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charlie-lec-stories · 4 months

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Good enough // CL16 & MV1

Pairing: Charles Leclerc / Original Female Character / Max Verstappen

Summary: Max is not always the confident man he looks like.

Warnings: Self-esteem issues, some dark thoughts, talks about eating disorders.

Author’s Note: Men can also suffer from low self-esteem and body insecurities. Rate: +16 (inappropriate language)

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She always slept in the middle and Max was okay with that, because even though he loved to cuddle Charles, he was a living heater, like Max. Y/N was like an ice cube and it was great to have her in the middle, cooling them down. Watching her peaceful face in the morning was also a plus. That was the sight he found that morning, her laying face up, her lips slightly parted, Charles half on top of her, his nose buried on the crook of her neck and his left arm over her protectively, his fingers brushing Max's middle. The Monegasque was snoring softly, the noise muffled by Y/N's collarbones. As always, Charles was shirtless, it was impossible for him to rest well with clothes and it wasn't like the Dutchman or their girl would complain about it. On the contrary, she started progressively to sleep with less clothes on. Max wasn't sure when it happened but she went from loving to trying different PJ's and seeing which one was more comfortable to sleeping in just a tank top and a pair of cotton panties. Again, there were no complaints about that. Max could never complain about seeing them with little to no clothing, they were literally the most beautiful people he had ever met.

He knew that she was perfect since the first time he laid eyes on her, while they were teenagers. He felt his breath itch just looking at her face, and when they became closer and she started hugging him more, he became addicted to the touch of her skin, soft and plush under his fingers. He could remember the first time he saw her in underwear like a core memory, they were still friends and he had never felt so guilty for anything as he felt for his thoughts that night. She spent the night at his house, they both had a race the next day and her parents couldn't take her, so he offered her to stay at his house and go with him the next day. His father was less than pleased with his idea, but agreed anyway. She changed in front of him like it was the most normal thing in the world, he was her best friend and she felt safe with him, the tug of guilt he felt in his heart for looking at her like she was a whole meal still haunted him. But he thought she was breath-taking, every inch of her body was just too perfect to be real. He was seventeen at the time, so his mind went to places that he wasn't proud of, but even if he wasn't sexualizing her all the time now that they were older, he still could say that she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

Then there was Charles, who Max knew for a fact was the most wanted man in motorsport. People just worshiped his body like it was a whole temple and Max couldn't agree more with those people. He would definitely join a cult about Charles' body. From his cute, messy hair to his toned legs, Charles was a living Greek God and Max thanked Zeus every day for making his boyfriend figuratively allergic to wearing shirts. Summer Charles was his favorite, all hot and bothered, walking around sporting his smallest shorts and needing someone to apply sunscreen on his back three times a day. Max would always volunteer for that. But Spring Charles was also great, always wearing half buttoned shirts, chest showing teasingly. Max's second favorite was Autumn Charles, who liked to work out in compression shirts, leaving him and Y/N looking at his body the whole time they should be training. Winter Charles was less of a show off, but that doesn't mean he didn't serve... There were few sights as beautiful as the Monegasque in winter attire, with his nose reddened and smile on full display. Max could spend hours just looking at Charles sitting in front of the fire, warming up while chatting with Y/N about all of his favorite things.

He watched them both sleep for a few minutes, following the ups and downs of their chests, the covers up to Charles' hips, giving away just a peek of the navy blue panties Y/N wore that time to sleep. He felt lucky, but he also felt terrible about himself. As he got up from the bed, he sighed softly, doing the best he could to suppress the negative thoughts that tried to settle down on his mind. Walking down the hallway and towards the kitchen, he couldn't stop his body and it positioned itself in front of the mirror at the entrance of the living room. He looked at his reflection with a shy gaze, the dark shirt made him look slimmer, or at least he told himself that. The deep breath he took was shaky and when his hands moved to his hips, the hem of it tensed, highlighting a little roll on his lower belly. He looked away disgusted, his hands falling back down by his sides and walked quickly to the kitchen to start breakfast. He focused on his Stroopwafels, he wanted them to be ready before Charles woke up, or else he would complain about eating in the morning and skip breakfast. His boyfriend was a disaster when it came to food, he didn't like many dishes, and the Stroopwafels were one of the few things Charles liked to eat in the morning.

Max thought about skipping breakfast and instead going for a run, burning that roll he saw in the mirror, but he knew that it was not healthy behavior. He didn't like the way he looked, he did feel ugly, but he was aware of the limits between feeling bad about himself and doing risky things to achieve the body he wanted. Still, once in a while, his low self-esteem would entertain the idea of skipping a meal or extending a training session. He didn't resent his partners for being physically perfect, but he did feel like he wasn't good enough for their perfection. He would sometimes look at them, so incredibly good-looking together, and think that he didn't look as good as he should, like he was out of place with their beauty. The fact that they loved him was important to him, he understood that they loved him for his personality and not for his looks, and he wasn't a superficial man, constantly thinking about his or other people's looks, still, he sometimes wondered what they saw in him. When he was making out with them and they felt so into it, he would ask himself once in a while how it was possible that someone like him could turn them on. It was some kind of miracle that a woman who could have any man in the world, who already had Charles fucking Leclerc would want to have sex with him, or al least that's how he felt like.

"Morning, Amor". (Love). He heard Y/N voice as her arms wrapped around him, her cheek pressed against his back. He felt her kissing his shoulder and then playfully bite him. He laughed.

"Morning, Schat. How did you sleep?". He took the last Stroopwafel out of the pan and then turned around to face her.

"Bien, but woke up around 3 am wanting to peet and went back to sleep right away because you both were squeezing me so bad that I couldn't even go to the bathroom". (Good). She pouted and then giggled, making him smirk, loved her giggles. She stood on her tip-toes and kissed him, her hands moving to his hair to pull at it a little, he moaned but gathered his composure back quickly.

"No funny business, no time for that". He said against her lips and she huffed. It was a Wednesday and they were all traveling to the USA for the triple-header.

"It won't take too long, I promise". She dragged her hands down his torso, he loved every second of that, until she reached the hem of his shirt and her fingers touched the skin of his lower belly. He grew self conscious fast and then pushed her hands away. She looked at him worried, not for him not wanting to have sex but for him to refuse her touch as if it was burning him. He had those reactions once in a while and it always made her wonder what was wrong, but he never seemed open to talk about it.

"I just don't want us to be late, Schat". He quickly lied and she let it slide. He kissed her again, just to let her know that they were good. They heard Charles' footsteps and the conversation died there.

In Austin, they were gratefully surprised with the fact that they were staying all in the same hotel, which meant that they could share a room all five nights. Charles and Y/N didn't even bother on settling down in their rooms, knowing that they weren't spending a second there, instead, they took their suitcases to Max's room and then plopped down on the bed. Max was still acting weird, he barely let them cuddle him on the plane, didn't ramble about anything and then just went straight to the shower, taking his sweet time there. Charles, even though he had been close to Max for less time, also picked up on his strange behavior. They knew that Max was allowed to have bad days and be moody, but these episodes were different from being moody. He looked sad, like the spark he usually had suddenly lacked power. The two talked about it, wondering what could have happened and how to bring up the subject to Max without scaring him off. The last thing they wanted was to make him feel uncomfortable or pressured to open up about something he wasn't ready. Once he walked out of the bathroom, completely dressed to bed, they made themselves comfortable and drifted off.

"You look stunning today, Y/N". Max heard one of the reporters say while they were all on the media pan. Max suppressed an eye-roll, she always looked great and someone always had to point it out. He was a little jealous, but the fact that he had felt particularly bad about himself the last few days didn't help.

"Thank you". She said with a tight grin, she wasn't a fan of physical compliments, she would rather people calling her a good driver instead. The reporter proceeded with his question about her good Qualifying that afternoon and she then gave him a complete answer with her feedback about the track and the car. He watched her talk, the way her hands moved as she explained something, her lips that did the best they could as she struggled with her pronunciation and how her nose scrunched when she talked about the least things she liked about the track.

"Max". He turned around to look at Charles, the Monegasque discreetly leading him to an empty room when the media pan was over. "Are you alright, babe?".

"Yeah, sure". He tried to play it cool, but the concerned look on Charles' eyes was making it really hard.

"Are you sure? Because you haven't looked fine for a few days now". Max knew what he meant, he knew that Charles was talking about his mood, but Max couldn't help but associate Charles' words to his body."I know I don't look fine, I'll do better". He walked out of the room, leaving Charles even more confused than before.

Austin went terribly for Charles and Y/N, both of them ending up disqualified after the race, the Ferrari driver losing a P6 and the Mercedes a podium. Max had won and still he didn't feel any better, so the mood back in the room wasn't the best. "Couples that get disqualified together, stay together" was the caption that their PR managers decided to use when they posted their joint post about the FIA's decision. Max looked at the picture over and over again, even sad they looked nice. Or maybe it was him that loved them so much that was unable to see a single defect in them. He didn't care, they were perfect in his eyes, and he wasn't good enough, no matter how much he could win. The next stop was Mexico and Max was already in a bad mood to also having to deal with Checo's fans. He got the chance to share his podium with Charles and Y/N there and that made everything a little bit better, but watching their pictures online, the three of them together was painful. And to top it, between Mexico and Brazil, Y/N trended on Twitter when a particularly good picture of her after the race "broke the internet". She was being called the most beautiful woman of motorsport, and it was all too much for Max.

Charles walked inside the room with his spare key, they were both at the same hotel in Brazil and Y/N staying just a block away, to find Max on the bed. His knees were all the way up to his chest and Charles could see that he was crying, thanks to the shaky movement of his back. With soft steps, he walked to the bed and sat down next to Max, placing his hand atop his shoulder and squeezing. The sob that the Dutchman let out broke Charles' heart in a million pieces. He quickly pulled out his phone and sent a short text to his girlfriend, requesting her presence, then he got into bed with Max, pulling him to his chest and letting him cry as much as he needed. Y/N arrived 20 minutes later, having to work her way through some PR duties before she could be free. Max was a lot more calm when she made it there, her two boyfriends resting on the bed, while Charles moved his hands up and down Max's back. The Ferrari driver looked up when he heard her walk in and they shared a look before she sat down at the other side of Max and ran her fingers through his blonde locks. She saw him let out a sigh and then a few more tears fell down his cheeks.

"Amor, what is it?". She spoke as gently as she could, not wanting to startle him. "Please, we want to help, Max".

"You can't. I'm the problem, not you". His voice was hoarse, the crying taking a toll on his throat.

"You're not a problem, Max. What are you saying?". Charles was almost offended at Max's comment, how could he call himself a problem when he was so darn amazing?

"Okay, we're not avoiding this anymore". She changed her tone from sweet to serious. "Both of you, sit up". They followed the order, Max resting his back against the headboard of the bed. "What's up with you?"

"Don't play dumb". Charles warned him after he saw Max was ready to straight up lie to them again. They waited patiently, and Max just looked around the room, feeling self-conscious. Their gazes were too intense and he couldn't take them.

"I've been feeling bad about myself". He whispered it, hoping that they wouldn't ask for him to repeat himself. They didn't.

"About your body?". Y/N placed a hand on his thigh as she asked the question, Max just nodded.

"But why? There's nothing wrong about you, Max". Charles made the comment so nonchalantly that Max almost laughed.

"Everything is wrong with my body!". He laughed bittersweetly as he said that, like he was amused by the fact that they didn't understand.

"Max, you're going to have to elaborate on that, because we can't see anything wrong with you". He could see that she was concerned, it wasn't just the tone of her voice, but also how hard she was pressing her hand against his tight.

"I'm ugly, so ugly. I don't even understand how you don't see it!". Charles was straight up horrified by the comment, Y/N kept a neutral face, she wanted to see where this was leading so she could fix it. "I'm fat and my face is not pretty or anything like that. Clothes don't fit me right and I look terrible in pictures".

"This stupid, you're saying stupid things". Charles couldn't believe what he was hearing and the string of French curses he let out after his comment just proved further that he was not agreeing with Max's perspective of himself. Y/N was more concerned about Max fat-shaming himself, as if gaining weight was something bad or even him getting fatter was true, considering he was a pretty fit guy. They had a long journey of self-love ahead.

"Charlie, you're not helping". She tried to calm him down, but Charles was angry.

"He's saying stupid stuff! How can he say that?!". Max stayed quiet. "Anyone would kill to be you, you're fucking perfect!".

"What?". That took Max by surprise. He had called them perfect for so much time that he felt the term foreign when it was directed towards himself.

"There's nothing wrong with you, Max". He turned to look at Y/N, she moved her hand from his leg to his face, running her thumb over his cheekbone. "We think you're amazing, perfect".

"But why? You're both so good-looking!". He couldn't believe it. "How could you think that of me looking like you guys do?"

"This is stupid". Y/N rolled her eyes.

"Looks like "stupid" is the word of the day". That made Max laugh softly, she smiled and shifted her position on the bed to sit on his lap. "I love your smile, I love it even more when it reaches your eyes because they look even better".

"You make it sound like he's doing it himself, it's easy for his eyes to look great when he has those eyes''. Charles was being actually useful with his angry comebacks.

"I also said that I love his smile".

"He has the whitest, most perfect teeth on Earth, you could turn off the lights and still find him if he smiles". Max smiled at that, looking at the frowning Charles that huffed and kept cursing in French. Y/N grabbed Max's face and made him look at her.

"We love you, Max. Not just the fact that you're an incredible person or a generational talent driving cars. I love looking at you and I love having sex with you". He blushed, she giggled. "I'm not sure where this idea of you being ugly came from, but I can assure you that you're extremely handsome and hot to me".

"Of course he is! Mon Dieu, thinking he's ugly... Simply stupid". (My God).

"He agrees". Max properly laughed this time. She kissed him, pressing herself against him to make him feel her heartbeat. They broke apart after a moment, both needing to breathe. "I know that getting those thoughts out of your head is not easy, but please, if you ever, ever think about yourself like that again, tell us. I promise you, we will prove you wrong".

"Really?".

"Yes, really. We love you, even when you talk stupid".

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Hope you guys like it!! Happy New Year everyone, and have a great 2024.

#charles leclerc imagine #lestappen imagine #lestappen x reader #max verstappen imagine #charles leclerc one shot #charles leclerc x reader #max verstappen x reader #max vestappen one shot

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kingdom-of-sins · 3 months

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Ares (God of war) x mortal!reader

Okay but imagine Ares, the god of war falling in love with a beautiful mortal. It wasn't just love at first sight or he was looking so godly that she was immediately attracted. It was more like enemies to friends to lovers. Ares totally wanted to avoid catching feelings. But it was inevitable.

