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screebyy · 5 months

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A something about Warlord's Ruin dialogue and Petra's exile and Uldren and Petra's relationship

“Petra, I’ve… never apologized to you. For what you’re still going through.”

The somber tone of Crow’s voice echoing through her radio sends an all-too-familiar jolt of unease down her spine. It’s uncanny how much the guardian sounds like him sometimes.

With a grimace, she shakes off the sensation, and clicks on her mic. “There’s no need,” she says, tiredly. “It wasn’t you.”

“I’m sorry,” The guardian radios back anyways. “He is too. Completely.”

She flinches again. He’s so much like the prince, it makes her nauseous sometimes - so self-obsessed he can’t help but shoulder the blame for any misdeed he can find some tangential reason to feel guilty over. What does Crow have to be sorry for?

And what exactly does Uldren have to be sorry for? For the thousandth time she replays all the decisions she made during Mara’s years-long absence, all the mistakes she made. Uldren’s arrest, and the cold, cramped cell she left him in, because she didn’t know what else to do with the shell of her former prince, her former friend. The prison break, the hunt, the squeeze of her trigger finger…

Her hands curl into tight fists, her fingernails digging painfully into her palm. There was more she could have done. She knew there was something wrong with him, she knew that he was sick. Even before Mara’s sacrifice - after the Garden, she could tell he was no longer himself, that a darkness she still does not understand had burrowed into his heart, and taken root. She could have found a way to help him, to save him maybe - but… after Saturn, the Reef, it was all too much, she wasn’t enough, not on her own. If only Mara had been here, the Queen would have been able to…

“If I could wish it away…” Crow’s voice over her radio snaps her back to the present. A wish - he’s such a fool, she could almost laugh. Almost. She clicks on her mic.

“No,” she says, sternly. She won’t let him take the blame for this - not for Uldren’s mistakes. Not for her own. “You’re helping break the cycle. That should be more than enough.”

She kills the connection before he can respond. She suspects her words will do nothing to ease his misplaced sense of guilt - they never helped Uldren much, either. And she’s in no mood to listen to him find new ways to twist the lingering stain of Uldren’s mistakes into his own responsibility.

They are so much alike, more-so every day. She leans heavily over her desk, and closes her eye, remembering another apology, a lifetime ago…

—

The sun is so much brighter on Earth. Especially this time of year, mid-summer - it hangs high in the cloudless sky, just beyond the Traveler’s looming figure, and it’s so bright that the white concrete and iron railings of the Vanguard's Tower shine like marble and silver. Somewhere deep down, Petra knows it must be beautiful - but allowing herself to admit that feels like a sleight on her true home, the gentle golden rays of a sun always sitting low on the horizon, the refraction of purple light off the amethyst-studded walls of the Dreaming City.

With a frown she sinks deeper into the shadow of the awning she's standing under, and squints against the blinding light. This place is a prison, she reminds herself - nothing here is beautiful.

A hand on her shoulder startles her out of her musing - she whirls around, her knife whizzing up to the intruder’s throat, and finds Uldren Sov smiling ear to ear, hands held up in mock surrender.

“Your highness-!” She stammers, jumping back in surprise. “You shouldn't be here!”

“I'm not,” Uldren grins, pulling the hood of his cloak further forward to obscure his face. “Come on, let's get something to eat.”

—

They sit at a rickety metal table, in a cramped alleyway un-befitting a prince, with two bowls of hot noodles in a delicious, savory broth between them. It’s humble, but the noodle shop is one of the few places Petra has come to enjoy during her exile to the Tower - and discreet enough that Uldren is unlikely to be recognized.

“Everybody misses you back in the Reef,” Uldren says, picking absently at his bowl with a pair of chopsticks. “Jol says hello.”

“He isn't with you?” Petra asks, squinting up at the rooftops around the alley shop - searching for the silhouette of Uldren's shadow.

“No,” Uldren answers as he carefully pulls a few noodles up with his chopsticks, regarding them suspiciously. “He doesn't care for the Last City.”

Finally, he takes a bite, slurping the noodles into his mouth. He considers it, then scowls - Petra thinks for a moment it must not be to his liking, but the glimmer of irritation in his eyes betrays his true feelings. It's not the taste of the noodles that bothers him, but where they were made - he must be furious that such a delicious dish could possibly have come from the Vanguard’s Tower.

Petra smiles, and shakes her head. She wonders if he even bothered to tell Jolyon about this little excursion, or if he had just assumed he was doing the man a favor by leaving him behind.

“Anyway,” Uldren sighs, pushing his bowl across the table towards her. “When are you coming home?”

Her smile breaks, her heart twists with grief.

“Uldren,” she stutters. “You know, this isn’t-.... Queen Mara, she said-...”

