fulfill his word?

What did Jaime do with his famous sword, during the year he had it? Only held it aloft for others to see. Used it to threaten, and to cajole. Boasted of it to other lords. But the only time he had just cause to draw it he had chosen to retreat instead, and in doing lost the only thing of any value he had ever found.

If only he had gone with her. Agreed right at the first, without hesitation. If he had stood at her side it might have ended differently. One had no chance, but two, perhaps, might have survived. He might have taken her with him to the Green Chapel. He might have taken her home to the King. He might have seen her made a knight, and stood proudly beside her at the king’s table. The tales he might have made with her, he would be proud to tell.

The Knight’s form comes into clearer and clearer relief: looming over him, impossibly tall, improbably wide.

Jaime knows with cold certainty that the Knight is going to wake very soon. As the light grows stronger, the Green Chapel is waking around him with a thousand tiny movements. He can almost make out the subtle sound of leaves uncurling to the sun, and worms crawling in the earth.

The sword, Oathkeeper, quivers in his hands, as though outraged. How did he dare to carry that blade to this place intending to lie? To break his promise? More and more he thinks he did not. He came here for something else entirely.

Jaime finds, for the first time that he can remember, his hands are trembling. It is one thing to go to battle, but another entirely to go to an execution. His heart beats in his ears with a deep drumbeat of doom... doom... doom...

He’s not here to fight a duel, is he? What, then, is he here for?

Glory? Judgement? Mercy? Absolution?

Or only the cold, mechanical means of his inevitable end?

Was all this journey only for that? Is he truly here only to get a blade through his chest? And if so, might it be worth his while? After all, is there any better way for a knight to die? Will it not be a fitting end to his legend?

But he isn’t ready to die. Not willingly. Not without redeeming his honor, making something of himself. If he had another year… but would he do any more with that than he had the last? Than he has with all of the years thus far? Is there any amount of time that would make any more of himself than he has already?

The time he needed was these weeks on the road with Brienne. That showed him what kind of man he’d like to be. But he failed her when it mattered most. Perhaps he should be judged for that. Not a year from now, nor twenty. Today.

The sun rises higher in the sky, and paints the Green Chapel gold. The air warms, and birdsong calls to him on the breeze. The day is relentlessly pleasant, with a promise of endless more such days to follow. A bittersweet longing fills him. It has never seemed half so lovely to be alive as it does in this beautiful place. If only he could have brought her here.

I will be brave, he says to himself. Like Brienne.

All at once there is a great creaking sound of wood bending and tearing, and when Jaime looks up the green altar is moving. Green leaves tremble and wave purposefully, and twigs and small branches snap and fall away to rest in the dirt below. The trunk of the altar pulls itself free, excavates itself from the enclosure in the leaves and branches. Limbs pull free, and something nearly human rises out of the green, the bark of its skin glistening, newborn.

The Green Knight is standing.

Jaime looks up, and up, and up, from where he sits on the mossy floor of the green chapel, and his hand grips the hilt of his sword.

He is ready to fight, by instinct, and to flee, by sudden impulse. He is afraid, he realizes, afraid in a way he has never been before. There is more than a blow to the heart to fear here. There is the fate of his soul, which is suddenly entirely in question. Before his journey he had no doubt of his own worth as a knight, and now he is just as certain in the opposite direction. Is he worthy? He is not. He is not.

Slowly, he stands. The sun shines down on him through the same corridor in the trees where he had watched the stars the night previous, and its warmth is a rebuke; why should the sun shine upon one such as him? He is the golden knight no more. He is only a man, a man with a sword that does not belong to him.

His eyes raise last of all.

Jaime finds through the golden light the Green Knight’s face. The eyes first, through a thin bloom of leaves and moss, and then the nose, the jawline. He has never seen it so clearly before, not even when he had stabbed her through the heart. With slow realization his eyes travel down and up again, taking in the shape of his host, and her nature.

The Green Knight is a woman? Why didn’t he realize it before?

It seems only too clear now. The slight narrowing of the waist and wrists, and in the face… not a pretty face, but undeniably feminine. Full lips, round cheeks, and the eyes...

Blue eyes. Beautiful blue, sad blue, noble and sorry. The lost blue of long-forgotten clear skies.

When he sees them his hands stop shaking. All is well. His grand sword slips from his fingers and settles softly in the grass, sinks gently into the ground, is welcomed.

“It’s you,” he says. “I’m glad it’s you.”

The girl from the Crossroads is standing before him.

He doesn’t understand how it is possible. Was she always the Knight? Was all an illusion? Was the Knight in disguise when he met her, or was the Knight once that girl? But it doesn’t matter. Whoever she is, she is here now, and it is good and right that this happen to him.

Her voice is low and rusty, like a hinge that has not moved in many years, and slow in its opening.

“You... kept... our appointment,” the Knight creaks.

His mouth is gone dry. “One year hence. You gave me time enough. And so I am here.”

He thinks he sees her smile, faintly. With the crackling sound of breaking branches, the Knight gestures to his feet.

“You... dropped your sword... my Lord.” Ser Jaime glances down at Oathkeeper, already disappearing beneath the twining vines on the forest floor. “Is it not time... for our blades to cross? A duel to make your legend?”

“I made you a promise,” he says faintly, and puts a hand over his unguarded heart. “It seems my word is all I have, and if it means nothing to anyone else, it means something to me.”

She smiles. An oaken hand reaches out and touches him on the face, gently. “My brave knight.”

Her eyes are the bluest skies he has ever seen. He is not afraid. Not anymore.

“Are you ready?” she asks him, still stroking his cheek.

“Yes.” He is eager for it now. “Strike your blow.”

“Straight through the heart,” she agrees. Then she reaches out with her other hand to touch the other side of his face.

She kisses him.

#dreadwulf fic #jaime lannister #braime

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loser-hub · 3 years

Text

Demon Slayer general relationship headcannons. Warning: Mild warnings here and there but nothing serious. All characters are 18+ inherently!

Tanjiro.

Mainly, dating Tanjy is a two-in-one kind of deal.

Being around him so much also means you're around Nezuko and if she doesn't like you, well, it's not going to work.

Good for you she immediately takes a liking to you and I mean immediately and by liking I mean love.

She pops out of her box when he attempts to introduce you two and she's smitten immediately. Loves to sit in your lap and hug you, it happens every moment possible. Its a lap stack. You on Tanjiro's lap and Nezuko on yours. Its adorable and makes them happy they can keep you warm and make sure you're protected!

On yeah, about that, its scary how protective they are of you. Even if you are a Demon Slayer too and are more than capable of protecting yourself, its how they express their love for you! They want to be with you so they'll do whatever they can to ensure your safety!

Tanjiro is a very patient person, almost too patient, but if someone tests him he's terrifying. He's the textbook definition of be wary the wrath of a patient man.

Secretly a fan of matching or complimentary outfits so get ready for him to show up with a haori that matches with theirs! Pink checkers or green florals all the way!

Zenitsu.

We all know how this would begin.

Doesn't matter if you're a man, woman, it, or think you look horrible because this man will beg for your hand in marriage.

Grabbing your hand, on his knees, crying and begging for you to marry him before he dies a horrible death. He's not the most graceful or subtle man but you humor him. Does that dance behind you as he calls out your name over and over day and night, he's so happy someone finally agreed to his request he can't help but want to smother you in love!

He might be unreliable in combat until he passes out but that isn't the case in every other instance, he's got the ability to remember just about everything you say. From the date of your birth, your favorite color, and everything you love and hate. Pops on in at random times to give you thing's he's "found".

Zenitsu totally has a fear of lightning storms, the booming thunder and trembling lightning has him running to you whenever one shows up. Frankly any random, loud sound makes him hide himself behind you. It would be quite if it wasn't for the fact that generally puts you in harms way. He'll apologize profusely once its all over and promise to not do it again but what happens the next time? He's cowering behind you.

Its quite the whiplash when he does faint and his other, more capable, romantic personality comes out. Saves you, gives you a smirk, and sweeps you off your feet. Quite literally and takes you somewhere safe. Which you get all the praise for when he wakes up, he bows down before you and kisses your feet as his way of praise. Crying as he thanks you for saving him.

He's a crybaby dumbass but at least he's your crybaby dumbass with a secret side. Now how to figure to get that out outside of him sleeping!

Inosuke.

Feral man has no idea what's going on most of the time so your presence would go right over his head.

When he did notice he couldn't understand the sudden feelings that gave him butterflies in his stomach, stupid bugs, how did they get in there?

You're the one person who he calls by the right name. Everyone else gets theirs messed up and butchered, but yours? He gets accurately. It baffles Tanjiro and Zenitsu when they hear the un-mumbled name that you were given at birth.

Competitive as fuck. Every little thing turns into who can do it better, even breathing, you're doing your normal tasks, chores or hobbies and he's next to you trying to outdo himself. It's quite endearing once you get past the shouting match. And when he claims he's superior and does everything better than you? He regrets it a little when he sees your face dip into gloominess. Though he quickly assumes it's because you want to go another round.

He doesn't understand, the poor boy.

It takes him being shouted at by Mr. Lightning Boi to finally get a grasp of the situation and even then its a vague, basic understanding at best. In his feral mindset is that you two aren't rivals, eternal competitors for him to gload over, but rather "mates". He chuckles his mad little laugh and dashes into the woods with his swords raised.

His return is late that evening, pulling a prey item he hunted himself and its dragged to you. No one else is allowed to touch it, much less eat it. That's yours and by extension his.

From that moment on his glued to your side and being uncharacteristically quiet, enjoying your presence as he comes to term that you're his mate. Whether you like it or not but you sigh in annoyance, all the little hints you've dropped and this is what he does? Sounds about right, don't you think?

Giyu.

Silent fury and annoyance.

He's so hard to read, he's the god of poker face. That hot, smoldering, poker face.

A bleeding heart and refuses to acknowledge it, he realized he had it when seeing Tanjiro for the first time in the snow, crying, begging and that's when he knew he was a softie.

Tries to ignore it to the best of his ability, tries to be stoic, stubborn hardass self but it gets harder and harder with you around.

Finds you so cute he can't function. Not like you'd ever know when he is or isn't functioning. He's too good at hiding it.

Really a low effort kind of guy.

Unless it's one of his stories then you have to beg him to shut up. Uses them as punishment.

And out of spite, sometimes he just likes hearing himself talk.

Really, truly can't handle seeing someone cry, especially if its someone he knows and cares about. Goes right to his soft side.

Especially if its you, in any way.

Seeing you cry because you got hurt to simply feeling to much and having it overflow always make him nervous, he's not used to consoling people so if and when he tries, it's less than stellar. Its the thought that counts right?

His guilty pleasure is having his hair brushed and played with. Have you seen it? Luscious but barely manageable being a Demon Hunter and all. When he returns to you after a mission, sit him down on the tatami mat, release his hair from the tie and brush it. Anything will do, a comb or your fingers though the latter is preferred since he lives for scalp massages. If he needs rest this is the most way to lull him into a peaceful sleep.

Yushiro.

Give yourself a medal to be the first person to actually get his attention away from Lady Tamayo.

He has tunnel vision for her that when he sees something that doesn't have to do with her is a miracle...or curse.

But now you have to deal with him following you around like a lost puppy.

Very tsundere at first...okay he's always tsundere but varying degrees depending on the state of your relationship.

Stalks you a bit too, hides behind trees and around corners, peeking around them to get a look at you and goes invisible when you look over your shoulder.

Wondering why he feels this way about you and he has to make sure you aren't a threat. Little does he know he falls a little more in love with you every time he sees you.

When you do interact, he's cold and distant. He buffs, crosses his arms and looks away...trying to hide the fact that when you smile at him his ears go red.

Finally, finally, after he stops his tip-toeing around you oh you're in for trouble. He's stepped up his game and he's more dedicated to you than he is to Tamayo.

Like most demons he's inherently over-protective and possessive so good luck talking with people aside from the patients at the secret clinic and if you have to go out, he's creating a parchment that protects you as well and of course not without him at your side as well.

Loves when you kiss his forehead or cheek, his favorites are Eskimo, he can give you affection and you don't taste the blood he has to consume!

Careful though that too many kisses does make him go into his tsundere mode.

#kimetsu no yaiba #demon slayer #kimetsu no yaiba x reader #demon slayer headcannons #tanjiro x reader #zenitsu x reader #inosuke x reader #giyu x reader #yushiro x reader #tanjiro headcannons #zenitsu headcannons #inosuke headcannons #giyu headcannons #yushiro headcannons #tw: fluff #tw: mild spice

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lorei-writes · 3 years

Text

Smut Alphabet: Masamune (A-Z)

Contents: Various aspects of sexuality and suitor’s sexual preferences. Certain kinks may be mentioned, but they are not described in much detail.

A: Afterglow

How are they after the moment? Do the fall asleep fast? Prefer to cuddle? Just roll onto their side and want to be left alone?

Given how hectic Masamune’s life is, it comes as little surprise that oftentimes, he is plainly tired afterwards, all his wishes being reduced to cuddling up with his lover and falling asleep, even if just for a short nap. Just in general, however, it is a bit of a vulnerable moment for him, all his scars being clearly visible, his face still being flushed. If it is possible, he will stay up until his lover falls asleep... He may also be a little grumpy if he cannot get at least a single hug afterwards.

B: Boundaries

Do they have any hard “no”s, things they would never do? Any hard boundaries? What are those?

He is rather open to experiments, but he still has his public persona to uphold. As such, anything that could possibly spoil his or his lover’s image is off limits (for example, public humiliation). Other than that, it may happen sometimes that he’d rather keep his eyepatch on, it’s something that may come up every now and again.

C: Curious

Is there something they’d like to try out? Does something fascinate them?

Well, it isn’t necessarily obtainable in the past, but if there was ever a chance to get in possession of those, he’d be curious to try modern sex toys. His lover did tell him a bunch about the different types of those, what they can be used for, and it seems to have inhabited the back of his head ever since.

D: Daring

How much are they willing to tease their partner in public? Perhaps it does not end only on teasing?

Flirting, stray touches, kisses that are perhaps just a little bit too much to handle - all in all, if chances of them being noticed are rather slim, Masamune is willing to go all on. However, he enjoys the flustered face of his lover quite a lot and as such, will most likely draw it out. Is it him torturing his partner, or him torturing himself? Ah, both, indeed, both.

E: Emotion

What is their approach to having sex? Is it a deeply emotional experience for them, something casual, or perhaps - it depends?

At first he was very casual about it, the entire act being just means of calming down and relaxing. He never got too emotionally invested into it, the partners he had never staying for too long just regardless. He doesn’t regret having this approach, but his views did change after he fell for his lover. Gradually, he begun to invest more feelings into it, so ultimately - it depends! Sometimes it’s just a fun activity, sometimes means to bond with each other, sometimes both!

F: First Time

What was their first time like?

He remembers it as being a little embarrassing. For one thing, he didn’t really have anybody to talk about most sex-related topics before, so well, he did have to go into it while knowing only so much. However, his partner was more experienced than him, so he just let her take the lead and teach him.

It also ties with the story of how his low tolerance to alcohol was discovered. They did want to have a go at it earlier, but his partner suggested getting a drink first, as to relax a little. Well, she certainly did not expect for Masamune to just fall asleep right there and then. He could hardly live it down and it still makes for semi-valuable blackmail material.

G: Guilty Pleasure

Is there something they enjoy, although they aren’t particularly proud of it?

It may not be the act itself, but the feeling accompanying it. It sometimes happens that, after he risked a bit too much and got injured as a result, his lover takes the lead and gets just a little rough. He is generally more so dominant towards them being dominant, but there is just something about it when they tie his wrists up and pin him down...

H: Hands

How is their touch? Do they lean more towards being rather rough, or perhaps gentle?

Endless hours of wielding a sword have left his hands rather rough. Nevertheless, if he just wishes so, his touch can be gentle and soothing - and it is so, whenever he wants to spoil his partner rotten and feels well enough. Some days are more emotionally draining, however, or much rather - anxiety inducing. He generally turns rougher then.

I: Imagination

Is there something they fantasise about? Would they want to turn it into the reality?

Masamune doesn’t generally let his mind wander, always opting to focus on the present... However, there are certain moments during the day when he lets himself be more lax - when falling asleep, soon after waking up... He may be thinking of what happened in his dream, but his real weakness is his lover doing anything in particularly suggestive manner. He also sometimes thinks of them playing out different roles. Some of those he’ll most probably bring up at one point.

J: Jest

How likely they are to joke about and during sex?

Joke about sex? More so general jokes are guaranteed to occur. Anything too specific to his relationship is unlikely to surface - unless it is an innuendo only his lover will understand. As for joking during sex... It is a fun activity! If anything goes mildly wrong or embarrassing, he is sure to laugh it off. (Well, unless it’s him who is the embarrassed one. He may need some help then).

K: Knowledge

Are they experienced? Is there something they didn’t or still don’t know?

Practise-wise he is very experienced - he was not only willing to try out different things, but had his fair share of partners. However, biology-wise... He may be lacking in that subject quite a bit, at least with the daily side of things. As in, he did know of period and that they appear roughly once a month, but since he never really shared his life with anybody, he wasn’t too aware of food cravings that happen before them, or of how severe the cramps can be.

L: Loud

Are they loud? Do they prefer to stay silent? What sounds to they make?

He generally tried to stay on the quieter side, and he still does, but well... It is not hard for his lover to fluster him and turn his grunts into moans, quite the opposite.

M: Misfortune

What is the most unfortunate thing that ever happened to them while having sex? How accident-prone are they?

Given his observant nature and the fact that he’s generally vigilant, Masamune is a sort of accident repellent. However, even he lets his guard down sometimes... Apparently, a moment of distraction is all it takes for a ruined orgasm and his lover slipping, falling forward, and accidentally elbowing him on the blind side of his face. He did have a bruise afterwards.

N: Nudity

How do they feel about their body? Are they insecure about something? Are they confident?

On most days, he’s rather confident in his looks. He is aware that his scars are part of the charm too, and that some view those as attractive - so quite honestly, the sprinkle of insecurity he felt upon entering a more so stable relationship was very surprising to him. His lover was the first person to touch the mark after his missing eye, after all... However, with enough time, it diminished almost completely and only ever resurfaces on the most draining of days.

O: Open

How open are they about their fantasies and wants? Is it hard for them to share those with their partner?

He’s very open about his needs, and save for few ideas, it is basically guaranteed that if he truly wants something, he will bring it up sooner rather than later. He doesn’t find it particularly hard too, well.. Unless there is an off-chance it will make him look mildly “uncool” - bad habits die hard.

P: Preferences

What do they like in their partner? What turns them on, what does the very opposite?