Imagine she had a successful career and everything, but here she was fighting with this dude at a diner who mistook her order of cheeseburger as his. And she had no idea he is a god.

Imagine both meeting again at the same diner a couple of days later and it's a complete coincidence. Ares is grumpy because he did something to piss off Zeus and as a sign it's raining heavily with thunder and lightning. She felt bad about the fight the other day and judging from his look he need some sort of comfort or assurance. All she could think about it buying him a cheeseburger. And then she left.

Imagine them turning into friends in their next meeting. And then within weeks falling in love. Ares is just like "I am screwed" because he has never loved a mortal so much.

Imagine Ares confessing and proving to her that he is a god. She is strong both mentally and emotionally but still he feared that she will run away. But she didn't, although she took some time to process it.

Imagine the weather getting worse and worse as the relationship progressed. Zeus is pissed. Ares doesn't care.

Imagine Ares showing her the amazing world hiding behind the mist. Both going on long rides on his motobike. Spending time with each other every chance they get.

And then eventually she fell pregnant. A very happy occasion for both of them. Ares vowed to always protect her and the child.

But them nothing last for ever. A prophecy. The child will grow up to become a threat to someone as powerful as the gods. Zeus thought the prophecy spoke of him. He immediately forbidded Ares to never see the child or the mother of the child again. Ares fought but at last he had no choice.

Imagine a very emotional scene. Ares assuring her that she is strong enough to raise their child, the demigod. Promising that he will always be around to protect the two of them but she just won't be able to see him.

She did her best to raise their daughter. A very powerful demigod with a urge to fight anyone.

Imagine she raised the demigod to be kind and just, taught her right from wrong. Told her about her father. But the daughter still ended up hating Ares. What kind of father abandon his daughter and the woman he claims to love.

Imagine father and daughter coming face to face years later when Ares and Percy Jackson are about to fight. Ares totally emotional to see his daughter again. His daughter however looking forward to make his father pay for leaving her mother.

#percy pjo #percy jackson show #percy jackson tv series #percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson imagine #percy jackson imagines #ares god of war #ares #ares x reader #ares greek god #zeus

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genericpuff · 1 month

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Persephone has a very nasty habit that needs to be talked about.

Have y'all ever really sat down and observed the when of Persephone's actions towards others?

There are three actions specifically I want you to recall and try and remember what happened preceding those actions:

1.) Persephone turning Minthe into a mint plant

2.) Persephone cornering Tori at his job

3.) Persephone invading Leuce's home with barn animals and low key threatening her life

Think very hard for a second about the when of those events. What happened leading up to them?

First, Persephone turning Minthe into a mint plant. This happened right after she made out with Hades at the shopping mall, but more specifically, this happened while she was hiding out in Hades' home from Zeus, while also fearing the worst of her situation with Apollo.

Second, Persephone cornering Tori at his job. This scene came right after she saw the "Apollo for President" sign in Olympus.

And third, Persephone invading Leuce's home. This came shortly after she had felt insecure over Hades calling Hera 'Bunny', which for some reason she pinned on her own "jealousy" instead of calling out the elephant in the room.

It also came right after the Zeus/Dionysus incident and Demeter trying to force her to stay in the Mortal Realm, but I think the Hera incident is the most damning because it's the most related to Persephone's clear insecurities that are being compounded by dating / being married to a serial cheater.

What do all three of these things tell us about Persephone?

It shows that Persephone has a bad habit of projecting all of her problems onto other people that have nothing to do with the bigger issues.

Minthe ratted her out, yes, but she was still running from her inevitable trial, attempting to use the Underworld's policies to play the system and get herself off as scot-free as possible. I mentioned this already in a previous post, but these aren't the actions of a person who claims to feel as guilty as they do over committing mass manslaughter. Point is, she would have gotten caught eventually, and she still had to answer for her crimes. Minthe was an easier target for her anger and frustration than Zeus.

Tori gossiped about her in college, yes, but it came from a very real incident in which Hades ripped out his roommate's eye and beat him half to death. Tori wasn't even gossiping at that point, he was deadass just telling his side of the story and warning people that Persephone was affiliating herself with an abusive man. None of what he said about her being "Hades' dark concubine" was untrue, but he had the unfortunate luck of being at the bank right after Persephone was triggered by the Apollo sign. Tori was just an easier target for her anger and frustration than Apollo.

Leuce attempted to 'seduce' Hades, yes, but she was manipulated by Thetis in an attempt to get her planted just like Minthe and I think a lot of people forget that. Not to mention, Persephone says that she had "ten years" to make the moves on Hades, but like... no she didn't, because Hades was either possessed by Kronos or in a coma for those 10 years, and then he got married to Persephone like 5 days after that LMAO (not saying that excuses her trying to seduce him, I'm just wondering when she was supposed to find the time in those 10 years to talk to him LOL). And finally, and most importantly, Hades had already rejected her advances. She was already embarrassed. She clearly wasn't going to attempt it again. She is of no threat to Persephone, the now wife of Hades and Queen of the Underworld. So Persephone raiding her home was purely just for her own entertainment and, again, to satisfy her own insecurities. Leuce was just an easier target for her anger and frustration than Hades and Hera.

Point is, instead of actually dealing with the root of her issues, seeking legitimate help for her trauma, and/or learning any amount of self-care techniques to manage her frustration and refocus herself on the bigger issues, Persephone is instead relegating herself to a bully who takes out all of her issues onto people weaker than her, oftentimes people who have nothing to do with those bigger issues or have no real bearing on her life.

I'm sure now that I've written about this (because I'm not 100% convinced Rachel isn't reading this lmao the odds are low but never zero) there's gonna be some arc where Persephone goes "aw, I saw the bigger issues but now I'm a different person so life goes on!" without actually doing anything to make up for how she's harmed people (there already is sort of a 'twist' like that in the newest FastPass and it's uh... yikes) but until that happens (again, odds are SEVERELY low but never zero) Persephone is literally the worst person in her own story. She doesn't need a sugar daddy, she doesn't need power, she needs some bitter doses of reality and, most importantly, help.

#lo critical #lore olympus critical #anti lore olympus

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 13 days

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1968 [Chapter 4: Zeus, God Of Thunder]

A/N: Can you believe we're already 1/3 done with this series?? I sure can't! I hope you enjoy Chapter 4. I'm so excited to show you where we're headed. The times are indeed a-changin'... 😉

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 7.3k

Tagging: @arcielee @huramuna @glasscandlegrenades @gemmagirlss1 @humanpurposes @mariahossain @marvelescvpe @darkenchantress @aemondssapphirebussy @haslysl @bearwithegg @beautifulsweetschaos @travelingmypassion @althea-tavalas @chucklefak @serving-targaryen-realness @chaoticallywriting @moonfllowerr @rafeism @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics @herfantasyworldd @mangosmootji @sunnysideaeggs @minttea07 @babyblue711

💜 All of my writing can be found HERE! 💜

You unzip the floral suitcase that Alicent gave the nurses to pack for you. Inside are the hundreds of greeting cards sent by people from the Atlantic to the Rockies; downstairs, Eudoxia is distributing a dozen bouquets of flowers throughout the house with appropriate grimness, and more arrive each hour. You lift cards out of the suitcase by the handful and lay them down on your bed. Every movement feels slow, every thought muddled, bare feet in cold wet sand that swallows you to your ankles. The windows are open, the sheer curtains billowing. The wind whips in off the ocean, smelling of brine and sun glare, life and death.

Aemond emerges from the bathroom in a gale of steam. He finishes adjusting his eyepatch and then dresses himself: white shorts, blue polo. Aemond wears a lot of blue. It is Greek, is it American, it is the Democratic Party, it is the color of the sky that was once believed to hold Olympus, it is everything he’s ever been or wanted to be. He’s humming The House Of The Rising Sun. It’s the first time you’ve truly been alone since the night before he caught his flight to Tacoma.

Beneath the greeting cards you find the books, cosmetics, and three new sundresses, none of which you ended up wearing home. Alicent bought you a plain black shift dress, matching gloves and flats, and opaque sunglasses to hide your face from the journalists who waited outside the hospital. And there is one last item to unpack. At the bottom of the suitcase is a clear plastic bag containing fabric, white dotted with bruises of common blue violets. At first you are confounded, and then you turn it over to see the dark, saturated stain of crimson. It’s the sundress you were wearing the day you were rushed to Mount Sinai to have Ari. The nurses hadn’t known if you wanted to keep it, burn it, bury it.

“Why didn’t you come back?”

Aemond’s brow furrows, like he’s surprised by the question. He goes to his writing desk and turns the chair around so it’s facing you. He sits, crosses one leg over the other, leans back and hides his hands in his pockets. His tone is gentle, but his gaze is hard. “By the time I heard that you’d had the baby, it was already over. You were out of surgery, he was in an incubator, and that was the immutable reality. I figured there was nothing I could do at that point to improve the outcome. And that’s true. Me flying back early wouldn’t have changed anything.”

“But you should have been there,” you insist, eyes wet, voice quivering. “You should have known him like I did.”

“Winning Washington was important.”

“Washington is a basket of votes, Ari was our child, he was real.”

“No one told me he was dying—”

“Because you didn’t pick up the fucking phone.”

Aemond is incredulous, like he couldn’t have heard you correctly. “It’s not like I was playing golf or drinking myself under some bar, I was campaigning 20 hours a day and it worked.”

“Nothing on earth could have kept me away from you when you got shot in Palm Beach.”

“So maybe it wasn’t just about Washington,” Aemond says, and his words aren’t gentle anymore. They are razored, dauntless, daring you to battle him. “It’s about the whole picture, it’s about the momentum. If I had underperformed in Washington, the dominoes would fall in Kentucky, and Utah, and Virginia, and then at the national convention in August, and then against Nixon in November. I don’t have the luxury of disappearing from the public eye to sit adoringly by your bedside when we both know there isn’t a single goddamn thing I can do to help.”

“It would have made you look like a better man.”

“But not a better president.”

And like a fracture being snapped back into place, you remember what Aegon said on that bloodstained night in Florida: You’re a vessel. You’re a cow. And one day he’ll be done with you. You stare down at the ruined dress entombed in plastic, still clutched in your hands. You don’t dare to let Aemond see your eyes. You’re afraid you won’t be able to disguise the betrayal glistening there. You ask, a whisper, a whimper: “Why aren’t you sad?” I thought you loved him. I thought you were always so worried about him.

“Of course I’m sad,” Aemond says, more kindly now, patiently, like he’s speaking to someone who can’t be expected to comprehend. “But it’s different for the mother.”

You can’t reply. If you do, something lethal will pour out, smoke and poison and arrows, something that shoots to kill. Ari was quietly interred at the Targaryen family mausoleum in Saint George Greek Orthodox Cemetery in Asbury Park. It had felt so wrong to leave his tiny casket there in a silent stone prison full of strangers.

Aemond is behind you now, trying to knead the tension out of your shoulders. And for the first time in two years, you wish he’d stop touching you. Your belly hurts, your head hurts, your heart hurts, you are a garden blooming with bruises and scars. “I know you aren’t in your right mind. Everything will be better soon. I promise.”

Tears gather on your eyelashes. “I miss him.”

“We’ll have others. Here, let me take that…” Aemond grabs the bag holding your ruined dress and it’s out of your reach before you can think to resist. “You should get ready for dinner.”

“Okay,” you reply numbly, now gazing down at your empty palms. Aemond leaves with his grisly parcel, and you never see it again. But once he’s gone you don’t shed your black mourning dress, blood-soaked pad, bandages, and shake loose your hair and step into the shower. Instead, you walk around the bed to pick up the mint green rotary phone on your nightstand. You speak to a series of operators before you reach the Harbour Rocks Hotel in Sydney. While you listen to the ringing through the intercontinental wire, you sit down on the bed. You’ve never felt low like this. You’ve never felt so unmoored from everything you had believed about your life.

A gruff, familiar voice answers. He’s just waking up, slurping on his morning coffee, dabbing his moustache with a napkin. “Hello?”

“Daddy, I don’t think I’m where I’m supposed to be.”

“What?” he asks, and immediately he is no longer groggy but desperately concerned. Your parents are away on a month-long tour of Australia and often incommunicado. By the time they received news of Ari’s death and called Mount Sinai in hysterics to speak with you, you had told them not to rush home. You were about to be released, and they would not make it in time for the funeral regardless. Aemond insisted on a swift, private ceremony, a detour on the drive back to Asteria, like it was something he couldn’t wait to put in his rearview mirror. “What are you talking about, sweetheart?”

“Aemond, he…” He’s not the man I thought he was. I don’t know him, I don’t trust him. “He’s not acting right, he’s not…he didn’t…Daddy, it’s like he doesn’t care. And I don’t want to be here anymore. Can I fly down to Tarpon Springs when you and Mama get back? Can I stay with you for a while? And then…and then…” You don’t even know what words you’re looking for. They don’t exist in your universe.

“Listen, honey,” your father says with great tenderness. “Are you listening?”

“Yeah.” You’re trying to stifle your sobs so no one downstairs hears you.

“You’ve just been through something terrible. So terrible I can’t even imagine it. And of course you’re feeling out of sorts. But Aemond is your husband, he’s your protector and your ally, your best friend, your partner in life. He’s not the one responsible for what happened. You can’t misdirect your heartache at him.”

“But he’s…Daddy, there’s…there’s something wrong with him.”

“Oftentimes, it’s easier for women to talk about their emotions, both good and bad. But for men—especially men like Aemond who are so self-disciplined by nature—it can be like pulling teeth to express themselves. They don’t like to be vulnerable. They actually think they’re failing in their commitments to their wife if they let her see how much they’re struggling. Aemond is hurting just like you are. He might not show it in the way you expect, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. Of course he cares.”

How do you know, Daddy? Have you cut him open and studied his brain, his ropy nerves, the dark chambers of his heart? “I thought he saw me like you see Mama, I thought he included me in everything because he loved and respected me, but that’s not it. He just needs someone to help him get elected, that’s all Ari and I were to him, and I can’t…I just can’t…the thought of him touching me now…”

“Sweetheart, Aemond is a good man,” your father says. “He does love you. He does respect you. And he’s doing such incredible things for this country. I have friends in Florida who’ve been voting Republican since Hoover, but they’re crossing over for Aemond. They think he’s the one to clean up this mess. Vietnam, poverty, civil rights, the riots, the shootings, the hippies, the drugs, the Russians, the Chinese, someone has to pick up the pieces and create something that makes sense. Do you think Nixon or Humphrey would end the war by this time next year? Do you think either of them would compel the South to enforce voting rights or desegregation?”