Emotion wells up in her throat, sharp as knives, and she bites her tongue to keep it from spilling into her voice. This position is an exile, a punishment for her mistakes. She's never going home again.

“I know what she said,” Uldren sighs, waving his hand dismissively. “But do you really think she meant it? Come on, you're smarter than that.”

Petra stares at him blankly, mind racing. What does he mean? Did the Queen say something to him? About her? Uldren rolls his eyes, and leans forward.

“Petra,” he says seriously. “How long have you been away - five years? Six? This is a waste of your talents, and everyone knows it. You belong back home, with us.”

“All this-” He gestures around at the bare concrete walls, which look nothing like marble in this dark, dingy alleyway. “It's just a stupid show Mara had to put on, a political farce to stay in the Vanguard’s good graces. It doesn't mean anything, and it’s high time the show ended.”

He looks away, brow furrowed as he considers his next words for a long moment. Finally, he looks back at her, eyes flickering with emotion.

“I'm… I'm sorry, by the way,” he says. “For all of this. It's my fault you're here. For-”

“No,” Petra cuts him off, raising her hand. She will not allow him to debase himself, not for this. “I was the one who called for the bombing run, it was my decision that killed them. And this is my punishment.”

“But I was the one who dropped the bombs,” Uldren hisses, eyes burning. “I should have seen those guardians, I should have noticed-...”

He breaks off, biting his lip angrily, then slumps back in his chair, sulking. Petra looks down at his bowl of noodles, delicious and untouched.

“If you had seen them,” she starts, cautiously. “Would that have stayed your hand?”

Uldren frowns, and looks away.

“If I had known what would happen? That you'd be the one to take the fall for their deaths?” His frown tightens, the corners of his lips curling down in disgust. “Yes.”

Emotion swells in Petra’s chest again, but this time the feeling is warm and bittersweet. Pride, and gratefulness, for a prince who acts earnestly as a friend, not a sovereign. A friend so fiercely loyal he would try to take her guilt from her, and wear it himself.

“This isn’t your fault,” Petra says, quietly. “It was my mistake. My decision.”

“It was the right decision,” Uldren says, eyes snapping back to her with renewed ferocity. “It may have been an accident, but it was no mistake. You know that, Mara knows that. And she knows you don’t deserve to be rotting away in this tower for making the right call.”

Her eye opens wide, she sucks air into her lungs as she considers the truth in his words. He’s right. Of course he’s right. The Queen, she knows everything, so she must understand the depth of Petra’s loyalty, the veracity of her fervor. She must understand that there was no other call Petra could have made, there was no way to predict the guardians’ interference, no reason to believe they’d be anywhere near that valley. She must understand…

Uldren leans forward again, prodding his finger declaratively into the table.

“Write to my sister, plead your case, and she will listen, I promise you that,” he says. “The City’s had their pound of flesh from you.”

“If you truly believe the Queen will hear me…” Petra starts, but treacherous hope flutters wildly in her chest, sending a smile bursting across her face before she can finish the thought. She laughs, suddenly giddy. Of course, Mara will understand. The exile, it’ll be lifted, her guilt absolved, and she’ll finally, finally-

“Come home, Petra.” Uldren smiles, lifting his finger to point directly at her. “That’s an order.”

#i like them all soooo much #i wish we had a better sense of the timeline for uldren going to the garden but in my mind it's fairly recent. after all this shit at least #though i didn't play much of d1 so the timing of petra's exile to the tower is also pretty loosey goosey to me. we bend the canon here #the premise of petra's exile though is pretty grim oops lol we love a war crime queen. girlboss behavior ig #petra venj #uldren sov #crow destiny

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polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup · 3 months

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new sea glass gardens fan here! ✋🏻 happy to see such so much ask activity but i cant really go thru them all.

what is one thing thats not in the fic but related to the universe that you would like ur readers to know?

Welcome!!

It’s that we won’t get to season 1 but if we did yuuji would be violently jealous of yuuta, who is living his best life and is obviously gods perfect man who has somehow locked down fushiguro megumi as his boy.

Probably just how badly it went when megumi was a kid.

There’s been a lot of asks about what happened when the zenin had shared custody. Most of what happened is never making it into sea glass gardens, because I don’t think it would ever come out in yuuta’s pov. I do have one shots from Megumi’s perspective and Gojo’s perspective that I’ve half written that may go up one day, but for right now, it’s a lot of backstory that you won’t ever get from sea glass itself.

If you don’t want to pick through a million asks, here’s a loose outline of what happened:

Gojo found Megumi and decided to adopt him. He then immediately decided he was in over his head and that he would be dragging Nanami and Shoko in with him. It takes a village and he’ll conscript one of his own.