He loves it when his partner shows their need, when they speak up about what they want, and how they want it. Them being expressive and loud? Getting a little rough with him in return, their fingers pulling at his hair? It gets him going so much. As for the opposite of that... He does have a rather sensitive nose, so aside from the obvious lack of hygiene: a very strong perfume, or an overly sweet one. The scent of alcohol. He also generally doesn’t necessarily fancy the idea of his partner having their entire life circle around their beauty and maintaining it, even at the expense of enjoying themselves.

R: Regrets

Are there some things they regret having done? Or perhaps some things they wish they had tried?

No. Masamune strives to live his life without regrets. If he wants something? He will reach for it, or at the very least try to and see what his partner thinks.

S: Safe Word

What would their safe word be? Would they ever need it? When?

Oh, they have a couple of those! “Can we have sweet buns for dinner?” if his teasing in public starts getting too far. “Shogetsu wouldn’t like that” for when they’re having sex. Three squeezes at any body part if they can’t speak, for any reason (be it while they’re making love or in public).

T: Tested

What are some of their favourite activities to indulge in? The positions they’ve tested and enjoy? Something they’d go for while tired in the evening?

It’s rather situation specific! For early mornings, especially if he’s still a bit sore (either after injury or being more passionate the night prior): both him and his lover lying on their sides, their back turned towards him and he rolls his hips into them For evenings/nights, when he’s especially tired and in need of comfort: missionary For when he’s injured and cannot move too much without pain: his partner riding him, mutual masturbation Other than that, oral sex by itself is on the list too.

U: Unknown

Do they hold any secrets? Are there some things they have not shared with their partner?

Masamune never hid it whenever he missed his lover, but he never went into details about it either. As such, the dreams he sometimes has when they’re apart for longer, but soon to meet again are a bit of his secret.

W: Weakness

What are their weak spots?

Hmm... His ears, when their teeth just lightly graze them. The inside of his wrist when his lover kisses it. He’s also always moved when his lover caresses his scar.

X: XOXO

Have they ever sent texts/letters with some suggestive content? How likely are they to do so?

~can include a snippet of such a letter

Yes. Masamune has done it and he will most likely do it again.

[in reply]

Yes, I do miss you. But what do I miss the most? I cannot tell. Is it your smile? The way your lips feel on mine? I wish to nibble at your neck and see your eyes cloud again. I wish to taste you, your hands in my hair as you writhe in pleasure and beg for more. I want to hear your moans as I rock you, to feel your nails dig into my shoulders.

How can you ask which one of those I miss the most? Clearly, we would have to try them all again for me to fully know... Or perhaps even some more, if you had some doubts of your own.

Y: Yearning

How fast do they start to miss their partner?

It generally takes a couple weeks, perhaps even a bit over a month. As much as it may not set in fast, it sets in violently - and once they reunite, he is truly hungry of their affection.

Z: Zealousness

Do they like to give? To receive? How zealous are they in pleasuring their partner?

Overall, he doesn’t like to receive more than he gives, and prefers to finish his partner at least once before the attention is split between the two of them. He feels neutral about going down on his partner - it’s not his favourite thing by itself, but their reactions are well worth it, so it’s enjoyable in that way. He’s a bit uneasy when he’s on the receiving end first.

Tag list: @nad-zeta, @cheese-ception , @tsubaki3192 , @rikumorimachisgirl Notes: After a bit of internal debate, I decided to tag only people I know for smut, only if they 18 or older. (It is strictly for the sake of peace of my mind). Thanks for your consideration ^^”

#masamune date #ikesen masamune #ikemen sengoku masamune #ikesen #ikemen sengoku #ikemen series #my ff #my writing #editing who no we're going in with all the typos and what not

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vvitchering · 3 years

Note

I love, LOVE, your writing! Would you be up for some hurt/comfort Gesekel? I'm a sucker for it, especially along the lines of Geralt thinking Eskel has died on the path but then he shows up with his grin and the whole "you should know better Wolf". 💜

I’m so happy to hear that you enjoy my writing ;w; I write for you guys so getting feedback like this literally fuels me. I am also a sucker for hurt/comfort so you are absolutely in luck~

It’s never a pretty sight when he makes his way through settlements ravaged by the war. As Nilfgaard pushes ever northward, the people suffer. Geralt is used to carnage wrought by mindless creatures, but seeing the violence done by men to men makes his stomach turn. The bright side, if it can be called a bright side, is that with war comes death, and with death come monsters. War can be profitable for witchers, if there is coin left to be paid.

He’s just north of White Orchard, in one such town left ransacked and bloody by a skirmish. The notice board had been covered in desperate pleas for assistance with the encroaching necrophages, drawn in by the stench of blood and bodies. Ghouls and Algouls looking to make meals of the dead would quickly move on to living prey once the bodies were devoured. A witcher was needed. Geralt holds one of the contract offers in his hand as he talks to the barkeep at the town’s tavern, one of the only buildings left intact.

“Ghouls were a big problem, yeah, but you’re a bit late. Another witcher beat you to them, though that might be to your benefit.”

Geralt frowns. He doesn’t often encounter other witchers. They tend to stick to their own territories.

“And how is that to my benefit exactly.” Geralt asks, already mentally counting his losses. If this town was already clean, he had a week at least to go before he again encountered a settlement big enough to find work in.

The barkeep gives him a slightly sympathetic look.

“He drove out the flesh eaters, but they still got ‘im in the end. Poisonous bite, you know? Got ‘im right in the neck and it wasn’t long before he stopped moving. Real shame. Wasn’t a bad guy for a witcher, had a bit of good humor about 'im, even with that scarred face of his.”

Geralt’s heart speeds up despite himself. There are plenty of witchers with facial scars. It’s not him.

He asks the barkeep to describe the good humored witcher.

Brown hair, strong jaw, wide nose, and terrible scars that disfigured the side of his face and twisted his mouth.

Geralt’s blood chills in his veins. It’s not possible. No way he’d let something as mundane as a ghoul take him out.

“Friend of yours?” the barkeep asks.

Geralt is reeling, still trying to process the information, still finding loopholes, when the man reaches underneath the bar and produces a long thin object, wrapped in a white sheet.

“Was gonna try to sell it, but if he was your kin it’s rightfully yours.”

Any doubt Geralt was trying to hold onto vanishes as he pushes aside the sheet. It’s a witcher’s silver sword, adorned with runes as familiar as the ones on his own sword, and altered at the grip to be easier for larger hands to wrap around comfortably. It’s Eskel’s, unquestionably. And no witcher would let his silver out of his sight unless...

“Where.” Geralt bites out. “Where is he.”

“The body? Dragged ‘im to the old oak by the hill. Couldn’t spare the labor to bury ‘im, you understand, but it seemed the least we could do for his help.”

Geralt snatches Eskel’s sword from the bar and leaves as quickly as his feet can carry him. He leaves Roach tethered outside and takes off at a run toward the hill he can see by the edge of the town. It’s a mistake. It has to be. It can’t be, the evidence is in his hands, but it must be.

There’s a figure resting at the base of a huge oak that looms into view the closer he gets to the hill. It’s not him. It can’t be him.

Geralt skids to a stop. Falls to his knees in the dirt, the sword slipping from his hands to rest in front of him.

Eskel is splattered with dried but foul smelling blood and his armor is ripped and tattered. The townspeople must have arranged him in the dignified position he laid in; back straight, eyes closed, his steel sword resting on his chest. They’ve laid him to rest like they would a respected warrior, albeit one who they couldn’t spare the resources to bury or burn.

There’s a high pitched agonized whine coming from somewhere. It takes Geralt a moment to realize it’s coming from his own throat. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew this day would come. No witcher ever died in his bed. But for it to be Eskel, already... They were both still young, by witcher standards, barely men, not even at their first hundred years. And Eskel was gone.

Distantly, Geralt registers that he’s crying. He feels lightheaded, like his soul is trying to escape and go somewhere else, like it can’t stand to exist in a reality where Eskel does not. Geralt shuffles forward on his knees until Eskel is close enough to touch. He bends over the fallen witcher and presses his face to his neck, searching for his scent, one last memory to hold onto.

Eskel’s lightning storm essence is there still, underneath the putrid stink of necrophage blood. Geralt breaths it in, greedy, desperate, tears dripping from his face to Eskel’s neck and leaving tracks in the filth there.

And then he hears it. A weak fluttering thud. A heartbeat. Geralt freezes, doesn’t even dare to breath, lest he destroy himself all over again with false hope.

A moment passes. Then another.

The dull thud sounds again.

He’s alive.

The relief is sudden and all consuming. Geralt collapses, curls around Eskel as best he can with all of their armor between them, and lets his sobs shake him apart. Eskel’s heart is slow, slower than even a witcher’s should be, and his chest doesn’t move at all for how shallow his breaths are, but he’s alive.

He’s alive.

Geralt tries to match his breaths to Eskel’s and finds himself slipping into meditation. Eskel is clearly on a deeper level than Geralt has ever experienced, if being handled and transported by humans and having his sword taken from him didn’t draw him out of the trance. Geralt drifts, exhausted by both his grief and his joy, and only stirs when he feels the pillow he’s made of Eskel’s chest shift under him.

Eskel groans and it’s the most beautiful sound Geralt has ever heard in his life. He sits up in a hurry and snakes a hand under Eskel’s neck to help the larger witcher sit up. His eyes are open and his pupils shrink and grow rapidly as he blinks and reorients himself. His gaze lands on Geralt and he smiles.

“Could’ve used you here a few days ago.”

His voice is rough and dry, but the deep tones are instantly comforting.

“You so far off your game you let a few ghouls turn you into a chew toy?” Geralt teases.

Eskel rolls his eyes and and moves to rotate his shoulder until it pops satisfyingly. He stretches his neck, producing a similar crack, and Geralt catches a glimpse of the half healed bite wound on Eskel’s neck. The barkeep’s story had been true, then. He brings a hand up to smooth down Eskel’s collar and lightly brush over the angry red skin. Eskel hisses and slaps his hand away.

“Gonna scar.” Eskel says gloomily. “I’ll never live it down.”

“You will. You’ll live.”

Geralt means it to sound light and humorous, but the look Eskel gives him says his joke didn’t quite land the way he’d hoped.

“I’m fine. It was just a ghoul. Got me in a hell of a shitty spot, but it’ll take more than that to get rid of me.”

“I know, its just...They told me you died. You looked dead. I couldn’t hear your heart.”

Eskel reaches up and slides his fingers through Geralt’s hair to cup the back of his head. He pulls lightly, bringing Geralt close enough to knock foreheads with him. It’s an action that they’d done since they were children at Kaer Morhen, their own special way of being close. Geralt can hear Eskel’s heart now, beating away strong and loud in his chest.

“I’m sorry I scared you. I really am fine.” Eskel says quietly, rubbing absently at Geralt’s scalp with the hand buried in the white strands.

Geralt leans into the pressure for a moment and then pulls away, clearing his throat after the emotional display.

“Don’t fucking do it again.” Geralt says, feigning annoyance.

Eskel laughs and Geralt once again has a new favorite sound.

“Yeah, sure, Wolf. I’ll do my best.”

*~*

:’) well that certainly got away from me. I hope this makes up for how long it took me to answer!!

#prompt fill #eskel/geralt #geskel #eskralt #the witcher #mine #my fic #ANYWAY HERE'S THIS

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queen-scribbles · 3 years

Text

Assumptions

This started as a prompt fill for @storyknitter, but kinda started... veering away from the prompt (selcouth). It still sort-of fits, and I wanna post it, but I’m hanging on to the actual prompt in my inbox in case I get an idea that sticks closer(and is shorter; this baby is 1100 words). (Pre-relationship Ves/Kurt)

----

First watch tended to be quiet, and tonight was no exception. Vesper, as she’d gotten in the habit of doing, took advantage of the time to care for her blades. She kept one ear and half an eye on her surroundings as she did, well aware some of the local fauna were quite stealthy. The soft crunch of footsteps came from behind her as she finished with her saber and she tightened her grip on the hilt when she turned to look.

“Just me,” Kurt said quietly, a chuckle on the edge of the words, “but good reflexes.”

“I had a good teacher,” Vesper replied with a smile, just as quietly so she didn’t wake Sìora. Her brow furrowed. “Is it your watch already? Doesn’t feel like it’s been that long.”

He shrugged. “Close enough. And if the choice is between futile attempts to get just a bit more sleep and lending a hand with the end of your watch, I’d just as soon make myself useful.”

She snorted at the thought of reducing him down to simply useful. “Well, then...” She shifted to the side, making more room on the flat rock serving as her perch, and gestured to the space in silent invitation.

There was just enough room that when Kurt sat down their shoulders weren’t quite touching. Even so, there was a level of comfort, of rightness, to having his familiar strength so close. Especially in such a (wonderfully)wild and unfamiliar place as this. Aside from the faint ringing scrape as he set his sword against a nearby rock, close at hand if needed, they sat in silence.

Vesper surveyed the environs again, her gaze slowing as it passed over Kurt’s profile, silhouetted against the hillside beyond in the faint moonlight. It took a moment to register she was subconsciously filling in the details she couldn’t quite see; his strong jawline, heavy brows, grey eyes...

She wrenched her gaze down to her lap with a start. Staring was rude, what had brought that on? Her neck and ears warmed at the possible answer and she fretted with the bandages around her wrist as a distraction.

“You alright?” Kurt asked, noticing her sudden preoccupation with the bandages, even if he missed the reason behind it.

“Mm-hm.” Vesper bit her lip and pressed lightly against the bandages. “It’s only a scratch, remember? Nothing serious.” She huffed a wry laugh. “It just itches a bit, yet I know better than to scratch.” It wasn’t a lie.

“I know the feeling,” he said, equally wry smile in his voice.

I’ll bet you do, she mused. He certainly had more than his share of scars. “It will be fine, though.”

They lapsed into silence briefly before Kurt spoke again. “Does it bother you, Green Blood?”

“...What?”

“When people presume they know what you’re about? What you want?”

Ah. He meant the conversation with the native that had preceded the fight responsible for her ‘just a scratch’.

“Sometimes,” Vesper admitted, bracing her forearms against her knees as she leaned forward to stare into the dark. “I strive to judge people on their own merits, their own actions, rather than group reputation. It can be frustrating when the favor is not returned. But in the natives’ case I can hardly blame them.” She sighed. “The Bridge Alliance sees them as little better than beasts, Theleme’s been spouting off that their religion, the very fabric of their culture, is barbaric and... and demonic, and even the Congregation has treated them more as a problem or resource than potential allies. It makes sense that they’d view all us foreigners as monsters of ill-intent at first blush, who only mean them harm.”

Kurt grunted and shifted position. Even if he didn’t say as much, it was easy to guess he disagreed, at least in part.

She arched a brow. “It’s human nature, Kurt. Surely you’ve had to deal with people making all manner of assumptions due to you being Coin Guard. I’ve heard some of them; ill-mannered, cold-hearted, mercenary bastards...”

He snorted a laugh that was almost too loud in the nighttime stillness. “Aye, I have, but, Green Blood, those are true.”

It was Vesper’s turn to snort in disagreement, a surprisingly strong surge of defensiveness cresting in her chest. “They are not-!” Not of you, at least.

“They are,” Kurt cut her off before her protest could go further--or louder. “And I’m alright with that.”

I’m not, Vesper thought rebelliously. But the middle of the night, in earshot of a sleeping friend, was not the time to have that argument. So she held her silence on the subject. For now. “Whatever assumptions people may make, I appreciate having you to watch my back.”

“Well, you’re welcome, but you hardly need it,” he said with a smile she only just caught in the dim light.

“Also not true,” she retorted. “Even just yesterday; d’you really think I could have handled that last group of tenlans on my own?”

“I did say hardly, Green Blood,” Kurt pointed out, a laugh under the words.

“Ah, well, in that case, I will accept the offered praise,” Vesper said lightly. She did have to admit it set something warm fluttering in her chest. Praise for improved abilities always felt good, of course, but this was somehow different. Her gaze went to the hillside again at a faint flicker of movement, but it was just a fox darting through the grass, best she could tell. She stifled a yawn and tried to ignore the urge to study his profile again out of the corner of her eye.

“You can turn in if you want,” Kurt said,his shoulder brushing hers when he turned her way. (The warmth of it made her shiver, and really, where was this coming from?) “It’s close enough to my watch, a handful of minutes won’t make much difference.”

She was rather tired. Maybe that was where the butterflies in her chest were coming from; fatigue. (No, no it wasn’t and she knew it.) “I believe I’ll take you up on that,” she said, resting a hand on his arm as she levered herself to her feet. “Thank you.”

He grunted softly in acknowledgement. “We need you in good shape, don’t we?”

Vesper gave a quiet laugh. “I suppose we do. G’night, Kurt.”

He merely nodded in response, and she smiled as she headed for her bedroll, her hand curled in front of her, a shield as she flexed her fingers at the lingering warmth. The night was still quiet as she laid down--save the background chorus of insects that lulled her to sleep before she could dwell too deeply on the strange new warmth filling her chest.

...But there was always tomorrow.

#queens fic #greedfall #vesper de sardet #kurt #greedfall kurt #ves/kurt

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victoriousscarf · 3 years

Text

I was tagged in this many moons ago by @dreadfutures

Name: Mahanon of Clan Lavellan

Alias: Herald, Inquisitor, Dandelion, Sweetheart, Flowers

Gender: Male

Age: Mid, inching up to late 30s

Species: Elf

Zodiac: aquarius / aries / cancer / capricorn / gemini / leo / libra / pisces / sagittarius / scorpio / taurus / virgo / unknown

(I feel like I need to be clear when I say he’s a Virgo I decided that the way I decide all my character horoscopes: I pulled out “shitty horoscopes” by Amrit Brar and read through until I found one where the most vibed with the character. Some highlights:

“Some bodies may be temples, but all are ruins at your feet”

“your teeth are only porcelain, your ribcage simply glass. like all delicate things, they can know no permanence.”

“worse than having too many secrets is having no secrets at all”

“there is a variety of sadness that makes a home in your guts and never quite leaves”

“there’s asking for forgiveness, there’s asking for permission, and then there’s saying “fuck it,” and doing what you may.”

“to labor in love, to toil in tenderness.”)

Abilities/Talents: Two handed Champion, got a really good handle on the Anchor, building his own image, caring for animals, and does the Well of Sorrows and all it’s weird ass visions and personality count here...?

{𝑃𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙}

Alignment: lawful / neutral / chaotic / good / neutral / evil / true

Religion: It’s complicated when you find out your gods were sorta just assholes

Sins: envy / greed / gluttony / lust / pride / sloth / wrath

Virtues: charity / chastity / diligence / humility / justice / kindness / patience

Languages: Whatever the common language around Thedas is, plus a lot of minor knowledge of phrases and words from all the world traveling he did the first time around. Ancient elven.