“No,” you say, closing your eyes. But that doesn’t mean I can forget what I’ve learned about Aemond.

“Here, your mom wants to say something.” Your father vanishes; your mother’s voice comes piping across the copper submarine cables that span the length of the Pacific Ocean. You wonder—randomly, distractedly—if any of the wires connecting you to Sydney run through Arizona, the place Aegon told you he didn’t want to leave.

“Hello? Are you there?”

“I’m here, Mama.”

“Oh, honey,” she sighs, distraught, hearing the exhaustion and misery in your voice. “You’ve got the baby blues, and no baby to hold good and close to help them run their course. I’m so sorry. It’s just awful, so awful.”

You speak before you know what you’re going to say. “I don’t want to be married to Aemond anymore.”

“You’re confused, sweetheart. Your hormones are all over the place, you’re in pain, you’ve just had major surgery, and after this year with all the stress from the campaign and that horrific shooting in Palm Beach—”

“He’s not like Daddy.” Tears are flooding down your cheeks; your voice is hoarse. “I thought he was, but he’s not.”

“You cannot make a mistake like this,” your mother says, and she’s turned from silk to steel. “If you do something drastic now, you’ll wake up in a month or six months or a year and realize you’ve ruined not just your life, but the chance this country had at a better future. Don’t you realize what’s at stake here? Every marriage goes through tough times. Every husband needs to learn how to care for his wife, and every wife how to best support her husband. That’s natural, and you’ve only been married two years. Of course you and Aemond are still learning how to navigate life together. It only seems so much worse because of what’s happened to the baby.”

Is she right? Am I wrong? “I don’t know,” you say weakly.

“If you leave now, what happens?” your mother demands. “You abandon the campaign and Aemond’s support plummets. You are a divorcee, a sinner, a failure. You don’t get your son back. But you do lose everything you’ve helped build. Marriage isn’t an experiment, ‘oh let’s give it a try and if we hit any bumps we’ll call the whole thing off.’ No. It’s a covenant. Marriage is for life.”

Yes it is, in just about every faith, and certainly for the Greek Orthodox Church. You are suddenly consumed by mistrust for your own body, this flesh that failed your son and now is deceiving you with doubt so heavy—like cold iron or lead or platinum—it masquerades as truth. How could you imagine a life after Aemond? What waits for you in Tarpon Springs besides the promise of an eventual remarriage that is banal, powerless, bleak, exactly what you’ve always plotted so willfully to avoid?

“Do you understand me, honey?” your mother asks, and she’s soft and kind again. “I don’t mean to be strict with you. My heart breaks for you, and I love you. I’m not trying to upset you. I’m trying to protect you from yourself.”

“Yes.” There are people getting massacred in Vietnam right now; there are people who can’t afford roofs over their heads. Who am I to complain? Your tears have stopped; your breathing is now slow and measured. “Yes, Mama. I understand.”

After you’ve hung up, you stay where you are for a long time, your hands folded limply in your lap and gazing at the paintings hung on the pale blue walls: small replicas of The Birth of Venus, Romulus and Remus, Prometheus Bound, Perseus Rescuing Andromeda, Echo and Narcissus, Jupiter and Io. Then you get up to sift through the greeting cards you’ve piled on the bed, not really seeing them. Only one captures your attention. Only one jolts you out of the fog like a flash of lightning through dark churning clouds.

You take the card Aegon gave you back when you were still a mother and set it upright on your nightstand, consider it for a while, wander into the bathroom to scrub the despair from your skin and change into something less somber for dinner.

~~~~~~~~~~

You’re playing Battleship with Cosmo by the edge of the swimming pool while all the other children splash around, howling with laughter and diving for toys they throw to the bottom and then fetch with their teeth like golden retrievers, G.I. Joes and Barbies and Trolls and even a waterlogged Mr. Potato Head. The nannies are observing intently, poised to leap in if anyone should appear to be at risk of drowning. If Ari had lived, I wouldn’t have wanted nannies to raise him, you think. I would have wanted him to have a normal childhood. I would have wanted to know him.

“Your turn,” Cosmo says with a grin. He’s the one who looks the most like Aegon, or how you imagine Aegon must have looked before the pills and the booze and the long caged decades. His hair is so light a blonde it’s nearly white, his eyes huge and glimmering and mischievous. Battleship is a bit advanced for a five-year-old. Cosmo keeps guessing the same coordinates over and over, so you periodically lie and tell him he’s sunk one of your ships. When you launch a successful attack against his, he seems to think it’s fair game to relocate the vessel to a more advantageous location.

“D7.”

He picks up his aircraft carrier and repositions it. From the record player drifts California Dreamin’. “Nope! Nothing sank!”

“Wow. I’m so bad at this.”

Cosmo is snickering. “Yeah, you are. Really bad.”

“If I got drafted, the Army would be better off leaving me at home. I’d just be a nuisance.”

“What’s drafted?”

“Never mind. Your turn to guess.”

“J12!”

The grid only goes up to 10. Nonetheless, you slap your own forehead dramatically. “Oh no, not again! You sunk my battleship!”

“Yay!” Cosmo cheers, then turns to the Jacuzzi. It’s brand new, just installed last month. “Mom, did you see? I’m winning!”

You glance over at Mimi. She has passed out, her latest Gimlet drained and her head resting atop her crossed arms, propped on the rim of the Jacuzzi. “Uh, Cosmo, run inside and ask Doxie to make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, okay?”

“Okay.” He scampers off, toddling on reckless little legs.

With no shortage of difficulty, you manage to stand. Each day your abdominal muscles feel less like they’ve been shredded and then mended with threads of fire, but the pain is still bad, very bad, and there are spots of skin on your belly that are numb when you skim your fingertips across them. You will have a long vertical scar like Aemond’s, an irreparable reminder of the blood you’ve paid to the cause. And for all your anguish, this particular fact doesn’t torment you. It is proof that Ari existed, however briefly, however futilely.

You amble over to the Jacuzzi, your roomy lavender dress flowing in the wind, and shove one of Mimi’s shoulders. “Mimi, wake up. Get out of the water.”

She mumbles incoherently in response. You reach for her before remembering you can’t lift anything. You look around. Alicent and Helaena are on lounge chairs at the other end of the pool; Alicent is trying very hard to look interested while Helaena shows her about 100 different butterfly species pictured in a kaleidoscopically colorful book. Criston is off giving Ludwika a tour of the property, flanked by a flock of Alopekis hoping for treats. Ludwika is Otto’s wife of six months but only newly arrived, 30 years old, perpetually unimpressed, modelesque, golden blonde, if Barbie was from Poland. Aemond, Otto, and Viserys—his sparse threads of silver hair hanging like cobwebs around his gaunt face, grimacing and clutching the armrests of his wheelchair—are conspiring on the lawn between the main house and the pool. They haven’t noticed your predicament. Fosco is sauntering by wearing some of the tiniest swim shorts you’ve ever seen. He is the son of an Italian count, gangly and chatty and from what you’ve seen almost certainly addicted to gambling.

“Will you help me move Mimi, please?” you ask him. “I’m afraid she’s going to drown.”

“Of course, of course, no problem. Let me handle it. Do not hurt yourself.” He has her half-dragged out of the Jacuzzi before Mimi startles awake.

“What’s going on?” she slurs. “Put me down, I can walk.”

“I doubt it,” you say.

“You are alright?” Fosco asks Mimi as he steadies her on the cement, wet with pool water. She clutches at his forearms helplessly.

“I’m fine. Absolutely fine.”

“Mimi, go inside,” you say. “Eat a sandwich. Tell Cosmo you’re proud of him for winning Battleship.”

“Battleship? Well, that’s just ridiculous. He’s five. Five-year-olds can’t play Battleship.”

“And yet you will congratulate him regardless.”

She can feel your impatience, your judgement, sharp like wasp stings. Mimi retreats like a kicked dog to the main house, somehow summoning the will to remain mostly upright.

You look to Fosco. “Do you know where Aegon is?” You want to see him, but you also don’t; each time you’re in the same room now is a disorienting storm of familiarity, curiosity, painful reminders, annoyance, awkwardness, longingness to again feel as close to him—to anyone—as you did during those fleeting moments at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.

Fosco chuckles. “Where is he ever? Napping, sailing, drinking, on the phone with one of his lady friends. I could not say. I have not seen him recently.”

“Okay. Thanks anyway.” The music stops—the record needs to be flipped over—and now you can just barely hear what Aemond, Otto, and Viserys are discussing.

“And you criticized me for going too young,” Aemond says to Otto. “What’s your age difference with Ludwika? 40 years?”

“She’s good publicity. She defected from the Eastern Bloc in search of the American Dream.”

“Being married to you?” Aemond quips. “I think she found the American Nightmare.”

“Speaking of wives,” Otto continues. “I assume since yours had one surgery, that’s how all the future children will need to be born, is that right?”

Aemond nods, frowning. “Yeah. And the doctors said she shouldn’t have more than three. It weakens the uterus, I guess, all that slicing and suturing. Do it too many times and ruptures get more likely, and those can be fatal.”

“Very unfortunate,” Viserys rasps. “Children are our greatest legacy. I wanted at least ten, but your mother…well…after Daeron, it just never happened again.” And you know that this is just one of the ways in which Aemond had planned to win his father’s admiration: by contributing more new Targaryens to the dynasty than anyone else. Now that’s impossible.

Otto sighs wistfully. “To have a brand new baby to parade around in the fall…that would have been wonderful.” For the first time in two years, you can sense that you have disappointed him. Fosco is watching you, uneasy, ashamed, sorry without knowing what to do about it.

“Absolutely,” Aemond says, as if this is not the first time the thought has crossed his mind. “But it’s done now. There’s no sense in dwelling on what might have been. We must look forward. It’s feasible that…well…if we try again and get good news by October, we can announce in time for Election Day…”

You can’t listen anymore. Your belly aching, your bare feet hurrying through warm emerald grass, you traverse the lawn and disappear into Helaena’s garden, painstakingly tended and continuously expanded since she was a little girl. There are marigolds and daffodils, tulips and roses, azaleas, asters, butterfly bushes, chrysanthemums, lilies and lupines, sunflowers, violets, life blooming in a hundred different shades. There are tiny statues too, tucked away in random places, stone angels and untamed creatures, alligators and turtles and rabbits and cats, the only sort the Alopekis will tolerate. At the very center of the garden is a tall circle of hedges with only one opening, an arched doorway cut into the thick lush green. You’ve been here before, though only with Aemond. On a property shared with so many family members—and the occasional intrusive journalist—it’s a good place to escape prying eyes. You pass through the threshold with a hand resting absentmindedly on your belly, as if you’re still pregnant. You keep doing this. Each time you remember you’re at the end of something rather than the beginning, it carves you open all over again.

Around the inside perimeter of the circle are twelve sculptures positioned like numbers on a clock: eleven Olympians and Hades, confined to the Underworld. In the middle of the clearing is the largest stature of all, a wrathful Zeus hurling lightning bolts and surrounded by a gurgling fountain of glass-clear water. Under the shadow of Zeus, Aegon is sprawled on the ground and smoking a joint. “So you’re hiding from them too, huh?” He gives you a sly, welcome-to-the-club smirk, then offers you his joint. “Want a hit?”

You shake your head, not taking another step towards him. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

He is confused. “Done what?”

“Any of it.” I told him about my life before. I made the mistake of thinking I could go back.

Aegon still doesn’t seem to understand. “You’re scared I’m gonna snitch?”

You shrug, evasive. It’s not just the fact that he knows. It’s the sensation that you’ve unlatched something—an attic room, a jewelry box, a birdcage—and now you can’t get it locked again, and the door rattles with every footstep and storm wind, and you are no longer Aphrodite or Io but Pandora, a hunger growing in your stitched womb like a child.

“What? What’s wrong with you?” And that’s always how he says it, not what’s the matter or are you alright or what did I do or how can I fix it?

“I’m kind of…embarrassed, I guess.”

“Embarrassed,” Aegon echoes. “Because of me?”

“I feel like I said and did a lot of things that were out of character because I was emotionally compromised.”

“They were out of character for who you’ve been trying to convince everyone you are since you married Aemond, sure. But they weren’t out of character for you.”

He’s treading too close now, arrows piercing their mark, a tremor near the epicenter. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Au contraire, I have acquired many interesting revelations recently.”

“Where’d you learn French? From Mimi?”

His smile dies. “Boarding school.”

You don’t know how to reply. You don’t know how to be around Aegon without either hating him or letting him see parts of yourself that you’re trying to drown like Icarus in the waves. You glance yearningly towards the doorway cut into the hedges.

All at once, Aegon is furious. “You don’t want to talk to me? You want to go back to how it was before, you want to pretend Mount Sinai never happened? Fine. You got it. Wish fucking granted. Whatever you have to do.”

He turns away from you. You flee from him. But that night when Asteria is hushed and still—Aemond, Criston, and Otto are attending a fundraising dinner in Philadelphia, and you are temporarily excused from accompanying them as you recover—you creep down into the basement of the main house to apologize. Mimi sleeps in a bedroom on the second floor, but here Aegon can keep odd hours and drink and smoke to his heart’s content, and even entertain clandestine guests, girls who are beautiful and giggling and never invited twice.

Aegon isn’t here. He might be passed out somewhere, or at a party, or maybe even upstairs with Mimi, and something about this idea twists through your mending guts like a blade. In his absence, you take a quick look around his room, something you’ve never done before. You hadn’t had any interest; it wouldn’t even have occurred to you. There’s a large green futon, a matching shag carpet, a television, a bookshelf full of notebooks and paperbacks—Kurt Vonnegut, Harper Lee, Sylvia Plath, Truman Capote, Ken Kesey—and vinyl albums, a record player, and his two acoustic guitars. The first is unpainted maple wood covered with stickers. I’d rather be nowhere reads one; Burn pot not people proclaims another. The second guitar is the souvenir he bought in Manhattan, an aquamarine blue six-string.

There's something strange on his end table. Along with a dozen empty cups is a full ashtray, and there’s a folded piece of paper tucked underneath. You slide the paper out and open it. It’s the receipt you used to solve the long division problem in your hospital room.

Why would he keep this? you think, mystified. There are footsteps above your head, and you quickly return the receipt to where you found it and leave before your trespass can be discovered.

When you emerge from the basement, Fosco is waiting in the hallway and carrying a Tupperware container filled with something that resembles kourabiethes, Greek shortbread cookies. “I thought I saw you sneak down there. What were you looking for?”

You scramble for an explanation. “One of the dogs is missing. Alicent wanted me to check the basement.”

“Ah, yes, I see.” He passes you the Tupperware container. “These are for you. I hope they are not too bad. I baked them myself.”

“Are they…” You shake it. “Biscotti?”

“They are ossi dei morti,” Fosco says. “Bones of the dead. We make them to remember loved ones we have lost. They are hard, so you should dip them in coffee or tea before you try to eat them.”

You open the lid. Inside are long thin cookies coated with powdered sugar. You inhale almond flour, cloves, cinnamon. And you are so touched you cannot find your words.

“You know, there still places in Italy where mothers wear black for years to mourn their children.” This is not trivia; it is an acknowledgement. Your son is gone. There is no shame in the grief that is left behind. In another house, it would be expected, it would be required.

“Thank you, Fosco.”

He smiles warmly. “We are in this together, no? We are pieces of the same machine.”

Then he plods off towards the living room, sliding a rolled-up horse racing program out of the back pocket of his tight plaid pants.