Nanami and Shoko asked him “where the fuck did you get children” and he Did Not Answer That Question

During this time, Gojo, Nanami, and Shoko were sort of falling apart. They were all grieving. Everyone was completely overworked. Nanami had one foot out the door and wasn’t even hiding it. He was isolating himself and blatantly about to leave them all and not leave a number to reach him at. Shoko was abusing alcohol and cigarettes. Gojo was constantly in missions. They were all on the brink of losing each other for good when gojo brought megumi and tsumiki home.

Then he told the Zenin that he has discovered the magic of teenaged fatherhood with Zenin Toji’s kid and would be keeping him, xoxoxo. Hugs and kisses, peace and love, would not be giving this funky little dude back.

The Zenin replied “fuck you, thats our blood, give him back” and Gojo replied “fuck you, I called dibs.” Which the Zenin Did Not Like.

But the thing is that none of the Zenin knew that Megumi had the Ten Shadows yet, and the Zenin knew that if they went to war with Gojo, they’d lose. And they did not want to fucking admit that one member of the Gojo clan could kick all their asses at once, especially over the son of the Zenin clan’s biggest failure, especially when that guy just fucked them all over by killing the star plasma vessel. To save face, they decided to let Gojo keep him and called it a peace offering between their clans… then turned around and spread rumors about how Gojo just liked little kids and that’s why he wanted Zenin Toji’s son.

There’s a roughly nine months period after that where everyone was genuinely happy. Like, it was far from perfect, but they were finally healing a little? They were finally a real group again. They were all simply enchanted with Megumi and Tsumiki. They were happy. They felt like they could really, really be a family one day.

Then the Zenin found out Megumi had the ten shadows.

Cue the most aggressive custody battle of all time. The Zenin wanted full and unconditional custody of Megumi. They wanted Gojo to never have contact with him again. They did not want Tsumiki. Megumi would be theirs and he was never to be allowed contact with his sister or anyone from their group again.

At this point, the higher ups were mostly content to let them duke it out privately. They thought Gojo would lose, is the thing. He was committing the ultimate taboo by taking the ten shadows from the Zenin. They figured he’d eventually cave after he burned up all his good will and he’d be easier to control after this.

Instead it got to the point where Gojo said “actually, fuck this,” and just fucking. Quit. So did Nanami and Shoko. They formed a union and took the kids with them. The Zenin had decided that taking Megumi was an act of war they would answer in kind. It was either kill the entire Zenin clan or fuck off with their family and they chose the latter.

Megumi and Tsumiki think they were just on vacation but actually the custody dispute had escalated to the point of physical violence and the Teen Parenting Trio were hiding out with them to keep them safe.

This made the higher ups freak out, because all of a sudden, they had lost their only working special grade curse user and their only healer. They put pressure on Yaga to fix it.

Yaga was the one who brokered the custody agreement.

He convinced Gojo that what was best for Megumi and for everyone was to negotiate with the Zenin. The Zenin would have partial custody, and Gojo would have him the rest of the time. Megumi would get training in his technique from the people with the best knowledge of it, the Zenin would get time with the Ten Shadows, and they’d avoid war. Yaga thought it was the best deal they’d get.

This is when it all goes to shit.

The Zenin start abusing Megumi. They wouldn’t call it abuse if you asked them, but it was. They forced him to train constantly. No one would call him by his actual name no matter how much he begged. The bit where Megumi was forcibly bathed in sgg? It was an everyday thing when he was a kid. Every single aspect of his life was controlled when he was on the compound, down to what he wore and how his hair was styled. He was getting beaten pretty badly on the daily. The Zenin consider learning how to manage pain a part of training, and Megumi was not exempt from that. He was their heir. He was meant to withstand the most intense training without complaint.

Zenin Naoya was made one of his primary trainers, and he did purposefully abuse Megumi. Everyone else was obsessed with Megumi, only cared about the idea of him, and discarded anything that didnt fit their image about who they wanted him to be. But Naoya hated him. He saw Megumi as usurping his place in the clan. He liked hurting him. He beat him as often as he could.

Megumi starts acting out at home because of how bad things are with the Zenin. He gets in more and more fights at school and shuts down constantly. He's hurting and it's making him struggle, hard.

Eventually, Megumi goes to Gojo and begs him to stop making him go back to the Zenin Compound.

Gojo doesn't save him.

When they come back and make the custody deal, the higher ups basically go after the Teen Parenting Trio with everything they've got. The thing is that they almost lost some of their most valuable members of their society. They realized that they needed new ways to control them. So they introduced Shoko to harder drugs and got her addicted. They worked Gojo constantly. They isolated Nanami. When Megumi goes to Gojo, Gojo's at the absolute end of his rope, fully exhausted, and cannot take a single thing more.

He's also biased out of his mind as to what he thinks is going on. See, he thinks Megumi is being treated how Gojo was treated when he was a kid, which is like a little prince. The issue he's worried about is Megumi being pampered and put on a pedestal to the point it becomes dehumanizing. He's working double time to make sure that the rest of the time, Megumi gets to be a kid the way he didn't get to be growing up. But he never in a million years thought that the Zenin would ever lay a hand on the Ten Shadows, because the Gojo never in a million years would have laid a hand on their Six Eyes.