Family: His biological parents died before he could remember them, and he has no siblings, but that doesn’t matter as much when your Clan is your family. The Keeper specifically raised him and Ellana after they lost their parents around the same time, so if he had a “sister” and a “mother” it would be them.

Friends: He usually gets along really well with people, especially the inner circle. Last time he was especially close with Bull, Blackwall, Sera, Cassandra and Cullen, and Vivienne could at best be described as cold acquaintance. This time around he’s still close with them but has added Hawke and Vivienne to the BFF squad. He’s also quite close with Alim Surana, and has a strange, grudging friendship with Loghain Mac Tir that he’s sorta pissed about.

Sexual Orientation: heterosexual / bi-/pansexual / homosexual / demisexual / asexual / unsure / other

Relationship status: single / dating / married / widowed / open relationship / divorced / not ready for dating/ IT’S COMPLICATED

Libido: sex god / very high / high / average / low / very low / non-existent

{𝑃ℎ𝑦𝑠𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙}

Build: twig / bony / slender / average / athletic / curvy / chubby / obese

Hair: white / blonde / brunette / red / black / other

Eyes: brown / blue / green / black / other -> Grey

Skin: pale / fair / olive / light brown / brown / very brown / other

Height: average for an elf, if edging toward the shorter side

Weight: ... listen I do not think these things out so excuse me again but average for whatever a two handed elf warrior would be. Whatever it is would mostly be muscle.

Scars: He’s got them, but they can mostly be covered by armor. He’s got a lot of little nicks and weird scars on his hands from sorta throwing himself straight into battle under all circumstances. He’s got burns and stab wounds, and particularly the wound from the original Solas.

Facial Features: Aside from the Vallaslin? I mean, his face isn’t particular round, nor is it particularly angular. I always thought of him as being generically pretty. Like without the whole Mythal’s tree and his ridiculous floppy hair and flower crown, you’d still think of him as being pretty, but not necessarily so memorable that looking back at memories of him, he wouldn’t have gotten a bit fuzzy over time. He stands out, but not necessarily for his face.

Tattoos: Mythal’s Vallaslin, technically done at two very different parts of his life.

{𝐶ℎ𝑜𝑜𝑠𝑒}

Dogs or Cats? (Tho he loves all animals and frankly would be happiest with his own heard of halla to care for)

Birds or Hamsters?

Snakes or Spiders?

Red or Blue?

Yellow or Green?

Black or White?

Coffee or Tea?

Ice Cream or Cake? (Tiny cakes please)

Fruits or Vegetables?

Sandwich or Soup?

Magic or Melee?

Sword or Bow?

Summer or Winter?

Spring or Autumn?

The Past or The Future?

#vs does a meme #the forest is dark and deep and ive seen you here before

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akkalatechlabs · 3 years

Text

The Rise of Amadeus.

So after some talk with @artisticzaati I’ve decided I’ll post the side storyline that blossomed the most Amadeus art and really shows how he is at his peak. It’s written by him and I but I altered it a bit to make it more... readable for tumblr. You’re welcome!

TW: Extreme descriptions of violence and major character death.

Ravii awaited at the spot they made the deal at; Fort Hateno. The corrupted king sat upon a decaying guardian, looking up at the clouds slowly moving across the moon. Round and bright... Closing his eyes he listened to everything around him, the crickets, the wind blowing into the hollow guardians... it was honestly, peaceful. Not for long however, once that man step foot on the field, the kingdom was going to fall into his hands. If everything fell into place as he planned, like pawns on a chessboard, he would sweep this land and take it by force. It all depended on one man. The one who better hold his end of the bargain. If he did not show however...

Ravii takes out the locket in his pocket, looking at it. Opening it up it has a simple name in it beside the picture of that man and a woman together: 'Purah.'

"Purah... Hm.." He closes the locket and shoves it back into his pocket, "I will see you soon it seems." He sighs, hopping off the guardian.

Robbie, far from Ravii looked down at the new sword hybrid in his hands, swallowing nervously. This was all Ravii wanted and it was over.

Simple.

“... Alright. Alright! Get ahold of yourself...” Robbie whispers to himself.

(HE IS GOING TO TURN ON YOU.)

Robbie freezes in place. No... not him. Not now!

“... everything will be alright.” Robbie reassured himself and... the other.

Nodding to himself he walks to Fort Hateno, raising his gaze on Ravii walking away. Robbie inhales and runs over to meet him, breathing heavily.

“Wh-wait-! I am here, as promised! I... I also brought this, as promised!” He holds out the sword bladesaw combination, looking up at him for a moment then bows his head down, holding up the sword over his head.

“It is light and swift as a normal sword but when you pull the trigger, it activates the bladesaw part...” He swallows nervously, staring at the ground. He can feel the other's gaze on him. Looking down on him. Burning into him... He hated every moment of it. But he needed to protect Purah and their child from this man at all costs.

"Impressive... you made it pretty quickly too." Ravii raised an eyebrow, taking the sword out of Robbie's hands. He takes out his other sword to compare the two blades carefully. Testing out the weight of each blade. He swings the ancient tech sword, humming to himself. Swings his other sword right after.

Another amused hum leaves the King.

"You are quite talented. Never met someone who can craft such weaponry like this before..." He glances at Robbie, seeing his head still bowed, "You impress me." He pulled the trigger and gasped as it went off.

Immediately Ravii dropped his old sword on the ground to grasp the new blade with both his hands. Swinging it side to side, full force. Turning around he looks at the decaying guardian and swings at one of the legs, immediately cutting through it.

"It is incredible! Such power..." Ravii smiles and looks at Robbie once more, pulling the trigger to make it stop, using the tip of the blade to lift Robbie's chin to make him look up.

"You have my trust. All of it."

That was no easy feat.

Sweat dripped on Robbie’s forehead as he looked up at Ravii, forcing out a smile.

“Of course! It is always a pleasure to create new weapons... this was a difficult one but I did it! It is one of my best...” He slowly stood up, carefully pushing the tip of the sword away with his finger and took a deep breath.

“Are... Are we done here? I brought you the sword. That is all you asked for, right? Is... is there anything else?” The Sheikah regrets opening his mouth already. He HAD to ask if there was anything else... Careless again.

... As always.

Robbie's expression slowly changes to a grin, crossing his arms and shrugs.

"Not that I would give you anything else. The sword is all yours now, can I leave, your Majesty or whatever you are.”

Robbie suddenly snaps out of it, his eyes widen and he covers his mouth.

“NOT NOW... NOT RIGHT NOW... YOU IDIOT” Robbie thought to himself, directing it to the other.

“ ... M-My apologies I... I...” Robbie swallows nervously. The other one was going to get them both killed at this rate.

Ravii was taken aback by the sudden expression change of the other. His sudden... tone of voice and atmosphere around him sent the King to a genuine shock.

"... What did you say to me? Repeat yourself." He aims the sword to Robbie's face, the tip of the blade just mere inches away from nose. Ravii leans closer to Robbie, glaring intensely at him. Eyes sharp as the blade itself.

"Say that again to me." Ravii glared at the Sheikah.

Robbie’s eyes widen as he gazes at the tip of his own creation in from of him. Slowly his eyes travel up to Ravii's face.

“I... erm, I don't remember. I have this uh, c-condition it's uh... very serious. My brain just mutters weird things and I cannot control it!” This was incredibly unbelievable. Lying was not his best suit, that's for sure. But there was half-truth even with how ridiculous it sounded...

“K-King Ravii, I apologize if I said anything to trouble you. Please forgive me. I beg of you! I'll make it up to you! Another weapon! Or... or... just...” He had to remain calm, this would go very badly if he screwed it up.

“... Th-the guardians. I'll make you a custom one that only listens to you! I can d-do that! Simple!” Robbie held his head down now, looking at his own legs wobbling from the amount of tension and fear he was facing right now. He felt sick, unstable... as if he could faint right here from the high stress.

"... Such disrespect for me will end up being your end. Do not speak to me again like that." Ravii lifts the blade slightly, tilting it to the side, slicing a bit of Robbie's cheek deeply.

"... Understood? You are mine. You speak ill towards me and you will face the consequences. I do not care if you were to die, I'll get to you and..." Drawing back, Ravii nods his head up, ordering Robbie to stand.

"... Purah, was it? If you wish to go against my words or even disrespect me even slightly... her blood will be on your hands. Do you understand me?”

All the color in Robbie’s face drained when he spoke her name... He knew her name.

He... knew her name.

Purah isn't safe anymore.

More was at stake now. More than he could handle. He couldn't handle this, he wanted to run far away with Purah for safety...

Swallowing nervously Robbie stood up, wiping the blood that dripped from the fresh cut on his cheek against the sleeve of his jacket. Smudging the mixture of crimson red and a dark glimmer of black color across his cheek, making a larger mess on his face... His eyebrows furrowed as he hissed in pain between his clenched jaw. Being cut by his own created sword, at least he knew it worked... how ironic was that? Robbie forced a chuckle under his breath at the thought alone. How dare this man make a fool out of his work like this?

Ravii turns around – his back facing Robbie. His cape gracefully following behind him.

The symbol of the Triforce was on it... Ravii wore it with pride.

"Now tell me... these guardians." Ravii spoke, glancing at Robbie with a side glance over his own shoulder, "How can they follow only my orders alone? How do you make them listen to your orders? Is it those ugly things you wear?" Motions his hand to his forehead, speaking of the goggles.

"They do not work for me when I took them. Why do these 'guardians' only listen to you? What makes such a simple person like you so special?" Ravii spat at Robbie, glaring at the Sheikah. He turns around again, about to grab his collar until ... what was that black on his cheek? Ravii clicks his tongue, quickly inspecting the blood and whatever the black stuff mixed with it was.

"Are you... even a Sheikah?" Ravii spoke as he scoops a little of it on his finger and rubs it between his index finger and thumb, looking closer.

"What is this? And why does it...burn?" Ravii wipes it on Robbie's jacket, frowning. "Ugh...disgusting. Let us go, you strange individual.... Clean yourself up. I don't want to be seen with such a mess of a person."

Robbie slowly raises his hand to his cheek, wiping the malice mixed blood onto his hand and his vision starts to blur. Taking a deep breath, he shook his head to gain his focus back.

“Ah... y-yes. The guardians and I are uh, you see... we are linked by a telepathic force. It took a while to master it but with the help of the ma-... ancient texts, I figured it out. It is a technique only the Sheikah can master. Especially me, since I... I have ancient technology built into me.” Robbie smiled a little as he taps his left temple, showing his burnt-out eye as it flickers for a moment.

“Without me, they will go haywire. Well, the ones under my control. There are still some that I haven't gotten to save yet... but that aside! If you have me, the guardians will also be on your side!”

Maybe with that fact he won't get hurt again, Robbie thought to himself.

“Meaning you lied to me just now, didn't you?" The corrupted king looked down at Robbie, his grip on the handle shaking, twitching... aching to cut the man testing his luck in front of him again.

"So, what is the truth? Can they only listen to you or perhaps... they will listen to me if they see who is stronger? Is that it?" A crooked grin slowly arched on Ravii's face, his expression becoming more twisted before the other's eyes.

"They just need to see who is the true leader here! The true king! I will guide them... I will guide them all... rushing to get what I deserve. I don't think I even need you anymore..."

Robbie’s eyes widened at the King, “No-! No... I am not lying! If I make it from scratch, I can program it to listen to you. The other ones are harder to do that. I swear! If I were to get hurt or..." Robbie swallows nervously, “...worse, they will target whoever hurt me majorly. A simple cut will not trigger them... but anything more severe? They will all go haywire and out of control searching for whoever hurt or killed me. I would never lie about something like this.” Robbie glances at Ravii's hand clenching the handle as he spoke. He could tell this man was clearly unstable. Worse than Astor, even...

“I will make you many guardians that listen to your orders! I just need more time! More time... I swear it! Please...

... Please...”

There was a sob slipping in his voice, Robbie was becoming scared and couldn't hold back anymore. Tears were pooling up as he felt he was begging for his life right now.

Ravii shook his head, laughing.

"Look at you! The real colors come out when I drop you. You beg for a use again... how humbling... but also incredibly pathetic." Ravii leans down, face to face with Robbie and wipes the tears off the other man's cheeks.

"Fear not... your actions will not be in vain! I know people like you. You only live to be useful for others. Over and over... but there is always someone better, isn't there? A replacement. Just know... that you will always be in my heart. This senseless vicious cycle will end..."

Ravii smiled, patting Robbie’s chest where his heart was, "And I'll make sure your dear Purah knows how proud you made the kingdom with your sacrifice..."

Ravii drew his hand back and with a swift movement, he lunged the blade into the Sheikah's chest, leaning closer to Robbie's ear, smiling widely. "A worthy right-hand man you were."

Robbie's eyes widen at the sharp pain in his chest, slowly glancing down at his own creation... no...

Robbie tries to push Ravii away as he drew closer again to him.

“... ngh!” Robbie mutters out as his gaze started to blur. No... he can't do this. Everything was blurring.

The pain was unbearable.

Ravii pulls the blade out and kicks him onto the ground as he takes the locket out of his own chest pocket, tossing it beside Robbie.

"As promised... Now then... I have a kingdom to take over and guardians to control. Goodbye, Robbie." Ravii turns on his heel, swinging his sword harshly to whip the blood off his blade as he walks away from the other laying on the ground. Ravii picks up his older sword he dropped from before, placing it back by his hip as he carried the new sword in his hand.

“Pu...rah...!” Robbie whispers as he lays on the ground. Clenching his teeth, he tries to pull himself up - sharp pain would travel throughout his body with every movement.

He cannot let him get Purah. No.. No....

Ravii’s ear twitches as he heard Robbie muttering something under his breath.

"Purah? Oh, that dear one? I'll take very good care of her. She is a pretty one... Maybe I'll make her MY wife!" The King cackles.

“...Ra...vii!” Robbie speaks a little louder, making sure the other could hear him.

With his final breath he whistles for the guardians, glaring at Ravii, his eyesight clearing on the other man. Focused. Scanning. Making sure the guardians would destroy him from where he stood. Even with his last breath he would make sure Purah would be safe from this man.

Ravii, still cackling at the Purah comment suddenly pauses as Robbie whistles. Tilting his head curiously.

Robbie slowly pointed at Ravii as guardians flew over him. Ravii, raising his head glances up at all the guardians flying towards him.

Ah. This was his chance!

"Hear me, mechanical beasts! I have defeated your... leader. You must listen to me now-" Robbie cuts him off with his last breath, simple two words that made Ravii freeze up.

“... destroy.... him!" The Sheikah screamed in pure anger and hatred and dropped. He had no more strength to move anymore.

All the red pointers all focused on Ravii - as much as he adored the attention, he knew this would end badly.

"... You bastard." Ravii clicks his tongue and takes a deep breath, glancing at the lifeless man across from him.

"You were telling the truth, huh?" Ravii shakes his head. Sighing, Ravii rushes towards Robbie and skids to a stop, sitting beside him.

"Shoot me. Your leader here is in shots way... want to hurt him more? Go ahead you idiotic beasts." He glares at the closest skywatcher to him dead center to the eye as he pats Robbie's head, cackling.

"Come on! Do it. Or listen to me..." A smirk arched Ravii’s lips.

The skywatcher scanned Ravii and Robbie beside him. Errors popping up on their side of the screen. Not knowing whether to shoot or not.

“ . . . (bzzzt) . . . Smart.” That was... Robbie's voice from the guardian? No. It was more glitched than his voice.

What was that?

“You are pretty smart for a royal pain in the ass, I'll give you that.”

Robbie's hand suddenly slammed on Ravii's shoulder as he used him to sit up, shaking his head and took a deep inhale and exhaled. That same black ink from before was manifesting by the blade wound.

Ravii flinches at the sudden hand on his shoulder as if all time stopped, he slowly turns his head, seeing the man he watched just die rise as if nothing happened. Like a phoenix from the ashes, he rises again... but this wasn't the same man.

No. He could feel the overwhelming power from him. There was something dark within him and it chilled even Ravii - nothing ever made him flinch.

Not like this.

“That hurt, you know. I told him you would betray us and he fell right into that one, the idiot.” Laughing 'Robbie' pats Ravii's shoulder, leaning his face in front of Ravii's with a big grin on his face.

“How dare you kill Robbie! We were just getting along too! But fret not, I'll save him eventually...

... but!

Until then! It's my turn to shine!” The corrupted Sheikah quickly grabs the hybrid sword he made and stands up fully.

“Time to rock!” He smiles as he swings the sword by Ravii's face

"What?! How are you still alive?!" Ravii screams and goes to grab his old sword just as the other swipes it from him, swinging it by his face - cutting a few hairs hanging from his forehead.

He was faster than Ravii in the state. What happened for him to change?

"What do you mean? You speak as if Robbie has died yet you - Robbie - are speaking to me right this moment! Have you gone mad?" Ravii swallows nervously as he jumps to his feet. He draws his old sword from his side, holding it up while watching the other closely.

"...Just who are you?!" Ravii glares at him, standing his ground now.

‘Robbie’ laughs and points the sword at Ravii while walking slowly around him, gazing.

“Finally someone asks! But you of all people...” His grin grows wildly as his stare intensifies.

“... I am Amadeus. I do not know what I am, but I have a body and mind, anger and passion. Am I alive? Who knows what I truly am. Perhaps I am merely apart of Robbie who was caged for so long... begging to be freed, or someone of my own. Malice with mind and soul of my own somehow? Despite it all...

... All I know is I am alive....and that we are one the same - two sides of the same coin. Unlucky for you, you ran out of luck with this flip. And now that I have full control again thanks to you, well...” Amadeus flips the sword in the air and catches it by the handle, snapping his stare at Ravii again.

“I'm going to make sure you regret threatening Purah into this mess. Robbie begged for her safety and trust. I am not so nice like that.” His head twitches as he glares at Ravii. Thinking for a moment his expression changes, a mischievous grin on his face quickly flashes.

“I'll be kind, I'll pretend to be Robbie for a moment though, just for fun! How would you like to go? A beam from one of my babies here or a sword into your empty void where your heart is supposed to be like you did with us?”

Amadeus taps his arm in a ticking rhythm. Grinning still.

“Tick. Tick. Tick... hurry before I choose for you!”

... For once.