~~~~~~~~~~

You’re in Louisville, Kentucky, where thunder quakes the eaves. An hour ago, Aegon was popping Valium and leisurely plucking at his pool water blue Gibson guitar, slumped against the wall, nipping at a flask filled with straight Bacardi. But he’s not anymore. Now he’s gathered around the small color television with you, Criston, Otto, Fosco, Helaena, and Ludwika. The news is just breaking. There was a civil rights protest at the University of Kentucky in Lexington one hour to the east. Someone threw a rock, or someone claims someone threw a rock, or someone threw something that was mistaken for a rock, and in any event the situation escalated from there and local police who were monitoring the demonstration opened fire on a crowd, killing five students and injuring another dozen.

Outside, word is spreading through the crowd of over 2,000 people that have gathered for Aemond’s planned speech at the historic Iroquois Amphitheater, a New Deal project finished in 1938. Rain is pouring, and the venue has no roof. Aemond is already 20 minutes late. The voices are becoming louder, more demanding, more wrathful. They’re shouting that Aemond is too afraid to face them now, that he’s trying to figure out what his statement will be, that he’s cowardly and calculating; and if President Lyndon Baines Johnson was here tonight instead of cursing his bad stars up in Washington D.C., he would certainly have something to say about the capriciousness of voters who love you, hate you, carry you higher, drag you down, all without ever knowing you.

In truth, Aemond is not stalling on purpose. He’s in the bathroom trying to get his prosthetic eye in. It’s been giving him hell all afternoon. He wears his eyepatch at home, but he’s never made a public appearance without his glass eye clean and perfect in his voided socket.

“He’s going to have to say something about it,” you tell the others as you watch the news coverage.

“Say what?” Otto snaps. “If he doesn’t treat those dead kids like martyrs he’s going to get booed off the stage. If he condemns the police he’s going to lose the suburbs. They’ll run to Humphrey now and Nixon in November.”

The weather report called for storms—which is why Alicent, Mimi, and the children are already back at the Seelbach Hotel for the night after a long day of shaking hands and smiling gamely—but no one expected it to get this bad. The room you’re huddled in is just off-stage, so you can see it all: the wind ripping signs and flags from people’s hands, drenched clothes, sopping hair, snarling faces, rain turning puddles to rivers. The stomping of boots is now as loud as the thunder. Rocks and bottles are being pitched at the stage.

“Is America always like this?” Ludwika asks, scandalized.

“No, not at all,” Otto says. “Goddamn animals…”

Aegon replies, not taking his eyes from the television: “You’d be mad too if cops were shooting your friends and the only graduation present you had to look forward to was getting disemboweled by guerillas in Vietnam.”

“I’ve had it with you and your Marxist bullshit! You want to liberate the dispossessed masses? Why don’t you start by donating your monthly drugs and rum budget to the—”

“We should cancel,” Fosco says. “Just call the whole thing off. Tell them Aemond is sick or something.”

“That’s the headline you want? ‘Senator Targaryen hides from grieving supporters who braved a thunderstorm to see him’?! Just give the White House to Nixon now!”

“I don’t think we can cancel,” Criston says softly. “I think if we tried to leave, they’d swarm the car.”

“It’s a riot,” Otto moans, rubbing his face with his hands. “This is what happens when you court voters like this, college kids and hippies, professional malcontents…”

“Aren’t there police outside?” Ludwika says anxiously.

“Yeah, a handful,” Criston tells her. “And if they try to do anything this will erupt and we can add to the body count in Lexington…”

You leave them and follow a hallway to the men’s bathroom; on the periphery of your vision, you can tell that Aegon is watching you go. You push the door open and find a row of stalls and three sinks, one of which Aemond is standing in front of as he stares into his reflection and attempts to shove the prosthetic eye into his empty, gore-red left socket. His suit is navy blue, his hair neatly slicked back, his shoes so polished they’re reflective like a mirror.

“Fuck,” he hisses, flinching. His right cheek is wet with tears of frustration and agony. It’s July 26th, and tomorrow are the final three state conventions in the Democratic primary. Humphrey is almost certain to take Utah; Virginia will go to Governor Mills Godwin, who is only running in his home state to control the delegates and will hand them over to whoever he feels is most worthy in August. But Aemond is the favorite to win here in Kentucky. Or at least, he was an hour ago.

“What can I do? What do you need?”

“You can’t do anything. It’s…it’s this goddamn nerve pain, it feels like I’m being fucking stabbed, I can’t get the muscles to relax enough…”

Like an apology, you say: “Aemond, the crowd is getting out of control.”

“So you came in here to rush me?”

“No, I’m here to help.”

“You’re not helping. You’re doing the exact opposite.”

“I think you should give this speech with your eyepatch on. It looks good, and you’ll be as comfortable as possible, and the crowd won’t have to wait any longer than they have already.”

“No.”

“Aemond, please—”

“No! FDR didn’t make speeches in his wheelchair and I’m not making mine without my eye in.”

“Do you want me to get you Aegon’s pills? Rum, weed?”

“You don’t think I’ve already taken something?” He tries to force his eye in again and strikes his fist against the sink when he can’t.

Then you ask gingerly: “Do you know what you’re going to say about the shooting?”

“Get out!” Aemond shouts. “You’re making it worse, just get the fuck out! Go!”

You bolt from the bathroom, hands trembling, throat burning. You don’t want to return to the television where the others are standing; you’re worried they’ll be able to tell how upset you are. You go to the edge of the stage, arms crossed protectively over your chest, and peek out into the crowd. Above their chants and jeers and howled threats, lightning splits the sky.

I don’ t think we’re going to be able to find our way out of this one. I think this is the end of the road.

“Hey,” Aegon says, tapping your shoulder. “Back up.”

“I’m fine here.”

“No you’re not.” He grabs your arm and tugs you farther backstage. Seconds later, an Absolut Vodka bottle explodes into crystalline shrapnel where you were standing. You yelp and Aegon gives you a little eyebrow raise. I told you, he means.

“Someone has to go out there,” Otto says, still lurking by the television. Fosco is comforting Helaena, who is quietly weeping; Ludwika is watching the news coverage in horror, surely reconsidering all her life choices. A sixth University of Kentucky student has been declared dead. “We can’t wait.”

“No we can’t,” Criston agrees. Then they both turn to you expectantly.

Your blood goes icy. Tonight was meant to be your first official appearance since the baby. Your hair is up, your dress a navy blue to match Aemond’s suit, gold chains around your wrist and throat, a gold chain of a belt. You thought you were ready. But it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

“Don’t you look at her,” Aegon says, sharp like a scalpel, like a bullet, like something that punctures arteries and lungs. “They’re throwing glass. You figure something else out, don’t even look at her.”

Otto relents, perhaps halfheartedly. “No, you’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Criston starts heading for the bathroom to get Aemond. Otto is watching the television again, his face vacuous as his ambitions are carried away by a flood of rain, wind, rage, blood. Aegon snatches his guitar from where he left it by the wall. He tosses the strap over his head, gives the strings a few experimental strums and retunes them, starts walking towards the stage.

“Aegon, what are you doing?” you ask, panicked.

“Someone has to distract the crowd.”

“No, stop, you can’t—”

“Hey,” Aegon says. And when you glance past him at the uproarious, storm-drenched frenzy, he turns your face back to his to make sure you’re listening. His hand is insistent but gentle, his voice steady. “Don’t go out there. Okay?”

“Okay,” you agree, startled.

He gives you one last small, parting smile, a flash of his teeth, a daring glint in his murky blue eyes. Then he’s out in the torrential rain, soaked to the skin in seconds. His frayed green Army jacket clings to him; his hair is ravaged by the wind. As he takes his place behind the microphone, a stone that someone has hurled skates by him and nicks the apple of his left cheek. You can see a trickle of blood snaking down his sunburned skin before the rain washes it away; you feel a desperate gnawing dread that someone will hurt him, not just here but anywhere, not just now but ever. The crowd is still seething, shouting, stomping their feet to join the inescapable growl of the thunder. Aegon’s pick flies over the guitar strings as he begins playing, raindrops cast from his fingers like spells. At first, you can barely hear him.

“Come gather ‘round, people, wherever you roam

And admit that the waters around you have grown

And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you is worth saving

And you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone

For the times, they are a-changin’”

The audience is settling down now. Some of them are singing along. You can feel that Otto, Ludwika, Fosco, and Helaena are gathering around you, but you don’t grasp anything they’re saying. You can’t tear your eyes from Aegon. It’s like you’re seeing him for the first time, this radiant sunbeam of a man, a light in dark places, a constellation that whispers myths through the ink-spill indigo of the night sky. How could you ever have hated him? How could you ever have thought he was worthless?

“Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen

And keep your eyes wide, the chance won’t come again

And don’t speak too soon, for the wheel’s still in spin

And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s naming

For the loser now will be later to win

For the times, they are a-changin’”

Aemond and Criston appear beside you at the edge of the stage; Aemond’s prosthetic eye has at last been successfully placed with no lingering evidence of a struggle. You expect him to apologize for what he said in the bathroom, but he doesn’t. Instead he says when he sees Aegon: “What the hell is he doing?”

“Saving your career,” you reply simply.

“Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call

Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall

For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled

The battle outside raging

Will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls

For the times, they are a-changin’”

Now Aegon peers pointedly off-stage to where Otto Hightower is gawking. Aegon beams, throws his head back to get his dripping hair out of his eyes, comes back to the mic.

“Come mothers and fathers throughout the land

And don’t criticize what you can’t understand

Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command

Your old road is rapidly aging

Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand

For the times, they are a-changin’”

Everyone you can see in the crowd is singing and swaying. It’s not just a Bob Dylan song from 1964 but an anthem, a prayer, a rallying cry, a dire warning for the powers at be.

“The line, it is drawn, the curse, it is cast

The slow one now will later be fast

As the present now will later be past

The order is rapidly fading

And the first one now will later be last

For the times, they are a-changin’”

The audience is applauding and whistling. Aegon steals a glimpse of where you are standing backstage, checks that Aemond is still there with you and that he’s ready.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Aegon broadcasts with a wicked grin. “I am now proud to present the next president of the United States of America, Senator Aemond Targaryen!”

And Aemond is crossing the stage, no trace of pain or self-consciousness or prey-animal fear, no mere mortal but someone chosen by the gods, and the rain is slowing to a drizzle, and the clouds are opening to let through rare pinprick aisles of daylight, and the riotous spectators are now his disciples, exorcised of any rage they’ve ever felt for the scarred senator from New Jersey. He and his family are not the enemy; they are the solution. They are revolutionaries who have bled for the cause. They bring with them the change that is required. Aegon steps back and the rest of you join him in a semi-circle like a crescent moon behind Aemond. When you walk out onto the stage, the cheers swell to screams.

Aegon takes off his guitar and then leans into you. “He’s lucky you aren’t 35,” Aegon whispers, soft lips that curl into a smile as they brush your ear. And he’s teasing you but he’s not mocking, he’s not mean. He’s so close you share the same atmosphere, the same gravity. “Maybe when he finishes up his second term you can start building your resume for your first.”

“I want your endorsement.”

“From the disgraced former mayor of Trenton? What an honor. You’ll have to fight for it.”

You ball up a fist and playfully bump your knuckles against his chin. He pretends to bite at you. And you laugh for the first time since a doctor and priest entered your hospital room 13 days ago. Aegon slings an arm around your shoulders, pulls you against him, soaks you in his rain.

“Today in Lexington, we lost six brave and brilliant souls,” Aemond says, his voice booming through the amphitheater. A hush ripples through the crowd as they listen, enraptured. “Their sacrifice was for the most noble of causes, but they should never have been forced to pay the ultimate price. They deserved long, full lives in a better America than the one we now call home. This tragedy is a symptom of the sickness that has infected this nation, a fatal failure to empathize with our fellow countrymen, a deafness to pleas for justice, a blindness to mercy. But the remedy is within all of us, for it is our own humanity. When we purge the diseases of war, prejudice, and ravenous greed, we will reclaim our best selves—our true selves—and our nation will at last be cured.”

The amphitheater is illuminated with not only strobing lightning but the flashbulbs of cameras. The journalists have arrived just in time.

#aegon ii targaryen #aegon targaryen #aegon targaryen ii #aegon ii #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon x reader #aegon x y/n #aegon x you #aegon ii x you #aegon ii x y/n #aegon ii x reader #aegon ii targaryen x reader #aegon ii fanfic #aegon ii fic

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deathmetalunicorn1 · 1 month

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You ever see those grandparent videos where the parent brings their newborn into the house, without the grandparent knowing they were born yet? Imagine adult! Reader inviting everyone in and to their knowledge she hasn’t gone into labor yet but to their surprise the baby is right there.

Bonus points if it’s multiple babies like twins or triplets and the family had no idea until the reveal.

-Your family was waiting for you and your husband to arrive, it was the normal routine for Saturday, when you both would come over, there would be a big barbeque or meal, and you would get to spend time with the massive family you called your own.

-It had been a little difficult for you lately as you had been pregnant up until just a few days ago, but only Brunnhilde and Eve knew this, as you had called them, letting them know but asking them to keep it a secret, as you wanted to surprise everyone with your twins.

-They agreed to keep it quiet only if they got to hold the babies first, which you and your husband agreed to while trying not to laugh, the four of you plotting the surprise.

-You arrived quietly and Brunnhilde was waiting by the side door so you both could sneak in the back door to drop off your babies in a side room to get them ready, getting them out of their carriers.

-Eve told everyone else that you both were here, but when Loki spoke up after running to the door, wanting to get a hug first, he pouted when he saw neither of you there, “Where are they?” she just smiled warmly, “Y/N had to run to the bathroom.”