The other thing is that he sort of just. Thought he knew what was going on? Megumi had been pissed he had to be separated from his sister from the start. He had started to fight incessantly at school (because he was being abused and lashing out), and the Zenin were explaining away his bruises by saying he was starting fights with the other children. It fully fit with his behavior, in their mind. They blamed Maki more than once for his bruises, ironically enough. They said she was jealous of his technique.

Megumi was itty bitty and so fucking hurt, and he sort of stumbles through asking for help, and a lot is lost in communication. Gojo thinks he's just sick of going back there because his family's fucking weird and treats him like he's magic Jesus and he wants to be with his sister full time again. He also thinks that the only options are keeping this going or killing all the Zenin, because that's what Yaga told him. As much as he fucking hates it, he'd rather Megumi put up with spending two days a month with some fucking weirdos over murdering an entire clan or giving up custody entirely. So he basically cuts Megumi off and tells him that they have to make this work if he wants to stay with his sister the rest of the time.

Megumi now thinks that his family knows about the abuse and that they'll take away his sister if he doesn't just shut up and take it.

Megumi gets more hopeless and desperate, but he doesn't ask for help again. He thinks they already know. And he's not going to beg someone to help who never will. The abuse gets worse.

The Zenin start pushing their luck. They don't want partial custody--they want full custody. They start refusing to turn Megumi over to them unless Gojo personally comes to retrieve him, because Gojo's the only one who can actually make them turn him over. Megumi thinks his family is just fucking abandoning to his abusers and becomes more despondent in his situation. It doesn't help that the Zenin are telling him that he's staying later than he has to because his family didn't care enough to come get him.

Nanami gets increasingly frustrated with the situation because he keeps showing up to pick up Megumi at the very first second he can, and the Zenin keep turning him away at the door, and he keeps having to call Gojo in only for them to suddenly cooperate without complaint. He feels useless and angry.

Gojo feels frustrated because he's got every single second of the day scheduled with missions, and he's having to leave them to knock on the door of the Zenin compound and walk Megumi to Nanami's car. During all of this, Shoko has been escalating her drug use due to the higher ups pressure, and it's starting to show, but she refuses to get clean because she can just heal any damage the drugs do to her. Their previously happy family dynamic starts breaking.

Eventually, the situation at the Zenin compound hits its breaking point. If you're interested in what makes the situation hit a new extreme, the post is here, but I'll refrain from saying it here in case anyone wants to wait and see if I'll post the one shots and have it be revealed in-universe.

Naoya almost kills Megumi that time around, and they're all so emboldened by the liberties they've been taking with the custody agreement that they don't even try to hide it this time. They don't think Gojo actually loves Megumi, is the thing. They think Megumi is just a pawn to him, and that he won't care if they hurt him.

Nanami is the one that finds Megumi like that, and it fucking destroys him. He is never able to forget what Megumi looked like then. He carried him to the car, held him the entire time that Ijichi gunned it back to the school, rushed him to Shoko for treatment, and has never been able to forget what it felt like to hold him and not know if he'd survive the drive. He has never been able to forget it.

Anyway, he went back to kick Naoya's fucking ass.

Gojo showed up halfway through their throw down, drag out fight, so furious the ground shook with it. That's the part that Maki remembers of what happened. He told them that it was over, that they'd never be allowed near Megumi again, and he kept his word.

Yaga tried to talk them out of it. It's not that he wanted Megumi to be hurt. He just genuinely thought they didn't have any other options. He didn't think they could actually take the Ten Shadows from the Zenin. He thought the best they could do would be to try to force them into a binding vow not to hurt him. He told them they had to give Megumi back to the Zenin.

The Teen Parenting Trio cut him out of raising the kids completely after that. It broke their trust in him. They no longer thought he'd actually protect them.

Nanami broke down. He couldn't do it anymore. It was Haibara all over again. He told Gojo he was done, that he couldn't do it anymore. He wanted equal custody of the kids. They could work out a schedule. But he couldn't do this anymore.

Gojo realized that Megumi thought that he knew the entire time, and swore up and down that he'd never compromise on his or Tsumiki's wellbeing again. Their family was never the same, and it sort of haunts Gojo as to what they could have been. He always wonders if they could have had something closer if he had just refused to let the Zenin near his kid.

These events are in greater detail in the asks, but that's the general backstory underlying the events right now.

#sea glass gardens #there's this huge drama underlying it that i wish i had time to write #it was so fucked up the first time around #megumi was never the same again and neither was their relationship #the zenin hurt him so so bad #he's legitmately so not okay after they got him again

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