For once in Ravii's entire life, he was speechless and terrified. What WAS this man? No ordinary Sheikah... why didn't he sense that power around him? Did he somehow keep it locked away within him? No... there was no way he could have done that. Ravii shakes his head and glances at the guardians above and the ones quickly scurrying on the horizon. More were coming and he was going to be surrounded - no escape. He had to think quick... Maybe if he struck them like last time, he can kill this "Amadeus" as well...

"You say you do not know what you are... perhaps I have... no, I truly did underestimate you. If you join me, imagine what we could do together - you and I! You could then discover who or what you are! Don't you realize what you can do? With this... with these..." He raises his hands up, looking at the guardians above them, "... we could take over this kingdom so easily. Just you and I alone!" Ravii was clearly shaking and avoiding the choices of his own execution.

"We can take over together, Amadeus. You have so much potential... and you are wasting it on me. Why not of grandeur scale?!" He was pointing his sword at him now; his voice was panicked - he couldn't calm himself.

"Please! I beg of you! Work alongside me!" Ravii’s voice was laced with desperation and fear. He stood, watching the other tilt his head in thought as he screamed and plead for Amadeus to join him.

“Oh, what was that? You beg of me? Wow... doesn't THAT sound familiar or WHAT?

Say it again,

say it again!” Amadeus cackles, clapping and walks towards him as two guardian stalkers follow him closely.

“Yeeeow... muuuusic to my ears!” Amadeus grabs Ravii by the front of his cape and with his other hand he loops his sword around Ravii's sword, knocking out of his hand. Amadeus then slams him against the wall, glaring at him.

“Tick TICK...

Actually, that is too bad... times up.”

“Wh-?!” Ravii winced as Amadeus slammed him against the wall, staring at the corrupted man in horror.

Amadeus tilts his head and pulls the trigger of the sword, making the smaller blades go on, rapidly spinning like the bladesaw.

“You said you want to see who I am? Want to work with me? Well...

... I made my decision.

You hurt me twice with my own weapon, now you'll see it's ‘true potential’.”

Just as Ravii did to Robbie - with a quick motion he drives the sword into the corrupted king, not breaking eye contact as he does so. Watching Ravii as all the color on his face drains. Just like he did with them.

Pulling the trigger again the blades stop and he let's go of the blade, leaving it there lodged in his chest.

Ravii coughs violently as his eyes widened at the horror in front of him. Not the guardians or even the sword... that man in front of him. Ravii has never felt so much fear in his life. The sword he requested was now in his own chest by the creator himself.

“I work for no one. If anything, I want to see this kingdom in ruin by my guardians. No kings nor queens, no monarchy... nothing. I don't care.

... Oh, and you can keep the sword. It was made for you after all.”

Ravii’s vision was shaking, blurred... he felt panic, nausea... all at once and suddenly he felt ...

... Cold.

Dropping to the ground he glanced up at the glowing eye of the monster in front of him. No, not the mechanical beasts... that monster he let out of the cage. Amadeus' eye glowing a dark, deep red looking down on him.

Amadeus watches Ravii fall to the ground and his grin only grows wider. It would be the last thing he sees along with the guardians lasers aiming at him. He waves his hand as he picks up Ravii's old sword and walks away.

The fallen king watches Amadeus pick up his sword and walk out of his sight. Now focusing on the red lasers of the guardians.

Amadeus hum one last word that would be the last thing Ravii hears.

As if all time stopped, everything was silent.

“... Boom.”

The guardians fire their beams all at once and the king's scream were drowned out by the loud boom of the beams.

King Ravii was no more.

Nothing, nor even the sword was left.

Like the kingdoms he left behind.

#my writing.txt ;;#amadeus #ravii dominis ii #king ravii dominis ii #artisticzaati #// here you go everyone.#Amadeus at his PEAK #Also an excuse to sneak in some purobbie in there because I can #PuRobbie all day every day #This is from May 1st too... it's pretty oldish now.

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abizarreyodelingincident · 4 years

Text

Linked Universe: Regrets

“Although I accepted life as the hero, I could not convey the lessons of that life to those who came after... At last, I have eased my regrets.”

Twilight had never forgotten those words. He had carried them with pride. Used them when his hands faltered. Remembered the strength that had been taught to him. Swords without courage meant nothing. With the lessons of the Hero's Shade, Twilight struck down Hyrule's greatest enemy for good.

(He thought. But there would be another after him, long after, but one nonetheless, and he would suffer greatly from the shadow of Hyrule's first enemy.)

Nowadays, it's a white lie that haunts his nights.

“Link... I... See you later.”

He's learned when things aren't meant to be. And he loves his fellow heroes. Wouldn't trade them for peaceful days wandering his Hyrule. He loves them. Like brothers. Like another father. But he knows it can't last. Whenever there is a meeting, a parting is sure to follow. And theirs... through time and space... there will be no reunion after they've completed this quest.

He should shield his heart better, but they slip past too easily for that. One day, they'll go their separate way. He can't change that. Still, any time he looks at the old man, his heart squeeze and he just wants to help. To save him. He can't.

Is it like that for anyone else? Does Hyrule hide something like this from Legend behind all his sweet smiles and his eagerness to learn? Does he also think of a nameless grave by a tree? Maybe a grand mausoleum, because it's Legend, and he's earned at least this much, to hear him speak of his many trials?

He smirks to himself at the idea, but it slips soon enough.

Four? No one's quite sure where he fits in the timeline, but the best guess is 'early'. Wind? No, he's said the legends exist, but the hero never showed. Warriors thinks it's the timelines diverging when Time returned to his youth to prevent Ganon's rise. He's another odd one out. Knowing a bit of everything and everyone's legacy. Does Warriors know how it'll end for me?Wild certainly doesn't.

The truth is Twilight knows that Time will never be fully content despite Malon, despite a future as a father, and he hates the fact that he cannot save his mentor. Cannot prevent that regret from taking root in him. He's only ever known that he hated leaving his Hyrule defenseless, with no one to learn from the hardships he was shoved into as a child.

Twilight hates it so much. Sometimes, Zant's pendant pulsed with the dark emotions that want to choke him up. He almost wonders if there isn't something right in the ranting of the old usurpers. The Goddesses were so many things, but kind?

It's hard to remember their blessings when the people you love most see their fate as cursed. When Hyrule is doomed without that pain.

“Green rupee for your thoughts?” Warriors ask, watching the sun set over the horizon.

“I know I'm country folk, but we ain't that cheap, Captain,” Twilight drawls.

Warriors shrugs, then pulls his sword out to run a whetstone over its edge. “Well, I'm broke. My queen and I hadn't thought it'd stretch out over this long.”

The thought sobers Twilight, who is decidedly not looking dusk painting the sky like a bonfire. “Miss her?” he says, quieter than usual.

Warriors' glance is a bit sharper than warranted, but he makes no comment about it. “Certainly,” he replies easily. “She was one of the few... mhmm, wait, did I never tell you about my situation back in my era?”

He sees the non-sequitur and accepts it with a sigh of relief. Sitting down by the same tree, he settles just close enough for them to touch shoulders. “No, but I sense this is a long story.”

“It's the perfect length, thank you,” Warriors haughtily counters. “So, it all begins roughly ten years ago-”

Twilight snorts, and pushes his brother roughly. Warriors is agile enough he slips back into place without dropping the sword or the stone, radiating smug triumph.

In the end, he joins Warriors on first watch just to distract himself from his thoughts.

***

Lon Lon Ranch is one of his favorite place to visit. Stepping inside feels like being served a slice of Ordon on a platter. It's a piece of home, without the awkwardness that comes from the odd looks here and there. Unspoken questions about every little way he's changed.

Twilight shakes his head. What's he doing? Somewhat forcefully, he pulls back the sleeves of his tunic and spits in his hands. He's got some work to do, and it's not Legend (who is egging Warriors more than he's shoveling) or Wind (who is having the time of his life learning how to ride with Time's Epona) that'll finish the chores for him.

“Here, sweetheart.” Malon holds out a waterskin to him and a towel. “Don't forget to rest and drink every once in a while. With this sun, it's not healthy to neglect it.”

He accepts gratefully, swallowing a mouthful of cool water first. “I will, Ma'am.”

“Oh, hush with that. It's Malon for family,” she corrects him easily, and he ducks his head, pleased. “And I'll be watching you, sweetheart. The Goddesses know my Link's not one to recognize his limits.”

Time straightens and leans against the handle of his spade. “Now, now, honey, you know I'm a reasonable man.”

“Did I tell you about the time my clever husband decided to renovate the ba-!”

Malon lets out a fake shriek when Time grabs her with his dirt-covered hands. Pretends to fight back. She's not fooling him or her husband. They've both witnessed her handling the cattle. It's not from Time's side of the family that Twilight inherited the strength.

(They're the type of couple that teases each other constantly. He wonders what it would have been like if Midna...)

There's something a little different about Malon today. Something under her skin. Like she was holding on to a secret with both hands and it's threatening to explode the whole time. He wouldn't call her nervous. Excited, though? Yes.

He finds out at dinner.

They've just finished another two course meal courtesy of Malon and Wild when she pulls her husband aside during dessert. It gets a glance or two, but the conversation keeps going on the topic of stupidest things they've ever done. Since it's Wild's turn though, Twilight can still focus on the married couple by the sink.

(It's a sad day when he can name more for Wild than Wild remembers. They've got diverging definitions of what constitutes a 'stupid' thing. He will forever argue against the monster masks, especially the lynel one.)

“I was waiting for a chance to tell you in person. I saw a wisewoman last week.”

“What for...?” Time asks, and he sounds a little anxious for once, hands hovering closer to his wife.

Coy, Malon bites her lips and glances at Twilight. Time has to turn to see where, exactly, she's looking, and his breath hitches when he realizes. His mouth twitch as he grabs both her hands, focused on her with such intensity she giggles.

“You mean...?”

She breaks into a grin, nods and whispers-yells: “Yes! We're going to be parents, Link.”

The kiss he lands on her lips is indecent enough to attract whistles from some of the others, who seem to be clueing in to the excitement in the room. When those two come apart, a pleasant blush colors their cheeks, and he tells her, over and over that he loves her. When he's had his fill, he whirls around to face them and their cheering.

“Boys!” Time calls out, exuberant, absolutely unguarded. “Boys! I'm going to be a father!”

The roof, improbably, resists the eruption of screams. Time's pure joy is contagious and it's the best news they've got since starting this quest. Congratulations rain on the happy couple.

“Someone's going to have competition, huh?” Legend nudges Twilight's ribs, wagging eyebrows.

Normally, Twilight would be flattered that his bond with Time is that obvious. Normally, he'd grab Legend and give him a noogie for his insolence. Make him cry 'uncle'. The classic big brother behavior he's used to. But he barely hears the words as it is, his mind bogged down by a sudden realization.

He stalls.

He's a second delayed in joining in the congratulations, behind Sky and Hyrule who are a little less physical in their affections. They've formed a circle around their leader and his wife, offering their best wishes, joking, patting Time on the back, kissing Malon's cheeks.

And then it's his turn.

Twilight remembers to breath. Offers his hand first.

“Oh, come here, you!” she swats away his hand and forces him into a hug that's warm, soft.

“You'll make a wonderful mother, Malon.”

Her expression shifts slightly, more of a knowing smirk, and he can see her laughter in her eyes. 'Oh, now you tell me.'

It's impossible for him not to smile back.

And below that elation, the flare of hope in his guts, is a heart stopping dread.

***

The next few battles are some of the worst Twilight had to struggle through. The enemies' number swell. Their ambushes turn elaborate with unheard of combinations of monsters that never coexisted naturally. The puppeteer behind them has tightened the strings, and Twilight has trouble keeping his head above water when every second he looks away, he fears his mentor (father) will die.

It's sheer experience and a heaping dose of help from his companions that ensure he's not dead. And even then...

“There, good as new,” Hyrule proclaims, slapping Twilight's bicep for good measure. “Now how about you don't pull a Wild and drop your weapon next time? We're counting on you to teach him caution, not the opposite.”

“Heard you, 'Rule!” Wild protests from where he's helping Four hobble back to them.

“Great, because we all saw that thing with the peahat.”

“It was the only way!”

And here goes the bickering, Twilight huffs. Wild and Hyrule get along like a house on fire, which means that it's warm and toasty for a while until everything collapse into ashes for a bit. Then they rebuild it better and stronger than before with perfect coordination. It's impressive, honestly, how they both push in the same direction without a second thought.

At least this doesn't look like he'll need to turn into a wolf to fetch them in a forest on the other side of a mountain like last time (he's still bitter about it, a mountain?).

“Pup,” Time's voice jolts him back into awareness. His mentor's standing right behind him. “Come with me for a minute?”

For a second, he hesitates. He likes to imagine a thousand explanations for it, but he already knows the one. Sky shot him the odd look during the fight. Saw him sloppier than usual. And Time keeps an even closer look on all of them.

The clearing is just far enough to be away from prying eyes, though not far enough they can't hear the others if they pay attention. Both sides could hear and rush at the first sign of trouble. It's a good place for a talk.

“Twilight,” Time begins, voice brimming with concern, “what's wrong?”

“It's...”

Silence lingers between them, with all the things Twilight can't say.

“Does it have anything to do about Malon's pregnancy?” Time asks, and Twilight cringes. “Ah. I figured as much. Are you bothered?”

Twilight fights the flashback to one of those evenings Rusl took him aside for a fatherly talk. He feels about as small as he did back then too. “No, of course not! It's... before, when I met Malon and saw you two didn't have kids, I realized you were safe. Every one of us is risking his life on this quest, but I could hold onto the idea that you'd live through, that it was impossible that you didn't because I'm here.”

“Were you not worried for my safety before this, Pup?” Time teases, a full on smirk on his face.

Twilight's face burns. “I, no, that's not it at all! It's just... Goddesses, I'm being silly.”

The hand that rests on his shoulder feels solid. Grounding. Like Time means to give him back some of that certainty through sheer force of will.

Twilight's relieved that it works on him.

“Pup, I promise I have no intention of dying and leaving Malon to raise our little hellion all on her own. I wouldn't do that to her.”

“Oh, right, the poor gal,” Twilight hears himself reply.

Time blinks. Then hooks his arm around Twilight's neck, an unholy glint in his good eye. “A youngster like you's too ignorant to mock your elders like this. But I suppose I should teach you.”

***

Time's few additions to the prank war ongoing inside their camps gives Twilight chills.

But he joins in the laughs with the rest of them.

And he almost forgets.

***

They have a lead on the object of their quest.

A location they must investigate. No guarantee, but reports seem promising.

It's hard not to get swept right in by his brothers' enthusiasms. He's found more family through this quest than he had ever hoped to get, but it's also been a mess of ambushes, lost directions and insufferable assholes (some of which, he loves because they're his pack, his siblings, his dad).

“I'll cut the fucker's balls right off!” Wind cheers, which gets nods from Legend and Wild, and winces from Sky and Warriors.

Twilight is more in the 'rip their throat out' camp, but he's also got a unique perspective on how to get personal with killing off your enemies.

(If their quest is to end, he will stand between any number of enemies so that his family returns home safe.)

***

The Temple of Souls.

A place of power, of memories. Deeds commemorated here. Statues of the various chosen heroes during their adventures. Honored and immortalized in stone.

Twilight hesitates before the one statue of a beast, and the imp riding its back. It's a testament to how much the other heroes helped him heal that he mostly feels nostalgia looking at his past. The pain, muted by Wild's enthusiasm or Four's more solemn amusement.

They search through the history of the Hero's Spirit together, with Warriors leading them. Their captain's light-hearted jester attitude's been replaced by his battlefield look. A strategist and a soldier, at the head of a battalion of legends. And yet, there's a tightness to his expression. Twilight gets why and he makes sure to stay close. The sorceress had been reformed, so this world's Zelda said. But the fear's longer lasting.

Time lingers near the statue of the Hero of Time. So do the others, with Warriors deciding to keep watch, since they clearly couldn't deal with the idea of Time having once been a child.

A little kid. Probably not even as tall as Colin or Talo. Twilight tries to imagine letting these two go on a quest to save Hyrule and his mind buckles in protest at the knowledge of what kind of monstrosities can crawl up from the darkest corners of Hyrule. Imagines them in the Arbiter's Ground, and he feels acute pain in his left hand, where he is gripping his sword's hilt so hard his knuckles turn white.

Hylia stole Time's childhood, but Twilight won't let her take his future.

***

They found the enemy.

It found them in return. Hyrule is the first to realize, and it's their wanderer's words that ring in their heads during the worst battle of their lives.

'Impaled by a shadow in my likeness. Everything I gave, he returned right back.'

Dark Link. The other side of the coin. The shadow of the Hero's Spirit, grown with each incarnation.

It is not an opponent for any one hero to take on anymore. Dark Link is the sum of every dark turns their minds have ever taken, every moment of fear, despair, anger. Every dirty trick. Every method of handling a sword. It reflects all nine of them, in turn and at once.

And it means that each one of them know a piece of Dark Link as intimately as the back of their hands.

The battle does not end quickly.

While most encounters with monsters last minutes at most and encounters with bosses sometimes stretch twice or thrice that, this battle goes on for what feels like lifetimes. There's not a thing Twilight knows that he doesn't see at some point in Dark Link's arsenal. He's forced to see his journey thrown back at him, and he only went on a single one.

(He loses both his shield and his sword midway through. Has to join in the sniping until that's destroyed. Breaks two more of Wild's weapons. Fought with fangs and claws till he desperately needed healing.)

They came prepared. Armed with every weapon they have. Overstocked with potions and blessings and fairies.

They're still all exhausted, wounded and little more than dead on their feet when Wild lands the apparent fatal blow with a shock arrow. Electricity dances on the shade, its face a mask of silent agony, and it stumbles, shape unsteady, and sinks back into nothing.

“Is it... is it over?” Wind asks, his shirt shredded and an ugly burn on his collarbone.

“Steady!” Warriors calls out. “It might be trying to trick us.”

They watch every corner of the room with the hard earned hatred of a difficult opponent. They're all on their last leg and they can't keep going much longer. The air's so thick with tension Twilight tastes it. His instinct's screaming at him. He knows, in his heart, that this is it.

(It might be why he looked.)

(None of the others have spent as much time as him watching shadows, longing for the way they might waver and twist and become a beloved companion.)

Time's shadow shouldn't be this inky black.

Time's grip on his sword is also looser than his shadow's.

Twilight breaks into a sprint.

For a long time, Twilight had no choice. No matter what, his old mentor couldn't die before he had children.

Somehow, he'd been naïve enough to find comfort in that. Since then, he's dreamed of Time holding his baby, happier than he had ever dared express before. The memories of years that aged his heart faster than his body no longer a burden in his quiet little corner of the world.

There still isn't a choice. Time must go back to his wife and child. Twilight won't accept any other outcome. He'll turn silly images conjured from his resting mind into rock solid visions of the future.