-They all nodded in understanding, as you were due any day now, as Hermes questioned, “Is it a good idea for her to be traveling right now?”

-Brunnhilde was recording before she gave you both the signal. Your husband walked out, holding your daughter, before you walked out, holding your son, “I’m fine.”

-Everyone turned, their eyes growing to the size of dinner plates, except for Eve and Brunnhilde as you grinned warmly as the house was shaking with screams and cries.

-Your daughter got a bit fussy at the sound, almost crying which made everyone hold their hands to their lips, silencing their cries as your husband rocked her.

-Your babies were being handed around, everyone enjoying the new additions to the family as you were relaxing, sitting curled up next to your husband who was grinning, recording now.

-Obnoxiously crying, unable to stop their tears as they held one or the other of your babies, unable to form any coherent words as they would look down at the baby, then to you, babbling nonsense while sniffling loudly, which made you giggle warmly.

-ARES, LOKI, Apollo, Nikola, Zerofuku, and Goll

-Only let a few happy tears slip out as they talked to your babies, talking so softly and sweetly, before turning to you and your husband, calling you both gremlins for pranking them, then turning back to your babies. They are overjoyed to see you and your babies, but how could you not tell them you had your babies already?!

-Adam, Zeus, Hades, Kojiro, Jack, Hercules, Hermes, Aphrodite, Shiva, Raiden, Eve, Brunnhilde, and the rest of the Valkyries

-Panicking, please don’t hand him a baby, he doesn’t know how to hold one! You sit next to him, guiding him how to hold your son who smiled up at him, babbling cutely which immediately made him melt, even if he didn’t show it. You can’t help but lean into him, seeing his rare soft smile.

-Thor, Lu Bu, Beelzebub, and Poseidon

-Expert baby holder, can easily put your children to sleep, all while trying to hide their smile that they were so good at it, despite others calling them out on it because they want to know how good there are, but they’re not revealing their secrets so easily, which causes you to laugh.

-Leonidas, Buddha, Qin Shi Huang, and Odin

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bones4thecats · 3 months

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hiii sorry and please can i request T-T

Tansaisekun!fem reader (like before) x Odin and anubis (seperately)

Soo im pretty bored since that can i request how a day in the life of reader and their lover and child would be , just fluff and pure crack and how would they find when one of their close friend are being bullied(jokingly) by the mischevious calamity Goddess??

(something like this)

Alright thats all tyyy

Type of Writing: Request Characters: Odin and Anubis Name: {Character} x Tansai Sekun! Reader with their Child Requester: @lizuannn Original Request: Here

A/N: I haven't written for these Record in Ragnarok characters to much, so they may kinda be a hint OOC. So I'll apologize in advance just in case.

✧⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋄✧⋄⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋆⋄✧⋄⋅⋆⋄✧⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋆⋄✧⋄⋅⋆⋄✧⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅

🪶 Everyone is so confused on how the hell you both even got along because of your differing personalities, not to mention started a relationship

🪶 Not many knew, but the reason he loved you was your differences, whenever he compared himself and his constant stoic expression to your more upbeat and sadistic smile-covered face, he would feel a flutter in his chest

🪶 When you guys heard you were expecting your first child, nobody was more shocked than Zeus, who never expected his oldest ally to have children of his own, he even bet his fellow Gods on it!

🪶 Now the guy owes around one million things of different kinds of money to different Deities, what a dumbass

🪶 Anyways, Odin was on the edge of having a child, he didn't want the kid to be 'on-the-edge' of sanity, that may end up causing mass chaos on the entirety of Valhalla

🪶 But, when your son, Thor, came in the world, he resembled his father far more than his mother, which made you tease him for it, trying to get him to smile more often than not

🪶 You bonded with Loki far more because of your sadism, and it wasn't new to your son or husband to see you both messing around with another God with your classic sadistic smile

🪶 The closest you have ever gotten to being the sadistic mother-son duo with Thor is whenever you were talking about bloody battles you both participated in, and hearing you both stay so calm while describing a mutilation honestly scares everyone within hearing-distance, your husband is even on edge around you more now

🪶 Now, everyone knew that you teased everyone. But when, during a Gods' Council meeting, you began to screw around with Zeus, driving him to the near-brink of insanity, Odin just mentally face-palmed, how does he put up with you?

🐶 What a surprise? The happy-sadist and the insane-golden-retriever Deities have now gotten together!

🐶 Anubis was known for his happy-go-lucky and partially sadistic personality, while you were known for your full-blown sadism to anything that walked, especially if the thing was humanoid

🐶 You guys got along quite well before it was announced that you guys were, in fact, a couple and were intending to marry one another once the day arrived, and it didn't shock anyone, you guys were quite similar and lived off the other's energy

🐶 No, your relationship didn't shock anyone who heard about it, rather, they were shocked when they heard you guys were expecting a child

🐶 Once your daughter, which you both named Kebechet, came into the world, anybody who looked at her could tell, she was definitely going to be as compulsive with her actions like you and her father was

🐶 As she aged, she showed more signs of a small-sadistic side hatching inside of her like a seed growing into a blooming apple tree

🐶 Anubis loves playing with his child, and most of the time, it ended up with them playfully bickering as you would film it to show off to the rest of the Egyptian Pantheon

🐶 Due to her more sadism showing, many began to fear the three of you being together in the same room whenever announcing something that they knew would at least aggravate one of you, since it most likely would result in all of you getting angry

🐶 Now, Anubis was fairly close to Hades, since their occupations involved being around one another sometimes, since Anubis brought souls to the Underworld while Hades ruled said land and measured each soul that passed

🐶 When he was dropping off a small group of souls and he saw you floating around the head of his friend's, Anubis smiled and was about to call your name when he faltered, seeing Hades jump as you summoned a small lump of what looked like body parts

🐶 Watching as you still pressured Hades into snapping, Anubis decided to take a break and watch. Why not? Two of his favorite people messing around? Yes please

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poisonousgirlie · 1 month

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Sparks: part II (Luke Castellan x Daughter of Zeus! Reader)

A/N: Hi! Thank you so much for reading and supporting part I of Sparks, it means so much to me. Here is the second part, it's a bit shorter than the first, but I wanted to get this out so I can start working on the third and final part for everyone. Also, I'm a sucker for a slow burn I'm SORRY.

Word count: 1,271

Summary: Reader helps Luke deal with the aftermath of his quest, and grapples with her own feelings.

part I

Luke’s quest took a huge toll on him. His anger, pain, and humiliation combined, putting him in a pretty bad place when he returned to Camp Half-Blood. You had been worried sick the entire time he was gone, constantly filled with nervous energy and biting people’s heads off more than you ever would under normal circumstances. The moment Annabeth burst into your cabin, her normally cool demeanor disrupted, you knew in your gut that something was wrong. She only managed to get his name out of her mouth before you were running, sprinting at top speed, the wind propelling you forward, and everyone else out of your way. You burst through the front door of the Big House, skidding to a halt as you nearly ran into Chiron. The centaur’s face was grim as he redirected you to the infirmary. Your heart dropped, and in your panic, you retained little memory of the moments it took for you to get to him after that. He was sitting on one of the cots, Lee Fletcher standing in front of him. You approached him from the back, unable to see his face as you stepped into the room fully. Your body relaxed slightly as you deduced that he wasn’t dying, but instinctively something felt wrong. His shoulders were hunched, and his face turned slightly downwards, a stark contrast to the Luke you knew, always keeping his head high, shoulders back, all confidence and charisma. Lee noticed you first, saying your name in what sounded like relief. To both of your surprise, Luke stiffened at this, almost curling into himself more at your arrival. You approached him carefully, noting his tattered and blood-stained clothes with muted alarm but little surprise. As you rounded the bed to stand in front of him, Lee cleared his throat and stepped away. The dark-haired boy before you refused to look up at you for a moment. He only lifted his face to meet your eyes when you gently tilted his chin upwards, sliding your hand over his jaw to cradle his face as you took in his new scar. You carefully kept your face neutral; you knew Luke well enough to know that he would despise pity from you more than anything else. “Are you all right?” you questioned, your voice betraying you slightly as it shook a little. It pained you to your very soul to see him like this; you hated to see him injured, but more than anything, it was the empty look in his eyes that killed you. A scar would heal, his face just as handsome and striking as it had been, if not more so. What mattered to you was the boy underneath all of that, the one whom you could tell was on the verge of a very dark place. To anyone else, he may just seem a little down, nursing his injuries and stewing as anybody would when something did not go as planned. You, however, knew how much succeeding on this quest meant to him, something you could easily deduce had not happened. His voice was convincing as he assured you of his physical well-being, and you opted not to push him right away for any details. He would share when he was ready. In the meantime, you resolved to stay by his side, providing him with a steadfast source of support as he dealt with the fallout of the failed quest.

It took weeks before Luke was fully open to talking to you. You had coaxed pieces of the story out of him, careful not to push too hard in fear of forcing him back into his shell as opposed to opening up. You were sure to avoid showing any pity— that was not what he needed, and he was already perceiving too much of it from the campers around him. In truth, you didn’t pity him; you felt for him. The situation sucked, but he was not some moping defeated loser. He was still Luke Castellan, the same strong heroic leader you adored and looked up to so much; he had just been dealt a crappy hand, by a crappy dad. When he finally was ready to talk about how he was feeling, you were ready. It was late one night; he had snuck into your cabin after lights out, exhausted from a long day of counselor duties and emotional labor related to his quest. You two had yet to officially cross the blurry boundary between friends and more, but it was nothing unusual when he shucked off his shoes and hoodie and collapsed into your bed with you. He rested his head on your stomach, his body slotted between your legs, as he allowed himself to relax for the first time all day. You gently untangled his messy curls with your fingers, providing quiet support, and chiming in periodically as he spoke, getting everything off his chest. “I’m angry, sweetheart. Hermes ignored me my entire life, finally acknowledging me just to send me on a pointless quest I didn’t even complete. And now people look at me like a kicked fucking puppy. I can’t stand it.” His voice was furious, but you did not miss the tinge of pain underneath the acid in his tone. You allowed him to rant; it was better he shared his feelings than bottle them up and put them towards negative things. You talked him through it for hours, being the sounding board he needed to work through his tangled mess of emotions. Eventually, he felt slightly better, which in turn gave you some relief. It was early morning when the two of you finally went to sleep, limbs tangled together, and hearts slightly lighter than they were before.

Months had passed, and Luke was getting closer and closer to his old self, his confidence back, even if some of it was faked. His laugh had returned, and so had his vigor for training and helping the kids. You were positive your heart was going to beat out of your chest with happiness and pride when you saw him one day, laughing loudly as he played with some of the youngest campers in the arena. He had been giving them very beginner sword lessons, and after a while of practice, the littles had rebelled and were now climbing all over him like a human jungle gym. His tall frame bore their weight easily, letting a little boy dangle his entire weight off one arm as if he weighed nothing at all. Watching Luke do anything was attractive if you were being honest with yourself. Even more so since he returned from his quest. The time he was gone was the longest you had been without him since arriving at camp, and it made you realize how integral he was to your life. You could function without him, but it was so much better when he was there next to you. You had been grappling with your feelings for a while, weighing the pros and cons of pushing past the point of friendship. You had recently come to terms with the fact that you were stupidly in love with your best friend, due in part to the interference of your close friend and daughter of Aphrodite: Silena Beauregard, who had more or less knocked some sense into you. Your feelings were clear to you, his, however, were not, and you did not know how to proceed. The signals were confusing; people who did not know you would assume that the two of you were already together. You certainly acted like it in many ways. You were always together and definitely did not shy away from touching each other. Seeing him with an arm casually slung across your shoulders or around your waist was not uncommon, and neither was witnessing you fix his hair, dust off his shirt, or touch him in other casual small ways that denoted the level of comfort the two of you shared. Despite all of this, he had never made a move. There were countless times, late at night alone in your cabin (which you literally had all to yourself??), when you were sure he might kiss you, but he always looked away at just the last second, smoothly changing the subject and ending whatever moment had taken place. It started to weigh on you a bit, and there had been a few times now when you cried to Silena about the pain of loving your best friend in silence. The ache in your chest when you looked at him felt like you had been stabbed with a celestial bronze knife, one that was slowly being twisted the longer you remained in your state of uncertainty. It was never a doubt to you that he cared about you; first and foremost, he was your friend and an amazing one at that. It was the in-between and the wishing for more that caused the damage. Outside of you and Luke, anyone with eyes could see that you were hopelessly in love. The way your eyes lingered on his form, and vice versa, conveyed all that needed to be said; it was only the two of you standing in the way.

A/N: I'm choosing not to have Luke side with Kronos in this because I am choosing peace for myself. Again I apologize for any errors, and hope you liked part II!

xx poisonousgirlie

#luke castellan fluff #luke castellan pjo #luke castellan x reader #luke castellan fanfic #luke castellan #pjo fanfic #percy jackson fandom #percy jackson fanfiction

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radioactivesweet · 10 months

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Hello!!~ May I pretty pls, get more headcanons about Nyx!s/o?; Ares, Beelzebub, Loki and Tesla with a Nyx! s/o?~

(Just imagine Loki using his s/o to scare Zeus, I can’t— 💀✨)

Also, feel free to add other characters if you want ^ - ^

Ngl I'm enjoying this Nyx!s/o requests! Nyx is such a cool goddess! And yeah- Loki is definitely using her in his favour hahahah I won't add anymore character tho otherwise I'll end up posting this much much later

Ares, knowing your name and reputation - alongside the fact that his father himself was scared of you - thought you'd be as scary as you were described. Whenever your name was brought up in a conversation - which happened quite rarely - people who'd grow pale and start shivering, which scared Ares immensly, despite trying not to show it. You became a sort of boogeyman in his mind, the kind of creature you'd talk about to children to have them got to sleep. So when he actually met you and discovered you didn't appear to be that frightnening, he immediately warmed up to you, being the himbo he is. When you get close to each other, whenever he sees you, he lights up - which is kinda ironic if you think about it. Ares has his perks and self-preservation doesn't appear to be one of them. How he has become devoid of any fear towards you and instead showers you with affection is a mystery to you, but it's much appreciated. All the rumours surrounding you weren't enough to scare him away after all and he surely is one funny god to have around. Family dinner are quite funny too for you. Zeus tries to avoid them whenever he can and you can have the time of your life by frightening Zeus himself.