Time's shadow stands up.

Hyrule shouts a warning.

And the blade swings.

“TWILIGHT!”

The taste of copper washes over his tongue. Drips from the corner of his mouth.

He looks down. A blade's shadow is impaling him straight through the chest. And Dark Link's face splits into a savage grin. Triumphant.

Heat bleeds out of his wound too fast. Somehow, he's certain this isn't poison, or at least, the traditional kind. It's climbing up his limbs, through his torso, and squeezes as if it were the coils of a snake. There's something wild, uncontrolled to it. Malicious. Its embrace tightens. Tries to leave him helpless, paralyzed.

It's fine. More so than any other hero, he's used to darkness. Made it a tool for himself in the ways the others haven't dared. And he's suddenly so thankful for it. That it's him. His country doesn't need him anymore, not like Sky who needs to build it from the ground, not like Legend who can never step outside his doors without getting roped into saving another country, not like Hyrule who guards the secret of his royal family, not like Warriors who is working so damn hard to earn back trust and honor amongst his own, not like Wild who wants to serve his Zelda and pay back his past mistake.

He doesn't even have grand projects for the future, like discovering a new land with pirates, find a lost brother, or simply build a home with his wife.

He's just... a farmer who picked up a sword and had help at the right time. Even if he dies, he knows his friends in the resistance could still protect Hyrule in his stead. The kids can look after themselves and each other now. Queen Zelda has always been stronger than him. And Illia... he'll finally let Epona go back to her. He can only hope that will be enough.

Because here and now, he is needed one last time.

Dark Link snarls and grins and begins to pull back his sword.

Twilight's hand catches his wrist. Grips.

Dark Link flinches. Red eyes flickers between his wrist and Twilight's serene smile. The other hand lashes like a whip, dagger's shade aimed right at his face, but that one instead pierces through Twilight's palm. Closing fingers lock Dark Link's arm into place. Neither can escape the other now. For the first time, hesitation flashes on the doppelganger's face. Tilts into fear as it starts to struggle. Each movement is rough, violent and murder on Twilight's battered body. The thing's strength should scare him.

Except Twilight learned to wrestle gorons for fun. He wins every time.

The others rally. He catches them rushing forward in the corner of his eyes.

It tries to slip inside his shadows, but Twilight remembers that trick too. He pulls back, welcomes the darkness and Dark Link's feet blur, fuse to the ground, to Twilight's own shadow. It's oddly fitting.

With a deadly chime, the biggoron sword sails over his shoulder and catches Dark Link's arm. It rams itself against Twilight, tries to stagger him, but his mentor's at his back now, and the battleworn heroes, his wronged family, repay their suffering with interest.

One skewering echoed eight times over. Every aspect of the Hero's Spirit stabbing at their inner darkness, fighting the demon that claimed their faults. It cannot escape this time. Its face shifts with every blow. From young to old to young again, a twin lost at birth. Bitter. Resentful. It's weak and faltering when at last, it becomes Twilight's.

With one last battle cry, Sky executes a point perfect great spin that slices straight through Dark Link's neck. Its head goes flying and dissolves before it hits the ground. The body remains longer. Some of it clings to Twilight, sinks into him. He might have worried about this eventually, but the black sword fades and his tunic become slick with blood.

Yeah... there's no coming back from that one.

Dark Mirrors had always been his greatest weakness. What set him on his journey, what broke him in the end, twice. He thinks... he thinks he managed to pick up the pieces well enough.

“Sorry, guys...” His attempt at a smile turn into a grimace of pain. “I don't think I can walk this off...”

“Hyrule! Heal him!”

Hyrule's corpse-like pallor is all the answer they need. The fight exhausted the last of his magic. He's still stumbling forward like he will put his own life into the spell if he needs it. Sky's the one to pull him back, looking sick.

Legend's bag is upturned over the floor, and three of them kneel amongst the items. Twilight notes with faint amusement that this time, their prickly veteran does not yell at them to be careful with his stuff. Rare items gathered through harrowing adventures just go flying on the sides, discarded as useless. He hopes none of them break. He'd hate that to be one of the last things Legend remember about him.

“Don't,” Twilight says, but it's too weak to get through his family's panic. “It's okay...”

Four, the one trying to help him stand, snaps at him. “Don't say that!”

“I-” His knees give out from under him. Four goes down with him.

“Twilight!”

The others snap their heads in their direction.

It takes one look at Time's face to realize what a fool he'd been. It's almost enough to make him regret it. But no, given another chance, he'd make the same decision over and over again.

“Please...” he tries to say, but it's lost in a gargle of copper and red.

The screaming worsens.

Will Time go to his grave with this on his mind? He can't. Twilight wants to beg him not to. Wants to explain. Free himself of the fear he's clung to for the months they traveled together. But his lungs refuse to cooperate, filling with blood. Every attempt to speak just pains him more and produces mere wheezes.

Not on my behalf, he thinks, a last jolt of strength going through him from frustration and fear and sorrow. He hates the knowledge he'll put his mentor to rest with false hope. That he'll move on, thinking that his training might save him from this fate.

(From Ganondorf, yes, always. Hyrule saved because of the old man. Always cursed not to be known for his heroism, wasn't he?)

High whistling notes edge the confines of his consciousness. Fast notes, frantic, played with the fervor of a dying man, and he almost chuckles thinking he has a much better understanding of this as darkness creeps on the corner of his eyes and heat leeches out of his wound.

He can't see Time anymore. Just vague outlines of all his brothers, the color of their cloaks and hair the best way he can distinguish them by now. Hands push down on his shoulders, lift him gently. Scarred hands. Strands of blonde hair tickle his face.

Wild.

“'M sorry...” he breathes out. Tears prick at his eyes, knowing how much this'll hurt his cub. His little brother who already bears the weight of so many deaths. “Not... f-f-au-lt. Swear,” he tries to sound stern, he really does.

He can't go to his grave otherwise. He'll stay alive just so Wild and Time and the others don't pick up the guilt.

Eh...

She did always call him an optimist.

He's probably in some dying dream, he sees hands the shades of her skin join Wild's, brush his hair away from his eyes. Liquid flames frame a face like hers. The mocking lilt of her voice is broken by a sob though. He's never heard that before.

He wishes he could stop the pain for all of them, but he's tired.

Maybe... maybe Hylia granted him that one last favor. Maybe it's just him and his stupid heart that won't heal right, that makes him see what's not there...

He doesn't have the strength to do more than believe anyway.

“Midna...”

Tender warmth brush over his lips, one last little balm before he goes. It's gentle. So unlike her, so like her too. Eh. He always imagined they'd be cold.

***

Wild sees Twilight's eyes close, and his world snaps in half.

His brother slips from his arms, but thankfully, the woman's grip on him is steady. Familiar. It makes Twilight look at peace, as if he was sleeping in his lover's lap. It's something he always wished for his big brother, from the moment he heard that joke about a princess and a mirror. To have someone who loved him worth the pain he'd gone through.

And he only gets it in death.

It can't end this way. It can't! Mipha! he grapples with the thought and it wins. “MIPHA! PLEASE!”

She'd healed him from the brink so many times. Twilight's even more of a hero than him, so it would only be fair, right? Just this once. Just this once. He can't lose someone else because of his incompetence!

But Mipha has long gone to rest, and no one disturbs their group of heroes from their loss.

Wild feels himself scrap at his old hood, pushes it down over his head. As if that would stop reality from sinking in. He can't look at Twilight's body. He can't. He just wants to wake up in the shrine, like nothing ever happened. Like he hasn't watched-

“It was you!” Warriors snarls at the woman, his tone as biting as a sword's kiss. “All this time! It was you that broke his heart! He said he lost you, but you just left, didn't you?! You could have gone back to him!”

The strange woman – Midna – finally turns away from Twil- from... she turns to Warriors. Tears trail down her cheeks despite the faintest hint of a smile. “I always hoped he would forget me, the sweet fool.”

It's spoken with the sort of affection in one of Twilight's hair ruffling, but the insult feels searing. Wind's on her the next second.

“Don't you dare call him that!” he howls in her face, the shout less intimidated by the snot and tears he can't hold in. “Don't you- Twilight's not- not...”

Somehow, Sky can move. He lifts Wind away from Midna. It breaks the teen's rage, and he curls into Sky's shoulders as if their chosen isn't crying himself.

“He was,” she says, and it strikes Wild that she is just like Twilight had said. Fierce. Powerful. And a bit cruel. Like a jewel barbed in thorns – even if she'd laugh at the description. “It could have been different, if he hadn't been who he was. But he would always make this choice. You know this.”

Memories come to Wild, unbidden, of days in his Hyrule, where the only one he could count on was himself and a wolf. Hordes chasing a beast whilst he picked them off one by one. Enormous monsters fell side by side with his friend. Cold nights buried in fur. Panicked barks getting closer to him as he struggled to stand in the middle of a battlefield.

Goddesses...

The music – when, who, had started, – breaks into a horrible screech that should never come out of an instrument. It's half scream. Half something shattering.

“Why isn't it working?!” Time croaks, hands trembling around his broken ocarina.

“That power was only ever borrowed,” Midna says as if every syllable costs her. “The price would be too high.”

Legend is the next one to move from sorrow to rage. “No! We'll do it again!” He kneels by his bags and he's tossing aside items by the dozens. “We didn't come all this way for this!”

“You did,” Midna's voice falters. “And so did I. It was always meant to end like this.”

An horrible sinking feeling seizes Wild's heart. “You... knew?”

They freeze.

Midna looks down at Twilight's face and brushes a strand of hair away from his markings. “At the very end of our adventures, I was spared by the Goddess. Salvaged, maybe, from the ruins of forbidden power and the home of my dearest friend. Hylia spoke to me then. Told me.”

Wild sees her chest shudder before her voice breaks.

“Told me that Link and I would only be reunited on the day of his death. That I'd be the one to take his last breath. It was the only way Hyrule could be safe.”

“Fuck Hyrule!” Legend shouts, hoarse. “What is the point-? Every time! F-fuck this kingdom and fuck Hylia! What about us?! Why does she hate us so much?!”

Legend's arms fall to the sides, his grief spent. He stares at his feet and doesn't react when his successor hugs him tight. Warriors gets his other side.

Wild feels numb. He had done his best the first time around, to believe that Hylia wanted the best even when she let his Zelda suffer through her silence. He thought, maybe, her late answer had a purpose. But he can't figure it out. A kingdom she claimed to protect, destroyed before she helped.

His chest hurts. He can't breath right.

Ahead, the air tears with a jarring noise and a burst of black particles. He can't help the flare of hope they bring, the very same magic that Twilight used to become a wolf. But his brother's not moving. Midna's arm is raised toward the black portal.

“No, no!” Time finally breaks out of his paralysis, reaching out for Twilight's body. “You can't take him!”

“I'm sorry,” she whispers. “I don't have much time left. I must bring him back to his village. I owe him that much.”

None of them stop her from walking back into the shadows, their lost brother in her arms.

***

The greatest threat to their world has finally been defeated. Months of hardship, over. The purpose for which Hylia assembled them, fulfilled. It should have been heralded by a feast, a last evening together before the final goodbyes. The weight of their mission should have been lifted, but now it won't leave them.

They try.

They find the seediest tavern, in the darkest corner of town. They are not looking for a celebration. They want to drown the sorrow in something less painful than grief, be it a bar fight, a hangover or a round of the bard's singing.

All eight of them around a table, nine drinks before them. A toast.

Unshed tears.

Stories. All those times Twilight played big brother to them. Tried to be the reasonable one even when he was smirking under his wolf pelt. Those games of cards he won the pants off Warriors, literally. Those times he teased Legend with his incomprehensible slangs (they'd never know what that one about goat horns mean, would they?). Those nights they woke bundled up under a wolf. Those days he would spend at their bedside, caring for injuries he sniffed out better than most.

They call up more drinks, left the ninth alone, and pour their soul into making themselves almost believe he was still alive. That Midna had taken his sleeping body back where he'd finally get to be in love with her.

For the time of a few laughs, it works. Then they look at the empty seat.

“He died.” Time drops his head into his hands, smaller than they'd ever seen him before. “Twilight died, and I wasn't even holding him! I was playing that goddess-curse ocarina! He told me! He told me he would die for me and I didn't listen!”

“He would have died for any of us,” Warriors says, weakly. “Just like we would have died for him.”

At the end of the night, when they stumble out, unsteady, Wild picks up the ninth drink and empties it outside.

***

The arrow's tip strikes one eye and detonates.

Cracks in the stone spread a little further. But the statue is still standing. It waited for him when he came back. Here. The only thing still standing in the ruins of the temple. Where his first journey began.

He can't hear her voice as he did before. He has no crest to offer, no proof of his valor to receive a blessing. Even now, the thought makes him want to hurl. To carve out the gifts he'd received from the monster that parades as a goddess right out of his chest.

“Why?!” Wild screams at the unfeeling block of stone.

The damage reaches the statue's middle, and a chunk tears off. A piece of her cloak. Dust follows. He shoots another bomb arrow. Almost grins to see a piece of her hair fly off.

“Why? Why WHYWHYWHY?!”

Fingers close on air. He's emptied his quiver.

Glowing bomb runes materialize in his hands, and he can barely wait out the cooldown time between each new explosion.

He switches to a club.

“Why him?!” He wails at the stone. “Why was it him?! Why not me?!”

The shout drains the last of his strength. With a sob, he falls to his knees.

“You did this to him! You killed my brother!” he spits every inch of venom that's making his chest heave, that burns his eyes and that opened this gaping hole inside him. “Why did you do that?! You're supposed to be good! Everyone told me you protect Hyrule! But you don't! You just send the same mortal do your job over and over again! And now he's... he's DEAD! What's the point of you?!”

“Link!”

Zelda's voice.

It rubs his skin raw that she sounds so happy. She should be disgusted to see such a worthless hero! She should have left him to die in that field!

She stops by the broken entrance to the Temple of Time, her gaze flickering to the statue, to his sorry state. The ecstatic looks vanishes and a far more fitting sadness replaces it.

“Link...?”

For a frightening moment, he thinks he's going to hate her. Hate Zelda for what she represents. He thinks he won't be able to look at her without knowing what she is. That there'll always be a voice in the back of his mind telling him she shares her soul with the unfeeling thing that lead his brother to his death.

“What happened?” she asks, gentle.

“T-Twilight... he's... ”

The club hits the ground.

Zelda closes her arms around him, and he clings to her like she's going to disappear.

***

“It's a boy!”

The wisewoman presents the small squirming body to Time.

Wisps of strawberry blonde hair crown his son's mostly naked head. Not dark enough to be...

He banishes the thought from his head. It's unfair. It's cruel. He can't compare them. His son. His son, he repeats to himself when the little bundle shifts against the inside of his elbow. Malon was right. That button nose is far cuter than his.

He's perfect.

His heart is threatening to jump right out of his chest. He doesn't think he can express all the love he has for this little hylian boy properly. He doesn't think it's possible to love anyone that much. For years, he'd feared a pauper's grave, a hole on the side of the road. A monster getting lucky at last and no one to mourn him. And now he was holding his firstborn child.

Malon had pushed past that fear and the walls he'd built around his heart. Twilight had shown him without a doubt he could have a family.

Twilight had...

It could have been different. But he would always make this choice.

Always choose to save Time at the last possible moment. For Malon. For their son.

Time dabs the corner of his eyes, and loses himself in the feeling of his son's skin against his own. He's so lucky to be able to hold him. To kiss the top of his head. To look at the beauty of his wife and child together. He doesn't know if he deserves it. Doesn't feel like he does anymore. But he can't throw it away. The price was so high. He wants every moment spent well. A full life to shower his child with love, for all the children he might have on the ranch.

I promised you.

Twilight is his successor, his son. A strong, kind young man that died too soon for Time's mistake. If he'd been stronger, if any of them had been a little stronger, perhaps...

He's never resented the lack of recognition over his deeds so ardently before. Never felt the bitterness take root this deep. Everything he was, everything he did, forgotten, lost. Accounts of his deeds, his prowesses, gone. Sword techniques. Tricks. Items. Twilight had been a farmer before Hylia had pushed his fate onto him. How could his own descendant have nothing of Time's knowledge and treasures passed down to him? If he had...

On the Triforce, he swears. He will pass on everything he knows to his children and his grandchildren after them, make them promise to perpetuate that tradition, so that Twilight might live longer. He couldn't fail him again.

He swears.

He will do anything to help Twilight survive their last quest.

In this world or the next.

#Linked Universe #Linkeduniverse #LU Twilight #LU Time

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metawatts · 3 years

Text

When I’m With You, I’m at Home- a Freezerburn Thesis

Table of Contents

Introduction

Tell Me Can A Heart Be Turned to Stone?

Any Remarkable Heart Has Gone Through the Hardship and Shame

Goldilocks and Snow White- The Freezerburn Dynamic

Snowflakes, Sunlight, and Songs- Symbolism Surrounding the Ship

Counterarguments and Refutations

Conclusion

Let’s get this show on the road.

1. Introduction

RWBY has had multiple attempts at diversity throughout the years, from the good, to the bad, and an entire spectrum in-between. Some of this involves LGBT+ couples, which are a favoured ship in the RWBY fandom. The most popular of these wlw ships are generally involving pairs between the main four girls, Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang. In this thesis, I am going to discuss the characters of Weiss and Yang, the storytelling and development of their relationship, and why this ship is top-notch.

2. Tell Me Can A Heart Be Turned to Stone?

Weiss Schnee, first appearing in the White Trailer on February 13th, 2013, is the second character who appears in RWBY canon. In her trailer, Weiss’s main theme song, Mirror Mirror, characterises her as a lonely individual who fears that she has become so closed off from the world that she’ll never be able to make any connections or open up to others again.

Heiress of the Schnee Dust Company, Weiss is characterised as a prim, proper, snobby brat when we meet her in volume 1, her haughtiness getting her into spats with her teammate and partner Ruby, and eventually causing friction within the group when her racist and discriminatory attitudes collide with the rest of her team. While we don’t get a proper resolution in the form of actual apologies for her actions, this part of her characterisation is quickly dropped throughout the rest of the show and Weiss later becomes the main person to stand up to racist actions in the cast.

Weiss, from volume 2 onwards, is characterised as a defrosting Ice Queen, cold, proud, and thorny to everyone, but slowly warming up to her team. She proves herself to be loyal, brave, and compassionate to her teammates over the course of the rest of the show, consistently offering support and kindness where she can. She fits rather well as a support fighter within the group, consistently buffing her teammates with her semblance, and using her elemental dust for combat effect. She has consistently been a caring, supportive individual to her allies, despite her overarching motif of ‘loneliness’.