Beelzebub recognises how similar you two are from the first moment he met you. Both of you feared and isolated deities, whose name alone makes the earth tremble, associated with darkness and ruin, whose presence is dreadful and nightmarish. Frightnening and unpleasant, he knew he'd get along well with you. To each other though, you're both kinda warmer, despite keeping a certain level of detachement between you two. You know about Beelzebub's curse - and have seen many curses during your long life - and try to look for a solution to it, despite his resistance. Being an ancient deity gave you much more experience than his, yet helping someone who doesn't want to be helped is a difficult job. Despite everything, when you two are together, you have the certainty that nobody will ever dare disturbing you. On your own you are both terrying, together you are Heaven's worst nightmare.

Loki isn't scared of you, what he's scared of is Odin finally punishing him for one of his many pranks. You are actually the one who could save him from his miserable fate! Not even Odin would dare to punish him if it meant crossing your path. You silently checking on him is more than enough for Loki to do whatever he want without having to deal with the consequences - unless he angers you, at that rate he'd probably be annihilated, but he doesn't want to reach that point. He is mischievous, not stupid, and doesn't want to die either. At first, he has to admit it, Loki was a little put off by you. You were intimidating to say the least, but he already had his good share of frightnening deities to deal with. You can be sure he will never and ever pull a prank on you, even though he'd like to try once. It may be his last prank though.

Nikola is the child of light; you are the goddess of night. The bright scientist and the gloomy deity. Complete opposites, yet he is enchanted by you. Nikola, believing in the power of science instead of gods' doesn't really understand why you seem to be feared by others. He can see how you can appear a little intimidating but aside from that, he finds your presence quite pleasant! Nikola believes that thanks to you he may also progress with his experiments - he is quite interested in your powers too. He doesn't want you to feel like a guinea pig though, because he doesn't absolutely see you that way. You are someone he knows will be of help in his researchs and sees you as a beacon who could make humanity itself evolve. You are his partner and Nikola values a lot your opinions and beliefs. The fact that you are an incredibly powerful deity is a bonus he doesn't dislike though. Thanks to his light and your darkness, he knows you'll be able to achieve great things together.

#record of ragnarok #shuumatsu no valkyrie #ror #record of ragnarok x reader #snv #snv x reader #ror x reader #shuumatsu no valkyrie x reader #shuumatsu no walkure #ares #ares x reader #beelzebub #beelzebub x reader #loki #loki x reader #nikola tesla #nikola tesla x reader

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spiritually-a-blorb · 8 months

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headcannons for Apollo and Meg after all the books beacuse all I've been doing for the past days are spinning these scrunkly guys around in my head at terminal velocity <3

- Meg always carries a pack of sunflower seeds with her when she goes to school.

- Whenever Meg takes ancient history and they cover Greece, she manages the worst grade beacuse Apollo tells her facts that the book literally dosent know and he thinks it's blasphemy that's she's failing.

- Apollo will literally never shut up about his kids now. he hears literally the smallest detail that reminds him of them and he talks for hours about them

- Artemis is around Apollo a lot more, and she's definitely more protective/worried about him. Apollo likes the extra time he gets with her.

- Apollo returned Paolo's bandanna, but definitely not before finding one for himself. he wears it everywhere, Artemis has tried to burn it like 20 times, but somehow it always returns to Apollo in one piece.

- Apollo cannot physically hear or look anything in a shakesperian accent without wanting to commit mass destruction/cry

- Meg never gets sunburnt. like ever. plus, her crops always manage to get the right balance of sun without her help.

- One day, Meg manages to teleport directly to Apollo. As it turns out, since Apollo got himself up out of Chaos, no one ever really broke the master/servant bond. Apollo conveniently does not mention this until the last moment possible, beacuse he likes feeling connected to Meg, even when he's away.

- Apollo kept his scars. In doing so, older scars seem to pop up, that he was definitely sure he didn't get while he was mortal. They cover his body, and he can't seem to get rid of them without the ones he got while being mortal going away too. So, he hides them, and only shows off the ones he got as a mortal.

- Apollo is allowed to visit Rachel, beacuse he wants to prevent something like Python from happening to his oracles again.Zeus buys this, but only beacuse he weighs in with Athena first. Athena was totally not bribed into this by Apollo with actual intellectual discussions, no sir.

- On a totally unrelated note, he tries to connect with Athena more. They have little discussions about different topics every week or two.

- Apollo likes trying to connect with all his Olympian family. He realizes that they all suffered under Zeus, and if they are closer, like an actual family, maybe it will lessen the blows.

- Meg somehow never gets sick. it is both a blessing and a curse, since she always has to care for her siblings when they are sick

- For some odd, very mysterious reason, whenever Apollo visits Rachel, his kids or Meg are ever-present, and after he visits for some time (some days he visits longer, others it is shorter) they just pop in. weird, but since he's here visiting his Pythia, and technically not his kids, Zeus isn't gonna pay that much attention to mortals

- Since Apollo's sacred animal (one of them, anyway) is a red cow, it's totally not far fetched that it falls within his duties to check on the herd at the Waystation. After all, what God wouldn't check on their sacred animal! some mortals might mistreat them, after all!! and since he needs to talk to the owners,, he might as well catch up with them, right?

- Camp Jupiter is totally in need of more renovations, right? and it makes sense that such a devoted group should deserve some kind of reward. plus, since Apollo made the mess with the whole war thing, it makes the most sense for him to go and help! and later, he needs to check that his work is top notch!

- Apollo always visits Meg on Sundays. Technically, he's visiting Herophile, since he needs to check on her too! she's an important oracle! but Meg lives there, so they are bound to run into each other, and it's totally not weird that these meetings take a day (or two) beacuse that's a mere blink in the eye, for a god, anyways.

#toa #meg mccaffrey #lester papadopoulos #pjo apollo #sunflower siblings

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idksmtms · 3 months

Text

You Are Not One of Us (Poseidon x Norse Goddess!reader) - Part 1

Full Request

AN: OMGGGG my first request! And it’s an absolute banger too??? I feel like a queen, I truly do.

I know the original request was more about Marvel-based Norse mythology but I’m not a Marvel fan so I went with original Norse mythology! Hope that’s ok!

-Also yes, this is a place where we pretend the Hades-Persephone myth isn’t as messed up as it actually is and is a sweet love story instead, fuck off-

-I know Hestia is supposed to be a virgin goddess and never marry but like… I’m thinking of a cute hearth goddess and how she could love Hephaestus and I want that for them-

Final PS. that corner pic of Toby Stephens doesn't fit the rest of the aesthetic, I know, but I saw it while searching and it had me quivering so I had to add it.

Summary: Zeus and Odin have brought peace to the worlds of the gods. With peace comes love. But all is NOT fair in love and war.

Word count: 6,187

Trigger Warnings: she/her pronouns, AFAB reader, profanity, innuendo, age gap (even tho they both thousands of years old), god racism?? Idk they act like “foreigner gods” is a bad thing, lusting, liking the fact that he looks older (is this a warning???), (please let me know if I missed any)

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians characters. I do not claim to own any of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians characters. I do not own any pictures used nor do I claim to do so.

Always appreciate comments, likes, and reblogs :)

It was the dawn of a new era when Kronos was thrown to Tartarus. His evil had touched more than just the world of the Greek gods, sending ripples through the very world of mythology itself. Though the worlds of the Norse and the Grecians were thousands of miles away, their gods had often met on the battlefields. A multitude of stories, now lost to time, told of the wars of snow and sand, told of the loves made and broken between viking idols and spartan gods. But upon the ‘death’ of Kronos, the new king of the gods found himself in a forgiving mood. Odin too, having given up so much for wisdom, realised the best way forward was to have peace in all aspects under his control, once and for all.

The two gods met deep in a forest exactly halfway between what is now Greece and Norway, a forest that eventually became the town of Vlasim in the Czech Republic. No one other than the two kings knows what was said in order for the peace pact to be made, but they left with promises of order, friendship, and an invitation for the Asgardians to visit the stronghold that is Mount Olympus.

When Zeus returned with this news, they all rejoiced and began ensuring Mount Olympus looked better than it ever had before. After all, they still needed to outshine these other supposed “gods”. Hera took charge of ensuring the entire place glowed, already beginning to argue with Demeter on how the flowers would look best. Aphrodite was already picking out her best dresses and sprucing up her hair, Artemis and Apollo hopping off to go hunting for some creature that would show their true prowess to the Asgardians (secretly hoping they would make it back in time). Dionysus was left in charge of the entertainment, though he was quickly focused only on providing wine for the entire table, and Hephaestus and Hestia found comfort in quiet corners of the room, watching all the chaos unfold. Hades had been unbothered, promising he would show up with Persephone when the Asgardians arrived and nothing more before disappearing in a puff of smoke back to the underworld and no doubt the loving arms of his wife. Poseidon was… well he didn’t know how he felt. If he was honest, he was beginning to feel old. Life as a god wasn’t all it was cut out to be, and it had been dragging a bit recently. His millennia of existence were beginning to catch up to him and he wasn’t sure how to jumpstart his enjoyment again. He had even taken to wearing an older form recently, a man still in his prime, but one with the wisdom of a thousand years subtly showing itself in the lines around his eyes and mouth. A man still corded in muscle but with the stockiness, width, and strength of one who had had one hundred lifetimes to hone it. This seemed like exactly the kind of thing he needed to reintroduce excitement to his life. Though Zeus had not included him in the peace talks, he was happy to be part of the governing that came after, to help maintain the peace between the gods. For once he felt he could happily commend his brother for a job well done.

And he was excited to meet these new gods, apprehensive too of course, but… excited. It would be a good opportunity to measure themselves up to the others in their world, to truly decide if they were as invincible as they believed they were. Poseidon believed it was important for the gods to have a wake-up call every now and again to their fragility, and he was sure this would be one of them.

Across the world, in the realm of Asgard and the halls of Valhalla, ale was poured and songs were sung as the gods rejoiced. Odin sat on his throne high above the others as some danced, some fought, some feasted, and some passed out from too much of everything too soon. Odin watched over them all with one of his rare smiles, a hand resting atop the one Frigg had placed on the arm of his throne. Even Loki, occasional friend, occasional enemy, had joined for this celebration. He was proud of what he had achieved, of the worthy sacrifices he had made, to not only bring him eternal wisdom, but to bring peace between two races of gods. Odin turned to Frigg, leaning down to kiss her cheek. She blushed, turning to him and pressing one on his cheek in return.

“Everything is well?” She asked, caressing his cheek just under the eye he had given up.

“Perfect,” he sighed, then looked back out to the dancefloor where his children now pranced jokingly.

Thor laughed heartily as he began to chug from his mug, froth spilling over the sides of his cheeks as his friends clapped and cheered. Loki even smiled, though he was more caught up in trying to continue his conversation with the little goddess sandwiched between her brother and him. Odin’s youngest child, the newest addition to Asgard, giggled at her brother’s antics and the clever commentary the god of mischief whispered in her ear. She was still young by the standards of the gods, having only seen a thousand sun cycles, and she was treated as such, cherished by all who looked upon the daughter of Odin, the goddess of love, so loved in fact, that Odin had chosen to bestow his own title of god of war onto her. The goddess of love, and war, Y/n Odinsdottir.

You were excited for this trip to Mount Olympus. You had been aware of the Greek gods since your birth but you had not had the opportunity of meeting them in battle. Being only a thousand years old meant you had been coddled for five hundred of them, and though you had been given the title of goddess of war, you still felt you had to earn it. Balancing the powers of love and war was a struggle you were still learning. You had spent the last five hundred years trying to choose the right warriors to bestow your blessing upon, the right vikings to give the power of love (the second being especially difficult as you had only felt familial love thus far). This would be an opportunity to learn from these other gods, to not only enjoy a new era of peace but to build on your own skills.

Odin, Frigg, and Thor enjoyed your excitement, watching with smiles as you pranced about in different dresses wondering which would be the best to wear, brushing out your hair and carefully pinning the dark blue tresses into an updo. Though you often changed the way you looked (shapeshifting came with the job of being a love goddess for all mythologies it seemed), you never changed the blue hair. You had quickly grown fond of it, and the natural movement of hair in that colour reminded you of waves on the ocean, a particular favourite spot of yours. Even past the blue hair, you often wore blue dresses in varying shades, simply because you had come to love the ocean, and thus the colour blue. The other gods often remarked that love was not black nor white, rather it was blue.

On the eve of the grand meeting of the gods, you had sat beside Loki in a stone alcove high above the feast hall of Valhalla, watching the slain heroes rejoice for another evening. Though it was in Loki’s nature to be a trickster, you had come to enjoy his company and often seeked him out when you were bored or nervous. He knew the history of the gods almost as well as Odin, and you enjoyed the way he told his stories with exaggerated voices and dancing movements. You loved learning about all that had happened before you, all the battles the gods had fought, the relationships they had made, long before you were even a thought in Odin’s head. On a night like this, when you had too much energy to just while away the hours, you found Loki and begged him to tell you a story. You were still young, and possibly your power as a love goddess had an influence too, but he found he could never quite say no to you.

“Alright, little goddess, settle in, for tonight I tell you a story of love and perilous heartbreak, a story that involves lovers who should never have met, lovers who had no business being together, and who fate punished for it,” Loki began, eyes sparkling as he gazed deep into your own. You shivered and nodded, excitement and just a hint of fear tickling your spine. You sat back against the stone wall and brought your knees to your chest, resting your chin on top of them and waiting for Loki to begin again.

“So many years ago that neither you nor I were even a thought in the dust, one of the aesir fell in love with a goddess of another land. Though their names and abilities are lost now, we know that the aesir was one of our strongest, almost indestructible. The goddess was special in her own right, among her own people, and these two great clans warred for many centuries. Years and years were spent slaughtering each other’s families, using human battles as their own, bleeding each other dry until there was barely anything left to call them gods.

During one such battle, this aesir had broken through the front lines of the opponents, but was stopped dead in his tracks when he laid eyes upon a beautiful goddess helping to heal what she could. He was enamoured by her, so enamoured that for the first time in any battle he was nicked by an arrow.” Loki paused, seeing the way your eyes widened and began to get teary, and he smiled gently. “Do not worry little goddess, it was only a small cut, and he was able to heal, but the true wound was in his heart. He wanted to find this goddess, to be near her, to love her, and yet every day he had to fight her people, without fail.

One day, he decided to stay back while the others fought, and he snuck over to the other side to try and find his goddess. He disguised himself as a butterfly and fluttered around their camp looking for her. Again, when he found her he was struck dumb by her beauty, and instantly changed into his true form in front of her. She was terrified, and she almost began to yell for help, but he begged her not to. He promised her his life, his very essence as a god, if only she would give him a chance to show her how much he had come to love her. Of course she was apprehensive at first, he was the enemy after all, but she allowed him this.

The aesir took his knife, cut his palm, and dripped his blood onto the ground. With the first drop, he created a new flower and named it Linnea, for her. With the second, he created a flurry of butterflies that would follow after her wherever she would go, do whatever she wished of them. And with the third, he created a thin gold thread. He took one end of the thread and tied it around his wrist before offering the other to her. He said that if she took it, he would bind himself to her, soul to soul. That if she loved him back, they may be separated, but the gold thread would tie them together forever and wherever they may be, they could always follow it back to one another. The goddess, won over by his utter devotion, accepted his offering and promised to love him back until the end of her days.

Each night they separated to their own camps, connected only by the gold thread, and each day while the battles and the war raged on, they would sneak away to far off places to be together and live in a happiness their people couldn’t seem to find. But all was not well for the lovers, for the Norns had spun their threads and knew that the price of their love was one no god could ever pay. And so, one day when the lovers snuck off, a god from this other clan who had been promised this goddess’s hand in marriage decided to follow. He saw this ultimate betrayal and sounded the alarm. Both lovers were dragged back to their camps in shackles, the aesir and the other gods unsure of how to punish them.

The eldest of the aesir knew what must be done. The lovers could never be together, it was simply impossible, and he spoke with the leader of this other clan in a moment of truce. They were both in agreement, and the elder was sent off to complete this task. He ventured to Yggdrasil and found Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld. He had Verðandi remove any memory or thought of the goddess from the aesir’s mind. He had Urðr remove any trace of the goddess from the aesir’s fate. And he had Skuld remove any future with the goddess.

When this was done, the elder returned to the camp and found the god to see if the Norns had worked true. He had no memory of the goddess, and seemed returned as he was to the aesir. On the other side, the same had happened to the goddess with her own fates, any trace of the god removed from her thoughts, memories, fate and future. Everyone thought all was well and normalcy had returned, but both god and goddess felt the eternal tug of a gold thread wrapped around their wrist that no one but them could see. Both attempted to follow it but it seemed to never have an end. They would stand in front of each other, and look straight through the other, never able to see one another again. Forever they were cursed to wonder why they were pulled toward something they could not see, something they would never be able to find.” Loki finished with a sigh, looking at you as you sat curled up against the wall opposite him. You were frowning, tears collected at the corners of your eyes and lip trembling.

“I didn’t like that story,” you mumbled, shaking your head and wiping at your eyes. “What was so wrong with them loving each other?”

“Little goddess, we are terrified of the things we don’t understand. We don’t understand love, we don’t understand why it evades us but not those we hate. We don’t understand why it makes us love those we do not want to love.” Loki began to stand, brushing off his legs and shirt with a shrug.

“Then… then none of you understand me. You are all terrified of me. I am the goddess of love, am I not?” You asked, looking up at him with fearful eyes. But Loki just smiled and patted your head.

“You help us understand love, little goddess. That is why we need you, because without you, we would all be even more lost. Imagine that,” he smirked and chuckled, then walked away, mumbling something about readying for the journey to Olympus.

When the Norse gods began to arrive on Olympus, the Vanir entering first, the gathered horde of Greek gods and goddesses and spirits began to mumble and talk among themselves as they judged the foreigners that now walked among them. The Grecians felt their dressing was superior, their peplos were so white that they would burn the eyes of a human. The gold edging was pure and shined as if it was freshly polished and not thread. The purple cloaks they all donned would bankrupt every village in the human world just to get enough dye to make it look that bright. They were… amused? Intrigued? Maybe even disgusted by the fashion of their guests. They all wore varying shades of red. They had either thin linen garments with animal furs draped across their shoulders and arms, or donned thick tunics of sheepskin and wool pants with leather belts decorated with axes and swords. Both groups were… apprehensive to mingle.

Zeus and Hera sat on their thrones and looked down on their guests, nodding greetings as they watched for Odin and Frigg. Poseidon and Hades sat on their own thrones to the side of their brother. Hades was turned to the side and conversing solely with Persephone who stood just behind his throne, leaning onto it and smiling down at her husband. Poseidon just sat back and watched the gods enter the grand hall, resting his chin on his hand and trying not to yawn with boredom.

The entrance of Odin and Frigg could not be missed. As they crossed the bridge into Mount Olympus, they were surrounded by the Aesir. Odin held Frigg’s hand, both dressed in traditional Viking fashion. Frigg wore a modest woollen strap dress in a shade of red so deep it looked like she had bathed in blood. Her grey eyes were smudged with black on the lids and her hair was braided on both sides and tied back, resting on a black fur stole draped over her shoulders. Odin was dressed completely in black, from his eyepatch to his tunic and sheepskin pants. But his cloak was of the pure white fur of a bear, the edges dragging on the ground behind him.

Thor followed behind his father, dressed as a common viking, but with Mjolnir dangling from his wrist, shiny and almost glowing. Baldr walked beside him, a simple white tunic and black pants comprising his outfit. But it was his hair that was the talk of the audience, so pale and white that it seemed to glow itself. He was a handsome creature, youthful and majestic, with a muscular body and a gentle smile. The muses began to giggle as they watched him walk past.

It was after Thor and Baldr had separated to stand beside their father and mother, that little gasps and whispers began to pervade the air. Behind them had walked Odin’s youngest child, wearing a dress of blue that draped over your body like water. It looked like it had been made of the thinnest netting all gathered and crushed together then draped over your body in the fashion of the Greeks. The fabric was so light near the top that it looked like the very froth of a wave, and darkened as it flared out behind you, the hem almost as black as the deepest trenches of the sea. Like your mother and father, you had draped a fur over your shoulders, hoping to appease your people. You had wanted to blend in with the Greeks, had wanted them to feel respected (you were entering their home after all) but you still wanted to look like a viking.

The Aesir walked forward as Zeus stood from his throne, followed slowly by his brothers and Hera. He smiled at the approaching group, waiting until they were just in front of the thrones before speaking.

“Welcome, all, to Mount Olympus,” his voice boomed, and a small flutter of claps sounded from around the crowd. “Thank you for joining us, and for ensuring peace between our peoples for the rest of our eternity,” he smiled, and Odin bowed his head in thanks, letting go of Frigg’s hand to hold both of his own in front of himself. “Please, converse, rest, enjoy the sights of Olympus and partake in the refreshments,” Zeus gestured his arms to the tables of ambrosia that stretched so far that even the gods lost sight of their ends. With that, he sat back on his throne, and waited for Odin and Frigg to approach.

Hades took the opportunity to grab Persephone’s hand and try to slink off but the goddess just chided him and forced him to sit back in his throne as she went to see her mother. Hel chose this moment to approach him and the two began a stilted conversation about their individual worlds of death. Hephaestus and Hestia, who had taken up to joining together in situations of unfamiliarity, sat together in the corner, whispering among themselves. Apollo found company in Bragi, though both instantly began speaking in verse to try and prove who was the better poet.

Artemis, Ares, and Athena had crowded Thor and Tyr and were all in different positions of trying to look dangerous, unamused, and intrigued at the same time. Aphrodite had pounced on Baldr, but found competition in the muses who had already made their way to surround him, and soon found herself flirting with Freyr. Hermes and Loki too had found delightful conversation with one another, full of ideas of thievery and trickery.

And Poseidon was… enamoured. Since the moment he had laid eyes on you he had not taken them away. He had slowly sat back down in his chair, worried that if he stayed standing his knees may give out. You made a god weak. You were beautiful, ethereal, magical, beyond anything even the gods could think to conjure. And your dress… oh that dress, had you chosen it for him? Had you arrived with a mind to capture his very essence? Because it started with that dress. You looked the very soul of water, the very thing that made a world impossible without it. Your hair, your luscious hair, so blue that it reminded him of his palace, of the places deepest in the sea where he felt truly at peace. And the small smile on your face as you meandered between the different groups of gods conversing, slightly shy of your place, but not unhappy. It was the smile of a fresh pearl, one that shined under even the dimmest of lights.

Poseidon watched you walk about, not entering any conversation but not shying away from listening to the others speak. Your pretty face never once dipped into a frown, and he felt like he would never truly catch his breath if he could see you in his line of vision. It took every bit of his godly power to force his eyes away, and he was both angered and thankful when some god (who seemed to be the only one who looked as old as he probably was) walked up to his throne and began conversing about fish.

You were so happy that Njord had listened to your little prompt to go speak to the god of the seas, because it meant he finally pulled his eyes away from you, and you could begin to watch him in return. He had been the first of the thrones you had looked at, and the only one you truly cared about now. His eyes were such a dark blue that they reminded you of the ocean, of your favourite place in the ocean in fact, and they seemed so… knowing, as if one look at another told him everything he needed to know about them. His form was majestic, stoic and strong, with broad shoulders and thick arms that made you desire something you had never desired before. You wanted him to hold you. You wanted him to wrap those arms around you, to run your fingers over those arms. Were you bewitched? Were you cursed? Even his hair made you feel desire, those beautiful locks of hair that resembled celestial bronze, neat yet still unrestrained with a particularly unruly strand falling onto his forehead. You wanted to run your fingers through that hair, to feel if it was truly as soft as you imagined, to press your nose into it and inhale the slightly salty scent that surely clung to him, that you had come to love as much as the sight of the ocean itself. You wanted to feel his beard on your cheeks, under your palms, to know if the white hairs that threaded through it were any coarser than the others, to know what it felt like to have a man’s face in the palms of your hands. Your entire being felt as if it was on fire, and the more you stared at him, at the slight signs of age that showed themselves in the lines by his eyes and mouth, the more you felt it burn inside you.

Someone cleared their throat to your right and you gasped, whirling on them as a blush branded itself on your cheeks, as if your body wanted to betray your thoughts. You smiled, hoping to cover up whatever embarrassment may have shown on your face, and gazed at the god before you. He was about your height, if not a little taller, with a grin that reminded you of Loki’s. His hair was black and combed back smoothly in a rather regal fashion. His eyes were black too, you noticed, so black that you couldn’t differentiate the pupil from the iris. You smiled brightly at him, bowing your head in greeting when you noticed the little wings that protruded from his shoes.

“My goodness! Your shoes!” You exclaimed, gasping and pointing at them with a delighted little laugh.

“Yes,” he laughed along, “they help me travel quickly when I am tired, though they do often have a mind of their own,” he joked, and you laughed loudly. He had a sweet voice, one that would sound happy even when he was sad. “I am Hermes, son of Zeus, what is your name?” His eyes were sparkling and you found you enjoyed it.

“I am Y/n of the Aesir, goddess of love and war,” you introduced yourself, holding out your hand to him. Hermes held it as if it were a precious gift and pressed his lips to your knuckles. You had never felt so regal.

“Ah, yes, Odin’s youngest, I have heard of your prowess on the battlefield.” Hermes was surely a charmer, you thought, and you smiled brightly, a tinge of pink to your cheeks.

“You flatter me, I am still unproven as a goddess of war, though I suppose I do plan a strategy well,” you smiled cheekily, shrugging nonchalantly and holding your hands behind your back as you swayed girlishly.

If there was one thing you were proud of, it was your ability to fight. It was the reason your father had given you this title, your cunning ability to break down your opponents in all sorts of ways, to plan out a fight before it had even begun. Simply put, you were good at it, you could defeat Tyr with ease now, and even Thor had become no challenge. While you still struggled with the love side of your godly abilities and duties, you could always rely on your fighting.

“What about you, Hermes? What are you the god of?” You asked, tilting your head in question.

“Many things, trade, luck, travel, and thieves,” he answered breezily, though his smile betrayed his pride. “I am the herald of our pantheon, the messenger of the gods.”

“Well you are very important then, for where would we be without our messengers?” You told him sweetly, and all he could do was nod. His chest filled with warmth and he knew he had to be careful or the affection that now bubbled inside of him would erupt from his mouth.

“You are wise as you are sweet,” he simply replied, and you just smiled brightly before turning to face the group and stepping slightly closer to his side.

“You remind me of Loki, though he is not a brother, I see him as such,” you told him, and a small pang hit him in the stomach. You had already passed him off as a brother it seemed. But Hermes just shook his head to himself and smiled at you again, leading you toward a display of flowers just to the side that was one of Demeter’s favoured experimental projects. He was tenacious, if nothing else, and he would eventually get you to enjoy his company as something more.

Poseidon had ended up enjoying his conversation with Njord (who was surprisingly intelligent and rather engaging when conversing about fish) but when the god had left him he instantly began to look around for you. Any good mood was squashed when he saw you walking off arm in arm with Hermes, and a thunderous look settled across his face. Somewhere on earth a storm began to brew. Luckily, you didn’t walk far, and he was able to watch over you from his throne, though his mood had already soured, and continued to sour the longer you stayed attached to Hermes’ arm.

Hades, who had finally rid himself of Hel’s company, Hestia and Hephaestus from their corner, and even Dionysus from his seat at the ambrosia table with a jug of wine bigger than his head watched Poseidon. He was acting rather odd, and they could all now see why. His eyes had not left the girl-goddess since she had arrived, and he was miserably failing if he was attempting to be subtle. They had noticed the goddess watching him in return, the pink tint on her cheeks and the sparkle in her eye, and a teasing giggle seemed to build in all those watching. How poignant for Poseidon to fall for the goddess dressed like the sea. Hades stood from his throne and made his way to his brother, sitting on the arm of his throne and smirking at him.

“I will admit, brother, that she is beautiful,” he told Poseidon quietly. The god of the sea snapped his head to his brother, and scowled.

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” he answered simply, but Hades just laughed, patting Poseidon on the shoulder.

“Oh brother, you truly do not understand the art of subtlety, do you?” Hades raised an eyebrow and Poseidon stared at him bewildered. “You have watched that one since she arrived and done nothing but that. And goodness, the way you watch her! Have you never seen a woman?” Poseidon shrugged his brother’s hand off of his shoulders and had the decency to look slightly sheepish. He had assumed no one would notice. Hades noted the slight shame in his brother’s expression and sighed, smiling gently.

“Do not worry, I will tell no one, though I may not have anything to tell as she does seem to be enjoying Hermes’ company,” he added teasingly, and Poseidon growled at his brother’s back.

He was distracted by a commotion that had arisen near where Hermes and the goddess had stood. Now a group had gathered around them, fluttering with whispers, and he was too curious not to know what was going on. He walked swiftly from the throne, standing just behind some of the minor gods in the group and peering over their heads.

“So you are a goddess of war, your brother has said?” Ares asked, hands on his hips as he stared down at you. You smiled up at him, nodding your head.

“The goddess of war and love,” you told him. Athena and Aphrodite, both stood just behind Ares with their arms crossed over their chests scoffed.