3. Any Remarkable Heart Has Gone Through the Hardship and Shame

Yang Xiao Long, first appearing in the Yellow Trailer on June 2nd, 2013, is the final member of the protagonist team to appear. Her debut song, I Burn, is all about her love of fighting, and her supreme self-confidence in her skills. What is interesting about the trailer version of I Burn is that it carries through the other songs from the rest of her team, depending on what stage of her battle she’s fighting.

The older sister to main character Ruby Rose, Yang doesn’t get much characterisation in volume 1 aside from being generally nice, supportive of her sister, and hints to some staggering anger issues and impulsive behaviour. This personality is in place throughout volume 2, where she gets more information given on her backstory and begins to show the flaws in her character, specifically how her abandonment issues from Raven drive her, her aimlessness of purpose scares her, and how her reckless temper puts her in more danger then she can handle.

Volume 3 puts Yang through a physical and emotional wringer, starting with being framed for attacking Mercury and ending with her desolate in her bed, having lost her right arm to Adam. The rest of the show attempts to tackle her storylines of depression, PTSD, disability in the form of amputations and prosthetics, the neglect and abandonment from her deadbeat mother, trauma surrounding Blake and Adam, and her anger issues. Despite it all, the core spark of Yang’s warmth is still available for her teammates, with her welcoming each of them with open arms when she reunites with them.

4. Goldilocks and Snow White- The Freezerburn Dynamic

Weiss and Yang have the healthiest friendship of the four main girls in team RWBY. They have excellent synergy when they work together, as implied first with their team move in Painting The Town, further fuelled with the two of them planning the Beacon Dance and having it go without a hitch, and confirmed when they go into the Vytal Doubles Round together. Weiss and Yang have complete trust in the other during combat, consistently protecting each other in a way no one else in team RWBY does. A good example of this is Weiss willingly throwing herself into a lava spout to protect Yang from an attack from Flynt. Even outside of fights they are always pushing the other to be their best. Eg. Yang confronting Weiss on her attitude towards Blake in volume 1 and Weiss supporting Yang throughout volume 5

While they don’t get as many scenes as some of the other bonds in the show, their rock-steady faith in each other is especially prominent after Yang kneecaps Mercury, with Weiss immediately declaring with full confidence ‘Yang would never do that’ and ‘Yang would never lie to us’ when Blake doubts Yang in the same scene. Yang, meanwhile, shows an incredible amount of emotional maturity after the Fall of Beacon when she recognises that Weiss did not choose to leave her side, having been forced to return to Atlas by Jacques.

When they reunite in the Branwen camp, they once again immediately have each other’s backs, with Weiss’s knight acting as a guard for their backs while they face off against Raven. Yang, despite her conflicted feelings towards Raven, instantly shows anger and horror at the fact that Raven kidnapped Weiss, showing how her bond with Weiss is much dearer to her. Weiss, once the danger has passed, throws her sword away without a shred of hesitation and bodily flings herself into Yang’s arms, hugging her close while proclaiming ‘I missed you so much’. Yang returns the hug, but not before looking stunned at Weiss’s actions, and returning the sentiment with ‘I missed you too’. In one of the more beautiful bits of animation in the show, Weiss’s knight fades out of existence behind them.

Throughout the talk with Raven, Weiss and Yang’s main roles are relegated to asking questions to allow for more exposition, but Weiss stands up for Yang quite a lot against Raven, specifically calling her obnoxious when Raven tries to start on a delaying tactic. Weiss also grounds Yang when Yang’s temper threatens to get the better of her, taking Yang’s hand and calming her down when Raven insults Taiyang to get a rise out of Yang. The two ride off on Bumblebee together, and when Yang reunites with Ruby, she shows no hesitation in inviting Weiss into the hug as well.

In Alone Together, we get Weiss and Yang talking in a scene where Weiss allows Yang to vent out a lot of her frustrations about Blake and her abandonment from family before she opens up about some of her own homelife, in an attempt at empathy about them both having experience with extreme loneliness. Weiss states ‘I don’t know loneliness like you do. I have my own kind’ and finishes the scene with ‘I’m here for you too’ to Yang, offering a measure of support that Yang has not been offered by anyone since she left Patch.

While Yang and Weiss don’t have much time together during the Haven fight, they are generally aware of each other, particularly when the other is in trouble. Yang’s expression when Weiss is impaled is horrified, meanwhile when Blake is standing in front of the rest of the team, Weiss’s eyes are on Yang to wait and see what Yang wants to do. It is only when Yang chooses to agree with Ruby that Weiss offers the hug to Blake, since she is aware of just how much Blake hurt Yang.

It is this trust and support that makes up the backbone of Freezerburn’s dynamic as a ship, with the two of them near-eternally supportive while also being willing to push the other to do better for themselves. Both with their own experiences of loneliness and with trauma, they also have never pushed their pain onto the other and have instead showed mutual communication, understanding, and warmth to each other.

5. Snowflakes, Sunlight, and Songs- Symbolism Surrounding the Ship

Freezerburn has a lot of good symbolism that is a shipper’s playground for the pair. From their first noticeable team-up being bookended with rainbows, to the very classic hot and cold dynamic that is very popular in a lot of important bonds in media. Yang saturates herself with fire imagery, to the point that it is the main tell of her semblance, and a recurring motif in most of her music. Weiss has the exact same saturation of her snow and ice motif, with her glyphs being snowflake-patterned. This provides a nice contrast both in and out of show for the two characters when it comes to their imagery.

Another, more subtle, piece of symbolism that threads through volumes 4, and 5, is Weiss’s knight being narratively tied to Yang. While one could make the argument that this started in volume 3, with Weiss first manifesting the Knight’s right arm in Heroes and Monsters, the same episode where Yang lost her own arm, that ties Yang’s traumatic experience into shipping fuel, which is a bad take and should not be done. Trauma is not romantic and holding up a disability and the event that caused it as the shining example of True Love is not a good argument for a ship.

Instead, we can talk about how Weiss first summoned her Knight in Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back, where Yang also takes her ‘step forward’ so to speak, listening to her father’s advice for their next spar, and how tying the two events as the ‘Steps Forward’ also comes into play when they first reunite in Lighting the Fire. Throughout the beginning of volume 5, Weiss has been using her knight as her comfort, and it is only when she is hugging Yang that she allows her knight to disappear. While this symbolism is a thin thread, it is still worth mentioning as a connection that exists.

Speaking of the songs, Weiss and Yang between them have the most singular character songs in the RWBY soundtrack, each of them stringing together to tell stories. For Weiss, her songs start, retroactively, with Path to Isolation, flowing into Mirror Mirror, Mirror Mirror Part II, It’s my Turn, and finally ending with the masterpiece This Life Is Mine, where she lyrically discards the mirror motif that has been with her from the start. Yang, meanwhile, starts with I Burn, quickly followed by Gold to show her softer side, with her number of songs diminishing over the events of volumes 2 and 3, before it kicks back into force with the triumphant Armed and Ready, the anger-fuelled Ignite, and ending on the heartbroken All That Matters, where Yang ruminates on how much Blake has hurt her, and will likely hurt her again in the future.

These two ‘song stories’, so to speak, are both currently at a pause until we get any further Weiss and Yang solo songs, but considering how we left with Weiss on a high note in her character development, finally freeing herself from her father’s abuse and ready to take her life for herself, and Yang at a low point where she requires the support of someone who has not hurt her the way Blake did, it is an interesting contrast . I would also like to talk about the significance of Home playing over the Freezerburn reunion, as Home upholds the same values of endless support and safety that is a running theme throughout Freezerburn as a ship. Specifically, the lines ‘I had you through it all’ and ‘A haven of safety where I’ll dry your tears’ are very emblematic.

6. Counterarguments and Refutations

Now, the main argument that seems to exist against Freezerburn as a ship is, well, Bumbleby. Now, I don’t mean to attack Bumbleby, I am not trying to start a ship war, but I would like to point out that Bumbleby, currently as it is written from volume 4 onwards, is based around trauma bonding and lacks any of the trust or open communication that Freezerburn has. An example of this is the talk in the truck in volume 7 doesn’t have Blake and Yang discussing anything of importance and instead features them dancing around their issues until Yang goes along with what Blake wants. Another example is the main Bumbleby fight scene in volume 6, where Blake spends most of it offscreen climbing a wall, letting Yang take the brunt of the fighting, and doesn’t make any moves to truly protect Yang from her ex.

I would also like to state that Bumbleby, going into volume 8 this weekend, is not canon yet, and should not be taken as canon. If RWBY can confirm relationships with things like ‘this is my wife, Terra Cotta’, or with kiss scenes, then it can do the same for Bumbleby. And should Freezerburn become canon instead, then it is a good milestone for LGBT+ representation in media, as Freezerburn is also a wlw ship, and would not devalue the show’s attempts at inclusivity.

7. Conclusion

To finish things up, Freezerburn is a great ship. This ship is an overall positive development for Weiss and Yang, character-wise, as it brings out their best qualities rather then their worst qualities. Freezerburn has a healthy amount of trust, respect, and communication, never feeling like the other ‘owes’ them anything, and they are endlessly supportive in a variety of ways. It’s good, what else is there to say?

#rwby #yang xiao long #weiss schnee #freezerburn #rwby-meta #ship-meta #thesis #mod watts

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owillofthewisps · 4 years

Text

portraits hung in empty halls - part one

notes: fun fact i am about ten times more nervous about writing jaskier than i am about geralt, idk why! also daylights saving time is a farce and a personal attack on me, a humble woman trying to not have a destroyed sleep schedule.

rating: still teen, somehow!

pairing: geralt of rivia/female reader

word count: 3.5k

prologue

there is an odd little portrait tucked away in an alcove. at night, the canvas lies empty. most never notice it.

the Witcher does.

The sun sets, and you rise.

The silk sheet that shrouds you slips to the floor. In the dim glow of the candlelight, it glimmers like snow in the moonlight, the creamy white of it cooled to prismatic ice. You leave it puddled on the stained wood floor. You pad barefoot to the washbasin, adjusting to the lively hum of the inn, to the jolt of noise after so long without. It is never an easy transition.

The cool water trickles down your neck as you splash your face, the droplets rolling over your bare skin like an early spring rain, collecting in the dip of your navel before spilling onward. You turn to the tiny nook that shelves your clothing, your stiff joints moaning as they stretch and pop.

Rose, you think, spotting the verdant sprig of fresh mint placed carefully on the small stool. The bundle you’d pulled a leaf from yesterday had been wilting at the edges, the leaves curling in under themselves, like shy children covering their faces. You’ll have to make her something. Embroider her favorite gown, maybe, weave delicate little morning glories around the bells of her sleeves so they sway with her, as if she’s the dawn wind.

The mint tears under your teeth. It burns cold, searing away the heavy, oily coating that lays rotting on your tongue. You chew slowly, rolling the leaf through your mouth as you unfold your chemise and drape it across the stool.

Unwinding the thin golden chain looped messily around your neck and shoulders takes time. You tease at it, slip your fingers beneath the delicate, tangled thread of it. It is the daintiest tether you have ever seen, a golden, gossamer little thing, a strand of a spider’s web lit by the sun. You dump it onto the thin wood stand the washbin rests on.

Your earrings clink as you set them down next to the chain. It’s a relief to have them off, to let your lobes rest from the sharp pull of their hefty weight.

The homespun wool of your skirts rustles against the floorboards as you dress. You sweep the discarded jewelry into your palm; you dump it onto the silk sheet, watch as the gold sinks into the folds of the fabric.

You leave it all on the floor.

A few travelers tip their heads to you as you sweep down the inn’s halls. You sail past the small alcove that had so entranced Geralt last night, stepping carefully away from the shadowed niche.

Johan is waiting for you at the archway to the tavern. You’ve never thought of him as large, with his wiry frame, thin but strong, like a bowstring pulled tight, but he fills the archway. There’s still a faint hint of rot to him, something acidic tinting his strong, handsome features. You slow your pace, come to a halt before him, just shy of nose to nose, your skirts frothing over his feet like a wave breaking on the sand. The scowl knitting his brow deepens.

“If your intent is anything other than apology, save your breath.”

The flush flares into life. It spills crimson across his skin like wine, spreading wide. “Apologize?” Johan snarls. “When you’re the one who defended that mutant?”

“Did I not just say to save your breath?”

His hand flexes. You watch as his fingers curl into a fist, the knuckles gone bone white, and wait. There’s fear cut sharp into his visage, barely blanketed by the veil of anger on the surface.

“If you’ve nothing to say,” you tell him, “please move.”

That fist of his tightens again, his knuckles a ridge of mountains. The tendons in his jaw cord. “The Witcher cannot stay.”

“He paid his coin, just like the rest.”

Johan’s jaw works. “Stubborn bitch.”

“Careful,” you say, and there is crackling frost in your tone, winter come early. “I won’t tell you to save your breath again.”

He considers you, those green eyes burning incandescent, all sparking St. Elmo’s fire. Johan has often reminded you of a dog with a bone, setting his teeth into the marrow of his irritant and worrying it until he breaks it.

“Move,” you say, pleasantly enough, but with that ice still threaded through your voice. “Malinka’s expecting me.”

Johan lingers in the door frame for a moment more, a shadow of a threat, but he steps aside. You brush by him without a care; if you clip him with an elbow, well, he should have moved further. He’ll just add it to the list of wrongs you’ve done him, you think, and gods know that’s the least of your concerns.

The sounds of the tavern sweep over you. The clank of tankards, that thick hollow thud of wood against wood; the spitting crackle of the fire; chatter punctuated by uproarious laughter, rising to fill the rafters. It is a balm against you. Noise has long been something to steady yourself on.

You scan the room as you enter, and do not glimpse the Witcher’s broad shoulders. Nor do you see a hint of the bard. Your shoulders loosen, the tension melting out of them like winter yielding to spring. Malinka is behind the bar, her ebony curls flowing like a wild river to her shoulders, gleaming in the candlelight. She presses a quick kiss to your cheek as you join her. Worried, you think. She is not alone in that.

“Ale!” Wren calls from the end of the bar.

“Coin!” you retort, sashaying over to him and leaning against the pitted wood counter. You pull a tankard from nearby, wincing as you flex your stiff fingers. They always take the longest to grow limber once more.

“Fair enough,” he laughs.

“Truly, Wren,” Annika says as she slides past with a tray of empty tankards. “Your mother would faint to hear your lack of manners. Tell me, how do the village girls stand your voice?”

“Yes, Wren, you’re lucky you’re charming when your mouth is closed,” you add.

“Beautiful and cruel, the both of you!”

You reach across the bar and pat his cheek. “Just a little,” you say with a laugh.

Annika snorts, passing you a tray. You nestle it into the crook of your hip and get to work.

The tavern only grows more lively, the gleam of light spilling from the doors cracking the darkness outside open. You whirl about, dipping around tipsy patrons, carrying plates of food high to drop them at tables.

It’s one of the busier nights, considering tomorrow is traditionally a day of rest, and you revel in the tumult, in the show of overflowing life. It keeps you light on your feet, moving until there’s sweat gleaming at the hollow of your throat. You dodge Elias’s hands with a laugh as you make your way back to the bar.

“So,” Annika says. “A Witcher, then?” Her slim hands move like water, smooth and flowing, pouring tankard after tankard between slicing off fat hunks of brown bread, still wisping steam even in the heated air of the tavern.

You sigh and duck beneath the bar to pull a few sausages from the small larder. “Yes,” you say. “Don’t you start.”

“There’s little for me to say.”

“And yet you so often say things anyway.”

She laughs. “True,” she says. “I’ve no quarrel with the Witcher, so long as he keeps his sword sheathed."

If Rose were here, that would not leave untouched - ‘which one,’ she’d say, her grin impish, her voice dropping into something sultry - but she is not, and you think you should try to keep thoughts like that from your head. At least until Geralt is gone, when there’s no danger to considering the thickness of his thighs and the knife of his golden gaze.

“I doubt he’s the one you should worry about,” you say, thinking of the way many men’s eyes had followed Geralt last night, malicious and hungry.

“Probably not.”

Someone calls to Annika from down the bar; she shoves the knife into your hand and gestures towards a loaf. You drop the sausages onto a nearby plate and start to slice the bread.

“I looked for you earlier. I didn’t think it would be so hard to locate such a pretty woman in the crowd.”

You glance up. The bard is smiling at you, his blue, blue eyes catching the light. You cast your gaze to the side, but Geralt is nowhere to be seen. Your grip on the knife’s handle loosens.

“I work nights,” you tell him, and if your smile is a little brittle, he doesn’t seem to notice. “Makes it hard to find me early. What can I get you?”

“Your name?”

“It’s a bit out of your price range, I think.”

He gasps, one hand flying to his chest. “Will you not take pity on a poor bard? How am I meant to write a song praising this inn and its lovely innkeeper?”

You arch a brow. “Why would you need my name for that, bard?”

He blinks. “Jaskier,” he tells you, and it takes you a moment to realize that he’s given you his name. “And because you are the innkeeper?”

“I’m not.”

“Are you certain?”

You stifle a laugh. “Quite,” you say, but then you take pity on him and give him your name. “Why did you think I was the innkeeper?”

“Ah,” Jaskier says. “You were...forceful, last night, not that Geralt was particularly forthcoming about it. Also the serving girl said you were.”

Betony, you think, following Jaskier’s long, nimble fingers as he gestures towards the far side of the tavern. Betony glances up just then, and from the cheeky grin she flashes, she’s unrepentant. It’s harmless enough, nothing worth even getting irritated over, so you blow her a kiss.

“I’m not,” you repeat. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“I’m not sure you could disappoint, love,” Jaskier says.

You fumble with your knife, the tip of it sinking into the wooden board beneath the sausage with a hollow thunk.

My love, Dymitr murmurs, his lips brushing against the curving shell of your ear.

“Isn’t that what you called me this morning?” Rose chirps. She swings over the bar in a flurry of crimson skirts and wraps an arm around your waist. She still carries the chill of the night air on her skin. She presses herself against you, lets you use her as an anchor against the wave pulling you under. “Aren’t bards meant to be inventive?”

Jaskier gapes.

“Be nice, Rose,” you say.

“Rose?” Jaskier says, “Funny, I took her for a bramble.”

Rose snorts. “Be careful not to be caught on thorns, bard,” she says. She tugs at her shawl, lets it flow from her shoulders to the crook of her elbows like a waterfall. It catches against you. “You were looking for the innkeeper? What is it you want from me?”

You sink your elbow into her side. Her curse is blistering; down the counter, Wren cackles at her creativity.

“She’s not the innkeeper,” you tell Jaskier, who is looking somewhere between distraught and combative. “Rose, will you please get more bread?”

She laughs, the sound like woodfire smoke, billowing out in slow, low tones. “I suppose,” she says. Rose dips away from you, giving your waist one last squeeze, and heads towards Wren.

“Gods, do all women here worship a trickster god?” Jaskier asks. “If not, you should consider it. I imagine most would excel.”

“Probably.”

“Is there a test I have to pass to get the innkeeper’s name? If it’s a physical one, can I have a champion? Geralt would do nicely at that.”

You pull the knife free of the board and set it to the side. Someone calls for ale; you sigh and pour a tankard of it. “You can play,” you tell Jaskier. “We’ll give you coin at the end of the night in addition to any earnings you may get from the crowd. That’s why you were looking for the innkeeper, yes?”

Jaskier sets his hands on his hips, his long fingers drumming against the fine material of his clothes. “Do you just use some title other than innkeeper to confuse people?”

“Malinka’s the innkeeper,” you say, nodding towards her. She’s laughing at a nearby table, men drawn in a knot around her, an unknowing queen speaking to her court.

“Right,” Jaskier says. “You just make all the decisions.”

“She listens to me, yes, when she chooses to do so,” you tell him. I raised her, taught her as much as I could as best I could, and she tends to honor that, you don’t say, trapping the words behind the gate of your teeth. It would only bring questions.

He chews at his bottom lip, bites the flesh pinker still.

“You’ll be paid,” you say. “No tricks, not about that. For last night, too.”

You wonder if other inns see the value in Jaskier, not just in his talent, but in his ability to reassure. There’s little doubt in your mind that his music has soothed many a ruffled feather that Geralt’s presence has caused. From the tongue on him, though, you think he’s also caused his fair share of trouble, too.

“You are a treasure despite your company of treacherous women.”

“Go play, bard, before I change my mind.”

Rose reappears as Jaskier heads towards where the fiddlers usually sit, his lute cradled against his stomach. He’s already plucking at it, discordant notes being corralled into something musical, something pretty.

“Do you think they’ll stay long?” you ask.

She lifts a shoulder in a lazily elegant shrug. “Hard to say,” she says. “I’ve had rocks speak to me more than the Witcher did.”

“Rose.”

“I know,” she tells you, cupping your cheek. Her palm is warm and callused against your skin. “It will be fine. No sense in worrying unless it’s needed.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“It’s not,” she says sharply, all thorn instead of her usual soft petals. “Do not make the mistake of thinking that I do not have fear.”

Jaskier starts to play. The music blooms to life, unfolds delicate and sweet. It seems an odd choice for the rowdy tavern, but the melody is a haunting one, one that slips beneath your skin and hooks deep.

Rose pats your cheek. “Don’t fret,” she says, an echo of last night. “Go help Betony, she’s such a distracted little thing.”

You snort, but there’s more than a measure of truth to it, so you wipe your hands free of breadcrumbs and pick up a nearby tray. Betony is half on Delythe’s lap. She’s plucking at Delythe’s thick braid, coiling it around her wrist and giggling. For her part, Del seems tolerant, the grin on her lips fondly indulgent.

“Betony,” you say.

“You’re no fun,” she says, but she gets to her feet, tugging on Delythe’s braid and pressing a kiss against her cheek. Her lip paint leaves a mark the color of a bruise, deep plum. The two of you gather empty tankards and plates, stacking them high on the tray. With Jaskier playing, everyone seems to fall into a rhythm. You duck between patrons with delicate precision. Each step is practically a dance, Betony matching you as the two of you dash around.

You can feel the night lengthening, can sense the moon tracing a path across the velvet sky. The moon always seems brighter as winter creeps forward. As if the coming snow reflects the light the moon sheds, makes it a disc of shining ice.

Elias catches you in a dance or two between servings; Wren pulls you along for a quick jig when you duck into the back room for supplies. Malinka sweeps you off your feet as well, laughing as she leads you before she twirls you into Betony’s arms. Jaskier’s music rises and falls, a piper’s call to the crowd’s mood. You let it envelop you.

Geralt appears as it grows late enough to perhaps be called early. Patrons are starting to stagger home, though there are a few gatherings tightly knit around tables, still nursing their tankards. Even with fewer present, there are still murmurs that follow the Witcher, little whispers that haunt his steps like an angry wraith. It makes your chest tighten. How quickly people turn on what they don’t understand. On what they don’t even try to understand.

He seems unbothered by it. You think again of stone, of the jutting mountain peaks, for Geralt’s face could be that of a statue’s. He has the jawline for it. Mostly, though, he has the smoothed expression of a marble bust, one just shy of human, as if the artist couldn’t quite settle on mood, caught between emotion and emptiness. It feels a false face. A shield, a barricade for humanity’s siege against his very presence to break upon.

You should leave, let one of the others serve him. You know that. Betony retired home earlier, but Malinka is just in the store room. Rose is not far, either. You should call for them. You know that. But Geralt finds you behind the bar, his amber eyes like firelight, and you stay.

The tankard clanks against the wood as you set it down in front of him. “Would you like something to eat?”

“If there’s something available.”

“I wouldn’t offer something I am unable to give.”

He pauses, the tankard halfway to his mouth, and you cannot look away from his parted lips. Your hands twist in the wool of your skirts, draw the fabric tight against your fingers. “Yes, then,” he says. His eyes flicker, and you think that is not what he wanted to say, that he has swallowed something down.

The plate is a simple one. Geralt seems a man who consumes only to continue, who does not yearn for flavor on his tongue. You keep it to a thick slice of brown bread and some salted meat. You wipe down some tankards as he eats, caught between the compulsion to stay and the whispering nerves that beg you to flee.

“What brings you here?”

Geralt pauses again, those golden eyes lifting to you. You feel heat rise in your cheeks. “I’m sorry,” you say. “It’s habit to chat with patrons.”

He grunts.

You bite at your lip and scrub harder at the tankard, twisting the old cleaning cloth around your fingers until it is cutting into your flesh, until it almost hurts.

“There’s a village to the north,” Geralt says. “It has rumors of a beast, and they have coin. This inn is the closest. The village is small.”

“And by that,” Jaskier says, sliding onto the stool next to his friend and gesturing wildly, “he means it is a hovel of a town, more a collection of houses than a village.”

“I see.”

“Luckily,” Jaskier says, leaning forward until you think he will overbalance, “that means we have found ourselves here. It is a charming inn, innkeeper-who-is-not.”

“It’s just an inn.”

“An inn with good ale and food, and most importantly, appreciative crowds.”

“It’s just an inn,” you repeat, but from the way Jaskier’s smile lights up, he can hear the laughter hiding just beneath your tongue.

Jaskier starts weaving a tale for you, his hands fluttering about as he speaks, his voice falling into a cantering cadence that lulls you into the story. Geralt eats in silence, grunting here and there as Jaskier tries to reel him into the story. The bard elbows him once, lightly, and the withering look Geralt gives him could rust a sword.

It is not long after Geralt finishes eating that the two men rise. It is truly late now, the time when nocturnal creatures begin to slink back to their burrows, the time when the starlight goes cold and strange.

“Good night,” you tell them.

Jaskier chirps something back to you, but his words are washed away by the weight of Geralt’s gaze on you. It peels at the layers of you, cuts through to the bone, until all of you is laid bare before him. Your fingers tremble.

They tremble still when you trace their path to the hallway, pulled after them like a pebble caught spinning in the tide. You catch yourself before you follow them further. From your place just beyond the door, you hear Jaskier heave a sigh.

“Geralt,” the bard says, and you’ve never heard a tone that sounds like someone putting their hands on their hips in reprimand before, “will you hurry up? The painting will be there when it’s not a time when even the gods are asleep.”

The bite of your fingernails startles you. They cut into your flesh, tiny sickle moons against the map of your palm, constellations amid the lined sky of your hand. There are footsteps, then, receding down the hall. They ring in your ears long after the men are gone.

Rose finds you sitting near the hearth, your knees tucked up against your chest.

“I’m frightened,” you tell her.

She kneels at your side, a priestess at your altar, her face turned up to you like a flower to the sun.

“I know,” she says.

She waits for sunrise with you, lets you gaze into the fire’s light in silence.

You feel it when daybreak approaches. You close your eyes and surrender to the dark, to the velvet night that lives behind your eyelids. It feels easier like this. Gods, you miss the sun.

The sun rises, and you set.

taglist: @fairytale07 @stretchkingblog97 @nonamejustshame @1950schick @sageandberries-png @peachy-aisha @msgeorgiarae @alwayshave-faith @bumblingandblooming

#geralt x reader #geralt of rivia x reader #the witcher x reader #geralt imagine #the witcher imagine #the witcher fic #story: portraits hung in empty halls

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lovelyirony · 4 years

Note

can I request stevesharon for the otp ask, please?

of course!

Coffee shop AU: Who is the barista, and who frequents the coffee shop?

Steve signed up to be a barista because he needs to make an Instagram account for one of his art classes detailing how he uses art in everyday life, and he’s convinced that maybe if he learns how to make good coffee, then he’ll actually learn to like it.

He’s right about both of these things, and gains a certain reputation around campus for having the best art pieces. (There are also the people who simply come to watch him work. Steve is quite the handsome man.)

And then there’s Sharon, who is done with everyone and pays no attention to the heart he draws in foam in each and every one of her lavender-mint lattes. At this point, he’s dying. So he needs to up his game, he thinks.

Highschool/College AU: Who is the straight-A student, and who’s the backrow slacker?

Steve doesn’t think he’s doing that badly in math until Fury takes him aside and tells him that if he doesn’t raise his grade, he’s out of the football championship, and he needs recruiters to see him so that he can get a scholarship.

Enter in Sharon, who is a tutor and also in the class before his. She’s nice, to the point, and teases Steve at every possible moment about football. But she does help in math, and she promises to come to the game on Friday.

Rivals to loves AU: Who takes their rivalry seriously, and who is half in it just to push the other’s buttons?

Steve takes their rivalry very seriously. It all started in eighth grade when Sharon showed him up on the diving board, and they’ve been competing in everything ever since.

He’s always annoyed at how easy Sharon can just...take it? She doesn’t get mad at him like he gets mad at her, and she says that she finds it cute that he’s still holding a grudge over a “silly diving board round.”

He’s not giving up.

Enemies to lovers AU: Which one switches sides?

Steve and Sharon have been enemies ever since Steve got in the way of Sharon’s mission and basically assumed that she couldn’t do her job because she’s not him. Well, Sharon states that she didn’t need to go into a special machine and come out absolutely jacked to hell to do her job, and there’s the rivalry.

There’s also the fact that they’re both after the exclusive Potts Ruby, one of Tony Stark’s most prized possessions.

And they both signed up to be on the same security team for said Miss Potts. This is going to be hell.

At least, up until Steve starts to realize that maybe Sharon isn’t as bad as he thought...

Soulmate AU: Who is eager to meet their soulmate? Who absolutely does not want to meet their soulmate?

Steve is very eager to meet his soulmate. He was always told my his mom that soulmates were special, and to be cherished.

Sharon grew up with a mother who couldn’t give a damn about soulmates, not even when she had ended up with hers. Sharon learns that soulmates don’t necessarily guarantee that you get a great life full of love and happiness. She’s not looking forward to it.

But Steve won’t give up. Not yet.

Single parent AU: Which one is the single parent? (Alt. if they’re both single parents: Which one is open to starting a new relationship from the start? Which one is never planning on finding love again… Until they meet the other and are instantly smitten?)

Sharon is very surprised when she gets a tiny little girl in her self-defense class, no more than seven years old, determined to “kick as much ass as possible, starting now.” Those were the words, verbatim.

She’s more surprised that this little girl’s dad is a “aw geez, shucks mister” kind of character, wrapped up in too-tight t-shirts and seemingly oblivious to the gazes of all the PTA moms at the dance studio/gym.

Doctor AU: Which one is the longsuffering doctor? Which one is the patient?

Steve wishes that Sharon would stop coming into his place of work with cuts and bruises all the time, and possible concussions. She tends to be as stubborn as him, which is endearing until she refuses painkillers and insists that she can get home just fine, thank you very much.

He also wishes that he didn’t know what caused the cuts and bruises, although he’s also a secret agent, so he understand the realities of the job. (Even though he went to medical school to make sure he could take care of himself.)

Bodyguard AU: Who is the bodyguard? Who are they protecting? Which one is secretly pining for the other?

Sharon is the bodyguard to world-famous actor Steve Rogers, who tends to have some intriguingly obsessed fans. Steve insists he doesn’t need a bodyguard, but can’t seem to shake Sharon off of him quite yet.

Sharon is determined to stick to her job and learn about why Steve Rogers is so squirmy around her after six months of working together. He wasn’t like that at first, and she’s not sure what’s causing it.

Pirate AU: Who is the pirate? Who is the member of the royal family who did not sign up for this?

Steve is all about justice. And if he has to ransack royal ballrooms and terrify queens and kings, then he’s fine with that. Serves them right when he sees the subjects of the kingdom starving and malnourished.

But the Carter Kingdom isn’t on his list. In fact, they do a bang-up job of running a country, although he thinks their desserts could use a little work.

They’ve hired him to find Sharon, the next in line for the throne. She disappeared into the night, clearly kidnapped if the broken windows and bloodshed was anything to go by.

He searches for a year, finding out more and more about this woman. It’s not until he runs into one of her former suitors that he finds a miniature, and falls a little bit in love with her teasing smile and elegant demeanor. It paints a picture of a lady who knows exactly her worth, but knows how to go along with everyone’s expectations until the last moment.

So he isn’t expecting Romanoff’s ship to have a brand new member of the crew, who looks remarkably similar and has expertise in handling a sword, and pressing it against his throat.

Well. That is...nice.

Childhood best friends AU: Which one was super obviously in love with the other the whole time? Who was oblivious until they were older?

Sharon’s been in love with Steve since they were in seventh grade and she moved to their school. Steve’s been focused on being just like his father, preparing for an army and still having the boniest body she’s ever seen.

But every Halloween, they go trick-or-treating and every Christmas, they exchange gifts and have snowball fights with Bucky and Sam.

And every year, she falls more and more.

She nearly gives up when it’s high school and it’s the end of everything, and they’re going to college. She should just get over it.

...right?

#i really liked this round #stevesharon #staron #sharon carter #steve rogers

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tanoraqui · 4 years

Text

[Part 1] [Part 2]

[now all on AO3!]

As Nie Huaisang pulls his horse to a halt, as he clumsily dismounts and begs his san-ge to speak with him in private and they walk off to the side of the road together, Nie Huaisang’s eyes down and his fan covering most his face in embarrassment, he thinks very quickly, and decides faster. He’d promised himself he would do that, next time something like this happened

Here is some of what he thinks:

if the lifeblood of Qishan was power and the heart of Qinghe is strength, then the vital spark of Lanling is appearance. Nie Huaisang has always admired this, even yearned for it - imagine being born to a sect in which it was okay to just sit around and look pretty! Sure, they go a bit overboard with gilt, but who wouldn’t, if they had the money? QingheNie has a fortress in the mountains; LanlingJin has a golden tower overlooking one of the biggest ports in the empire, trade and art and culture all within reach

Conversely, they also thrive on secrets - the dark side of golden, glittering appearance. They’re not so different from QishanWen like that, because information is power. That’s why gossip is a thing

Nie Huaisang has no particular reason to distrust Jin Guangyao, personally. He’s always been very kind to Nie Huaisang, bringing him lovely new fans and paints and a beautiful finch one time. Da-ge doesn’t trust him, for reason of some things JGY did in the war, but da-ge has such high standards for conduct that it’s a miracle he trusts anyone after the Sunshot Campaign. (And it’d help if he told NHS anything about those alleged untrustworthy “things”...) Wen Qing doesn’t trust him, but in fairness, it was her side that he betrayed. That could sour anyone. Even putting aside the possibility that she’s deliberately sowing discord for some devilish Wen reason.

Admittedly, anything that Nie Huaisang says to him will almost certainly get back to Jin Guangshan, unless it’s of a truly personal nature - and perhaps even then. Secrets and gossip and power, after all, and it doesn’t take a genius to see that Jin Guangyao is desperate to please his father

even if the old bastard doesn’t deserve it an inch

So the question is, what is Nie Huaisang comfortable having known, and to whom? What does he want to appear as, to whom? And what is he willing to risk coming to light?

He thinks very fast, and soon as they’re well-out of earshot of his disciple-assistants and newly acquired Wen grandmother, he flings himself into Jin Guangyao’s arms, wailing.

(it’s a little difficult, because Jin Guangyao is one of the few men Nie Huaisang knows who’s shorter than he is.)

“San-ge, it’s not my fault! It’s all gone wrong! I just wanted to get out of saber practice, but then Wen Qing told da-ge something completely different, and then she made be get a baby, and - ”

The whole story comes out, in stops and starts mixed with helpless, hapless sobs. Nie Huaisang downplays Wen Qing’s successes with his brother, or at least mostly ignores them. He mentions A-Yuan’s nightmares only so far as they inconvenience himself, doesn’t comment on the Wens’ state of life at all, and generally exaggerates every terrible and bewildering situation he’s found himself in since he first happened to glance at Jiang Yanli at Phoenix Mountain

He figures Jin Guangyao probably sees through at least 20% of it, but that’s okay - that’s only deep enough to pierce the outer layer of overdramatics, which are mostly embellishments of the truth anyway, and maybe judge that Nie Huaisang has a soft heart for a cute kid

it’s a very cute kid, okay. NHS saw Nie Mingjue sneaking A-Yuan a piece of candy once. No one is safe

he doesn’t tell Jin Guangyao that

Nearly an hour later, Jin Guangyao peels Nie Huaisang gently off of his (now quite tear-damp) shoulder and smiles at him. It’s gentle, sympathetic, and the only thing it seems to be hiding is a laugh

Nie Huaisang is 99% sure of this assessment. Fortunately, he’s free to let his relief show, along with some healthy trepidation

“I won’t tell da-ge,” Jin Guangyao says, and there’s barely any humor to be seen dancing in his eyes. It’s really impressive, now that Nie Huaisang is learning what to look for.

“Really?” Nie Huaisang sniffles. “I just- He tries so hard, you know. I don’t want to disappoint him, not really.”

it really is all about using the truth. if it wasn’t so stressful, it’d be an incredible high

“Of course not.” Jin Guangyao squeezes him gently by the shoulders. “What is a san-ge for, if not to look out for his littlest brother?”

Nie Huaisang could definitely make a crack about his height smiles shakily and flings his arms around JGY’s shoulders again. “Oh, thank you! Thank you for your help!”

Jin Guangyao hugs him back gently and efficiently, then starts to tug him back to the waiting horses and by-now-dismounted companions. “Go on, get your A-Yuan’s granny back to Nie Sect and get yourself a good night’s sleep. I’ll make sure they’re both marked correctly as requisitioned for labor in Qinghe”

Nie Huaisang thanks him several more times, wiping away his tears like someone who just remembered that he’s not supposed to appear so weak in public. Jin Guangyao waves goodbye as he mounts his sword and flies away, and Nie Huaisang waves back, and then he and his assistants and his newly acquired A-Yuan’s Granny ride home

[they’re never going to be relevant again but I want you all to know that in my mind, these two dumb bastards are brothers with rhyming names, like, Xi Ping and Xi Ying or something. RIP Xi Ping and Xi Ying and their eardrums after NMJ reams them out for helping NHS do something stupid again]

And then...

they actually have peace for several months.

Oh, the cold war between Jing and Jiang - or more accurately, between Jin and Wei Wuxian - is still brewing like fine tea, and Nie Huaisang finds himself paying more attention than usual to the gossip about it, because Wens come up as often as not. They're the prime example of the destructive power of the Stygian Tiger Seal, after all. And NHS has four of them living in his house, now

the gossip spikes deliciously when Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan get engaged, though it somehow neither eases nor increases the tension in either side

{the timeline is rubbish anyway, so it’s whatever’s convenient for this fic, thank you very much}

Nie Sect’s physicians are too proud to let Wen Qing take over their infirmary wholesale, but they don’t hesitate to consult with her on pretty much everything. Wen Ning turns out to be pretty fun to play checkers with, whether he lets Nie Huaisang win or gets invested enough to actually put up a good fight. Despite Granny’s addition to the orphan-caring staff, A-Yuan still slips away most days and follows Nie Huaisang around like a particularly persistent curse-construct. On the plus side, he’s learning how to be patient enough that the bolder birds will sit on him as readily as on Nie Huaisang himself, and he painted an entirely acceptable butterfly the other day.

Oh, and the veins in Nie Mingjue’s neck are only visible when he shouts, now, and enough time has passed that he’s forgotten about Nie Huaisang’s earlier, rash promise to practice saber for an extra half hour each day. Or maybe he’s just resigned to the fact that such promises never last. This is truly the best timeline!

And then the worst happens, out of the blue yet in retrospect inevitable: Nie Mingjue has a severe qi deviation

He’s coming back from a meeting in Lanling, which wasn’t so much a discussion conference as Jin Guangshan calling a handful of sect leaders together to bitch about the Wei Wuxian and the Tiger Seal again. Wen Qing is in the infirmary, setting a young disciple’s broken leg. Nie Huaisang is in his bedroom, trying to write an ode to snowflakes that, read aloud, is a single tone off from a recitation of curse words for the entire poem. They both hear the shouting from the main courtyard

Wen Qing has a doctor’s reflexes; she leaves the leg to an assistant and arrives in the courtyard in time to watch Nie Mingjue collapse out of the air. The disciples who accompanied him to Lanling are there to catch him, ease him down gently, but Baxia clatters to the ground

Nie Huaisang sees it from his window. By the time he gets there, his brother is laid out flat and Wen Qing and the Chief Physician are snapping clipped phrases at each other as they assess his status, in the mode of emergency responders everywhere

the Chief Physician doesn’t like Wen Qing, doesn’t like Wens, but he can respect her medical talents. Both sentiments are mutual - Wen Qing has a much more comprehensive skillset, but if there’s anything Nie healers know, it’s how to handle qi deviation

qi deviations are difficult and dangerous to treat - the spiritual energy starts cascading through a cultivator’s body, untamed and harmful, and adding soothing energy may help but it may make it worse, or even cause the chaos to spread to the would-be healer

{I actually have no idea how any of this works, and will henceforth be making up my own worldbuilding}

Nie Mingjue’s eyes have rolled back in his head, bleeding, and he shakes like a leaf in the wind, incongruous to the warrior who led attacks on the Nightless City itself. Who held his brother like a guarding stone wall at their father’s funeral. Nie Huaisang cannot breathe

they get him stabilized enough to move up to the infirmary. Someone eases up their grip on Nie Huaisang’s body so he could follow (he won’t remember until later that he was being held back)

It takes four hours to stabilize him fully (unlucky). His golden core tries to collapse three times, his heart stops twice, and his fucking saber tries to attack them once, seemingly of its own initiative. Several other healers join in as needed, even Wen Ning - he’s always been good at getting seizing patients to still. Wen Qing rates it below the 39-hour golden core transfer with Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, in terms of worst surgeries of her life, but above nearly everything else, including the emergency liver transfer where the girl turned out to have all her organs on the opposite side and a side order of demon-induced pneumonia

Nie Huaisang has been sitting in the corridor outside, on the floor. Someone's put a cloak on him. He looks up when they exit, forgetting how to breath again.

“He’s unconscious,” says the Chief Physician, who is probably some sort of distant uncle/cousin. “But he should wake. He will wake,” he corrects.

Wen Qing takes a deep breath. “We need to talk somewhere private.”

By the time Nie Huaisang has at least gotten to see his brother, get proof that he’s still breathing, the First Disciple has joined them as well (I mean, that position is sure as hell not held by NHS). Her name is Han Xiaoshi and she’s built in the same mold as the sect leader: tall, broad, wields her saber like a third hand. She leans against the closed door of the Chief Physician’s office while the Chief Physician - let’s say Nie Fengji - gives a slightly less brief explanation of the sect leader’s current state.

(it’s not good. he’s in a semi-medically induced coma. he is bleeding neither blood nor spiritual energy. he...should wake, in his own time, if they continue to carefully feed his healing energy)

(if he wakes within three days, he will be fine. for now)

Nie Huaisang’s blood pounds hot and panicked in his ears; an unthinking fan covers his face.

they all turn to Wen Qing, who wanted privacy.

Wen Qing soothes hands over her skirt, still blood-flecked, and lifts her chin calmly. Addresses the First Disciple more than anyone. “Before I begin, would you please put a guard each on my bedroom and the apothecary, and my brother’s room as well?”

“What? Why?” asks Nie Huaisang, bewildered. Han Xiaoshi echoes more sternly

She smiles thinly. “I’d rather not be accused of trying to assassinate Chifeng-zun.”

Nie Huaisang’s blood turns cold

“Keep talking,” says Han Xiaoshi

Here’s what Wen Qing explains: there’s an herb grown on the same volcanic slopes into which the Nightless City is set, a grass that absorbs so much yin energy from the volcano that it carries it over into anyone who consumes the stalks, offsetting the natural balance of their spiritual energy. A closely guarded inner clan secret. It can allow for rare, advanced cultivation techniques (including demonic ones)...or it can spark a fatal qi deviation the next time the user tries to do anything spiritually strenuous. Like flying from Carp Tower to the Unclean Realm

“It’s almost impossible to detect in the blood,” she finishes. “But I recognize the pattern of its effects.” Her hands are clasped loosely in front of her. “I wouldn’t be surprised to find some planted in a place that draws suspicion to A-Ning or myself.”

“Who else would know about it?” Nie Huaisang demands, trembling even as the ice is settles into his veins

“Someone who was close to Wen Ruohan,” she says calmly

they all know who she means

(oh, how she wants to tremble, too, too aware of every sword in the room that could be turned against her. Aware of A-Yuan and Granny and Wen Ning, her brother in the corridor just outside, and how it still hasn’t been a year since Wen blood ran in the flagstones of this castle. But Wen Qing has never been one to shake)

“There’s something else I should say,” she admits, to Nie Huaisang more than anyone. “I don’t actually know much about qi deviation - I’ve had a crash course, obviously, and I’m not a fool, but I’m mostly been treating it as a blood pressure problem - ”

“Obviously,” the Chief Physician scoffs

“ - but my Uncle Six is a true expert. Wen Zhichen - he was friends with your aunt, Huaisang-gongzi; your older sister, Fengji-shifu [the previous Chief Physician, killed in battle in the fifth month of the Sunshot Campaign]. If anyone can wake Nie-zongzhi, it’s him - ”

she could have said this earlier, could have said it weeks ago, or even from the start - but she had Wen Ning to think of before anyone else, and then A-Yuan who was too young to have accumulated crimes even as a Wen...

Wen Qing had once noted that the second son of Nie had likely never felt fear, true fear, in his life. That’s not true anymore. His brother is unconscious in the next room over and it’s not sure if he’ll ever wake. And it’s consequences catching up with him again, for real this time, this maybe-first time - was it the Wens, villainous duplicitous Wens that he brought into their home himself? Was it someone else, equally traitorous, suspicion roused to a killing intent by something Huaisang did himself?

People do a lot things when they’re feel fear deep down to their souls. They scrape and bow; they make bargains they shouldn’t, accept costs they can’t. They bend or they break

Nie Huaisang is a fop by preference, but it turns out that he breaks like a Nie

He shoves Wen Qing against the wall, hand on her throat. “Tell me this isn’t a trick. Tell me this isn’t some fucking ploy to get more Wen-dogs into my home, so you can finish killing my brother.” He shakes her, drops the fan to put his hand on the saber he's terrible with (it still hums eagerly for blood.) “Tell me.”

“I am,” she gasps

There is a tableau. Then Nie Huaisang drops her and strides for the door. “Shijie, put guards on her rooms, her brother’s, and Granny’s,” he snaps to Han Xiaoshi. “Don’t let anyone enter. Gather the Wens all in the third guest bedroom and keep them there - make sure A-Yuan has some paints to keep him quiet. And I’ll need your two fastest - no, those with the best strength and endurance in flight - ”

“Nephew - ” says the Chief Physician, and “Young Master,” says the First Disciple, a little impressed and a medium dubious

the closest Nie Huaisang has ever gotten to this commanding before was the early days of the Sunshot Campaign when there were no battle lines to hide behind yet, when he sometimes followed Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji as they tore across the country and directed the clean-up of their wake

“The best strength and endurance,” he repeats over them. The fan stays on the floor. “We’re flying to Qishan - we’ll be back with an extra expert for you in a couple days, Uncle. In the meantime, you can have Wen Qing if you need her, but otherwise they all stay in the third guest room.”

It takes a full day to fly to the Wen settlement in Qishan, at Nie Huaisang’s best pace. Starting already late in the afternoon, full of anger and terrified panic in equal measure, it’s beyond late by the time they near - and all but the anger has simmered away. Nie Huaisang lets them settle near the nearest halfway decent city instead, forces himself to lay on the ground and try to sleep, and sends one of his disciples out to buy the nicest fan they can find. He left so fast, he forgot to pick one up again

When they land in the filthy little town just after dawn, he stumbles off his sword more than lands (he is genuinely tired, at least) and runs to hammer on the door of the supervisory office, all terror and panic. “Jin-guniang! Jin-guniang! Help, help! It’s me, Nie Huaisang! I need - ”

“What?!” The captain yanks the door open (she sleeps above the office) and he very much does fall into her arms

“Ah, you have to help me!” He’s disheveled with flight and weepy with tears. “Wen Qing poisoned my brother and now he won’t wake up, so I have to find her sixth uncle - ”

“What - Nie Huaisang, what? Is she threatening - that Wen-bitch - ”

“No, no, we beat up her brother until she said - please! He’s the best at qi deviation, even Uncle Physician admitted it - ”

make sure to have Wen Ning beaten up just enough to look good, he notes in a small, back corner of his mind. in case there are spies in the castle. I’d have spies, if I could

“Okay, okay!” Jin Qixian ushers him into the office, half-holding him up. “Let me check the list of residences - sit down, Huaisang-gongxi, someone will brew tea...”

[five minutes later...]

“A different camp?” Nie Huaisang cries, fluttering his new fan in dismay

“They needed a healer...” Jin Qixian says apologetically. “But you just wait here, I’ll send someone - ”

“No, no,” Nie Huaisang gets to his feet, shaking his head. Happy to let the exhaustion of a 10-hour flight and 4 hours fitful sleep in the woods show, and the desperate helplessness that’s really not hard to fake. “I have to- Da-ge is counting on me - ”

He waves off all her attempted reassurances, bullheaded with anxiety, and accepts an officially sealed note of authority with babbling gratitude, and...

[about an hour and a half later...]

the other town the remnants of the Wen sect and soldiers have been relegated to is more of a city, really - cramped and filthy, where the other one was merely destitute and filthy. Families living all in one room or worse, and it’s okay because they’re only home to sleep; the fields are already filled with everyone old enough to work. They probably do need healers, because there’s not enough attention being paid to waste management. But -

“What do you mean, he’s gone?” Nie Huaisang demands more sharply than he’d intended

Focus, A-Sang. It’s Nie Mingjue’s voice in his head, always, as though this was just another hated saber practice

“I’m sorry, Young Master Nie,” says the disciple in charge of this place - Jin Guangchao, another stray cousin. does everyone in that family spread seed like a watering can? “There was an incident a few days ago - ”

“He’s dead?” Nie Huaisang wails, sinking to ground

“No!” Jin Guangchao looks a little disgusted at his helplessness, but bends down to pull him up anyway. “Jin Zixun came around on an inspection and that one you wanted, he was impudent. Jin Zixun ordered him sent to the work camp at Qiongqi Pass.”

mother of fucking fucker [meaning Jin Zixun; meaning the whole situation]. the man probably made eye contact and that overbearing asshole -

“That’s so far away!” Nie Huaisang whined, staying limp, crying into his fan

“Nie-shixiong, it is on the way - ” one of his disciples offers uncertainly (poor bastards - he’s really yanking them around. They’re not sure if they’re helping a con or offering real support)

“We’ll get him back to Chifeng-zun, and get Chifeng-zun back on his feet,” says the other, slipping her arm under his and pulling him to his own feet. “Come on, you’ll see”

(whether it’s for the con or not, Nie Huaisang appreciates it. They’ve never been this genuinely nice to him before)

there’s a conversation in the air halfway to Qiongqi Pass. It goes like this:

“Nie-shixiong, we have to rest. You have to rest.”

[gritted teeth] “I’m fine.”

“You’re going to fall off your sword.” (Liu Lifang, the older woman)

“Then you’ll carry me, won’t you? We’ll already have Wen Zhichen - we’ll double up.”

“Your, uh, dramatics - ” (Zhao Huandi, younger, male - there aren’t a lot of Nies, in Nie. There’s a lot of guest cultivators. There’s a lot of turnover.)

“Will be just as good, if not better, when I’m fainting from spiritual exhaustion.” [slightly bitter, mostly factual] “Don’t worry, I won’t deviate - I don’t use my saber enough for that.” [definitely exhausted] “We don’t stop.”

The work camp at Qiongqi Pass has all the bully-filled charm of Jin Qixian’s town and all the overworked labor je-ne-sais-quoi of the other one, and it’s started raining so there’s a really nice note of despair. If Nie Huaisang had any room left in his brain, he would mourn the beauty of the frescos being destroyed, grand and glorious works of art even if their glory was that of the Wens

he slides off Liu Lifang’s sword in the middle of the densest group of workers, cups his hands around his mouth and shouts, “Hey! Wen Qing’s Sixth Uncle, Wen Zhichen of DafanWen! Nie Sect requisitions you!”

the prisoner-workers all shrink away; an inspector hurries over. “Hey, who are you - ”

“You will respect Second Master Nie Huaisang,” snaps Zhao Huandi, hand on his saber while Nie Huaisang starts to cry on cue for the third time that day, and god, either they’re really getting it or he’s just blessed with a sect full of perfect straight men.

“Please,” Nie Huaisang begs, leaning on his disciple and waving the letter from Jin Qixian. “I need a healer - that healer, it’s my brother, he’s been poisoned - ”

they’re real tears of exhaustion. maybe he should have let them talk him into a rest

(Da-ge will be fine, he knows, he insists to himself and the world. He was stable 24 hours ago and Nie Huaisang left him with the most competent people he knows)

the inspector has no idea what to do with him and neither does the Chief Inspector, really, when he rides up. That’s perfect - it means their half-hearted objections are easy to push past

they’re still shit at actually helping, because they don’t know a single person in this goddamned work-prison, and all the Wens just shy away, or pick up a pickaxe and try to keep working if anyone comes too near. The inspectors seem to regard this as ideal

Nie Huaisang honestly doesn’t care right now, but he does notice

Finally Nie Huaisang has wailed loudly enough up and down the valley that one prisoner hesitantly steps forward and admits to being the Dafan Wens’ Sixth Uncle. He has Wen Ning’s ears and Granny’s eyes and the same needle callouses as Wen Qing, so Nie Huaisang calls it a day

except they still have to fly back to the Unclean Realm, a flight of six hours unburdened

Nie Huaisang’s groan is entirely genuine

Wen Qing has taken to pacing by the time the Chief Physician comes to fetch her, personally, from the third guest bedroom. Night has come and gone and come again; A-Yuan and Granny are both asleep in the bed and Wen Ning is lying beside them, though she can tell he’s only pretending to sleep to make her feel better. What a good boy.

Sixth Uncle is sitting by Nie Mingjue’s bed in the infirmary, eating soup. There’s a couple Nie disciples in the room as well, one sending a slight stream of energy into Nie Mingjue and one simply watching the Wen, a hand on his saber hilt

(no one’s told her if they’ve searched her or anyone else’s rooms, yet; if they found anything)

“Keep sitting and eating!” snaps Nie Fengji, the Chief Physician, before Sixth Uncle can leap up at the sight of Wen Qing. “I need you talking qi balance, not falling over again.” He mutters under his breath, “People can’t even work if you let them get so weak - can’t trust a Jin to do anything with care.”

She sinks to her knees to hug her uncle instead - and notices a cot that’s been brought in to sit beside Nie Mingjue’s, its occupant also as still and wan as the grave.

“Huaisang!” She springs to her feet. “He didn’t - ”

“Exhaustion. The boy overworked his golden core and passed out.” Nie Fengji pushes her back with a roll of his eyes. “Bullheaded as their father, the both of them.”

He rolls up his sleeves and nudges the attending physician out of the way, to take over easing calming energy into Nie Mingjue without a single quiver in the stream. “Now, you two prove to me why I should trust any sort of Wen.”

To be continued...but Part 4 really will be the last, so, that’s p good actually. By my standards of mis-estimation of how long a piece of writing will be. And it’ll definitely be a short one! Unlike this Part 3, which is...*checks* 4.5k WTF.

#mdzs #the untamed #nie huaisang #wen qing #jin guangyao #a bunch of OCs who i named by mashing together random syllables and i'm not checking if any of them are real names bc it's 3am #ALSO wildly made up as i went: how to address anyone with any sort of title #just went with my gut #so like...apologies if i wildly messed up

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