“A goddess of war and love? Must not be good at either,” Aphrodite murmured, voice snarky and loud enough to be heard by everyone. Athena smirked, hiding a chuckle behind her hand. You frowned at this, looking toward the two goddesses, but Ares just moved so you would be forced to continue staring at him.

“She is a guest, do not be rude,” Hermes spat, but Ares and Aphrodite just waved their hands in twin moves of dismissal.

“I am the god of war, she is the goddess of love, we have the right to ask questions of a guest who resembles us so closely,” Ares smirked at Hermes, but he was quick to return his gaze to you. His eyes were like fire, hungry and angry, ready to burn whatever he looked at.

“So, what exactly do you do? Do you make enemies fall in love and end wars?” Aphrodite snarked, tilting her head and staring at you like you were just something annoying that had flown into her path.

Poseidon wanted to intervene. He was desperate to come to your defence, to have the waters flood Olympus and drown each of them until they were nothing but salt in the sea. But before he could step forward to your aid, he saw the subtle changes in you. He saw the way your eyes hardened, any trace of the happiness and gentleness with which you had treated everyone thus far disappearing. He saw your back straighten just a tad more, your shoulders pushing back and your balance shifting just slightly forward onto the balls of your feet. You clenched your teeth together for a moment before relaxing your jaw and looking up at Ares.

“Would you like to fight me?” You asked simply, folding your hands in front of you. Ares began to laugh, a deep guffawing laugh that had him bending backward and puffing it into the sky. Aphrodite tittered, pressing her fingers to her mouth and turning to the side as her laugh tinkled into the air. Even Athena smirked, though she didn’t say anything nor laugh, just a widening of her lips and a slight disbelief at your stupidity in her eyes. “Is there a problem?”

“You have just asked to fight a REAL god of war, child, what am I to do other than laugh?” He replied, throwing his arms out and gazing at the crowd.

“Careful, brother,” Hermes spat, but you just placed a hand on his arm, stoic expression not changing.

“You could fight me,” you answered simply, beginning to tie your hair back. “Unless you do not believe in yourself, REAL god of war?”

Ares snarled, baring his teeth at you before stepping back and throwing off his purple sash. It would only be a hindrance to his fighting ability. You smiled, broad and bright, and a longsword appeared in your hand. A glorious weapon, with a handle of white bone carved from a broken fang of Fenrir. The blade was black like onyx, but fashioned from the strongest metal the dwarves could find and forge in Nidavellir. It was your favourite. You spun it in your hand lazily, inspecting it for a moment before turning to look back at Ares. Your eyes flashed blue, so quickly that if anyone had blinked they would have missed it. Then, with a smile so gentle you seemed you could never hurt a fly, you attacked.

It took you no more than five minutes to have Ares on the floor, your sword pointed at his throat. You were swift like wind, clanging your sword against his before twisting around him and kicking the back of his knee and then the other to flip him over as he fell. Not a hair out of place, you smiled down at him, pressing the point just a little into the skin of his throat before pulling it away completely and sending it back to Asgard. Ares stared up at you with eyes so wide you thought they would pop out of his head. He was winded, puffing on the floor as he tried to figure out where he was, what had just happened.

“How did you…” Hermes stared at you, mouth wide open.

“I told you! I’m good at strategy. He is cocky, and he underestimated me. He believed I was being cocky, and thought that when I saw him with his sword I would be apprehensive. He did not expect a swift beginning attack, nor did he believe I would risk trying to go for an obvious place like the back of the knees. To know your opponent is to be able to defeat them. Simple.” You smiled at Hermes, shrugging and turning away from the crowd to venture around the flower display and find one you hadn’t seen yet.

Ares sat up, Aphrodite gulped, and Athena turned away, walking off. The entire group began to whisper about what they had just witnessed, the story spreading to all the gods and spirits quicker than a wildfire. They slowly dispersed, leaving Ares on the floor with Aphrodite gently patting his shoulder in a sad attempt at comfort (which he shoved off as he stood and stormed away).

Poseidon watched all this and waited until he had walked back to his throne to let himself smile. He leaned back and replayed the fight in his mind, chuckling at the way you had stomped on the back of Ares’ knee with your delicate shoes. Oh he was absolutely enthralled by this goddess, and he didn’t even know your name yet…

Taglist: @josxkl1m

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l0sercat · 8 months

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Yandere Alphabet w/ Hermes

Affection — how do they show their love and affection?

He'll bake you little goodies and cook you meals. Sometimes they might be drugged with things to call you down but sometimes they're not. He'll also play some songs for you on his violin.

Blood — how messy are they willing to get when it comes to their darling?

He is willing to get messy but doesn't prefer it. He doesn't like making messes or getting dirty but if he has to he will.

Cruelty — how would they treat their darling once abducted?

Depends on how darling acts. If darling is rude then he is rude if darling is chill then he is nice and gentle. But even then he can be a little sadistic. He just likes to see you cry from time to time and have you beg but nothing much.

Darling — aside from abduction, would they do anything against their darling’s will?

Depends. If darling is being terrible he might need to teach them a lesson and depending on what they did will depend on what he does. He might touch and grope you even if you try to shrug him off. He would never go as far as showing you off on display though. No one but him will get to touch you and see your beauty; not even his family. Ares is to stupid and rough to be able to admire your beauty, Zeus...(well need I say more?), Apollo has so many women and men already he doesn't need another one especially if he is just gonna treat you like a whore.

Exposed — how vulnerable are they when it comes to their darling?

He isn't exposed much. He just doesn't open up not because he doesn't love you he does. But he just doesn't because there truly isn't a need for him to do so.

Fight — how would they feel if their darling fought back?

He would be amused at first then, it would be irritating. He thought it was cute you thought you could escape. Then you kept trying and it's like you don't even see him as a god an just a weak human.

Game — is this a game to them? How much would they enjoy watching their darling try to escape?

He doesn't view it as a game but finds it pretty amusing. Watching you try and escape from him, a god. He chuckles and let's you get your hopes up and run to find a god to help you. But no god in there right mind is gonna mess with his Darling (Well Buddha will but you didn't reach him in time). He'll then quickly scoop you back into his arms and talk to you in a condescending manner. Why would you think you'd be able to escape?

Hell — what would be their darling’s worst experience with them?

When you tried to run to his brothers or father for help. It pissed him off. You could practically feel his aura coming off him. He kept the same smile but you could tell he was planning something. He slammed you against the wall and pinned you by your neck. Why did you go to his brothers? Did you want them more than him? Did you honestly think they were gonna help you? What was the point? Was it just to make me mad? Your in for a whole world of hurt :/

Ideals — what kind of future do they have in mind for their darling?

One where your basically his lap dog. You obey all his commands and don't put up a fight. You basically fall into Stockholm syndrome and view him as you should've in he first place. A god.

Jealousy — do they get jealous? How do they handle it?

He hardly ever gets jealous but when he does it probably because of something to do with his brothers. You were talking with Ares and although Ares is not competition it pisses him off to no end to see you talking to him. Then Zeus pulls you in and clearly flirting and suggesting things to you. He would simply say something that could be read as aggressive and scoop you up in his arms and take you away.

Kisses — how do they act around or with their darling?

He's the same person he is with everyone else. But he is more loving and gentle with you but also a little sadistic. He'll whisper sweet things in your ear while he is treating your body harshly. He is also an obsessive and manipulative yandere so...

Love letters — how would they go about approaching their darling?

He would try to court you by taking you on dates. He's cooking for you and getting you jewelry if you like that stuff. If that doesn't work then he's kidnapping you lmao.

Mask — are their true colors drastically different from the way they act around everyone else?

Not really but like I said he'll be more loving (and sadistic). You can totally see his yandere behaviors.

Naughty — how would they punish their darling?

By bending you over his lap and spanking you. It is probably psychical but he can and will punish you with non physically.

Oppression — how many rights would they take away from their darling?

Some you keep more than most darlings. He won't rape or SA you. He's better than that and he won't make you walk around with no clothes in his house. You also have free reign of the house and can use whatever you want in the house. Wether that be internet or even knives. You can't call anyone and you need a divine weapon to even hurt him.

Patience — how patient are they with their darling?

He is pretty patient it is gonna take a lot for him to snap. But when he does...you better stay begging and praying.

Quite — if their darling dies, leaves, or successfully escapes, would they ever be able to move on?

If darling dies he would be shocked and sad for a bit. He would grieve and move on but he probably won't get another. Its a surprise he felt that way in the first place. If darling escapes he will just find them which want take less than a day.

Regret — would they ever feel guilty about abducting their darling?

No 💀

Stigma — what brought about this side of them (childhood, curiosity, etc)?

Probably more curiosity and wanting to feed this strong emotion he's getting. He can be greedy I mean he's a god after all.

Tears — how do they feel about seeing their darling scream, cry, and/or isolate themselves?

He doesn't always enjoy but he doesn't care much. It will get annoying after a while but if he can't handle it he will gag you.

Unique — would they do anything different from the classic yandere?

Yeah he would probably let you out without supervision. I mean where would you go? He would let you out and you think you would have a chance but then you almost fall to your death and your reminded where you are. He knows you can't get anywhere or hide so he lets you roam and when you think your being slick he ends up by your side in an instant just smirking with a condescending look on his face.

Vice — what weakness can their darling exploit in order to escape?

There isn't anything you could exploit he knows how to keep a cool head. He does everything with purpose and he plans for everything. You ain't escaping him 😂

Wit’s end — would they ever hurt their darling?

He would but would only before his pleasure. If you misbehave he is putting you in his lap and spanking you. Wether or not you enjoy it he is hurting you. He enjoys seeing you beg and helpless for him. It reminds you of your place and how you need to watch your mouth.

Xoanon — how much would they revere or worship their darling?

He isn't worshipping you but he doesn't really expect you to worship him. He honestly doesn't care if you. Does he get some sort of feeling in his chest when you do of course because he is a god. But he isn't like those stuck up gods who need to be showered in mortal's praise.

Yearn — how long do they pine after their darling before they snap?

2 months. He would need to accept his feelings then he would try to court you normally. If that doesn't work he is then preparing his bike for you and after that kidnaping you so honestly could be shorter than 2months.

Zenith — would they ever break their darling?

He would and he would not feel bad about it. He probably wanted to break you in the first place. Strong willed and not giving in easily? Well now your broken lol.

#x reader #gender neutral #gender not specified #gender neutral reader #record of ragnarok x reader #record of ragnarok headcanons #record of ragnarok #hermes record of ragnarok #hermes ror #hermes #ror #ror headcanons #ror hermes #yandere hermes #yandere hermes x reader #yandere record of ragnarok #yandere ror

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piinkyypriincess · 3 months

Text

SOUR CHERRY

Luke Castellan x OC

"Fuck the God's, angel, your mine."

Main Pairing ~ Luke Castellan x Daughter of Oizys!OC

Warnings ~ Depressing Themes, Failure, Anger, Anxiety, Zeus, Kronos, Mommy Issues, and Mentions of Death.

Spoilers ~ A Ton!!

Masterpost ~ Here.

Beta Read/Edited ~ No (No Beta Lmao)

Word Count ~ 7k Words. (Word Vomit, im Sorry)

Chp Summary ~ Luke is usually very persuasive, but God's are not reasonable; especially Zeus. Between Luke's overbearing savior complex, Zeus's extreme God complex, Apollo's emotional outburst, Chirons' disappointment, and a mysterious man tempting her to burn Olympus to the ground; Nisha is overwhelmed. She wants to go home, and Mother Oizys makes sure that happens.

Chp 3 ~ Diverging Pathways of Fate.

Oizys infiltrated Nisha's dreams every night since she could remember. With the comforting scent of freshly cut ginger, lavender sprigs, and bitter dark chocolate pieces; the primordial Goddess would sit on a dark cloud of shimmering mist and paint the stars in the sky upon a blank canvas.

The girl was satisfied with their routine before she matured. For years, she wouldn't question the quiet woman who constantly had blue-black tears of Styx's river pooling around her waterline.

Nisha only made comments about her day and the woman would listen vigilantly, turning her cheek to show her active attention to her child. Nisha could see how her hand would pause mid movement, and one of her eyes was visible as she showed the side of her face. Her mothers eyes glowed a dark gold and shimmered like stygian iron.

She didn't know her mothers name at the time, but she was quite content with watching the strokes of a paintbrush delicately stain a canvas every night. All the child knew was that the woman in her dreams was her mother, and her mother was a safe person.

Nisha being an exception to Olympus' strict rules, on behalf of their ever-so-great generosity, meant knowing a lot of Demi-Gods.

When Nisha turned nine, she asked Chiron why so many shrouds were burned each year. She received a day of distracting activities after that. That night, after attending her ninth Winter Solstice in a row as a member of Hermes cabin, she finally gathered the courage to ask her mother questions that itched at her childish brain.

One was about the strange scents of different people she came across at camp. The second was what type of Goddess her mother was.

Fresh scents wafting from someone's pores meant failure. They appealed to Nisha as she was supposed to thrive off of misery; however, she was never as taunted by a scent as she was in Olympus on her eighteenth Winter Solstice.

Campers smelled delectable while they were first recruited or failed a mission. Having a permanent residence in Hermes Cabin made the temptation to either absorb mentally painful emotions or make them fester was excruciating.

But none like on Olympus.

Her mother told her the truth of who she was when she asked. Oizys wasn't ashamed of what she was or who she was despite appearing depressed the majority of the time people saw her. The Goddess even showed her child how to use her abilities.

Oizys was born to fail, and by proxy, Nisha was subgrouped with her sullen mother. Nisha wasn't supposed to smell her own strawberry scent, let alone a sweet aroma clinging to the fruit like melting sugar.

Oizys always smelled like fresh ginger; even in the almost rare instances when she accomplished a task for Nyx or saw her only daughter.

All Gods and Goddesses had a sweet smell blended into the natural aroma of their skins scent. Oizys was one of the few Goddesses, and probably the only Primordial Goddess, that smelled newly fresh instead of steeped sweet.

Oizys only smelled sweet when she was inflicting harm on living things alike. With jarring mental abuses inflicted onto the soul, she was among the most powerful God's in ability alone.

Most God's smell drool worthy because of glory that was etched into their marble skin from birth. Demi-Gods had to earn that smell. They had to earn kleos with sacrifices and heroic deeds that got themselves killed in the name of glory.

Oizys had one of the most overwhelming known glory stories and sensible kleos to other Gods, despite not being well known. Misery was unavoidable. It clung to Nisha's skin like the air surrounding her, and she knew she had to accept that.

She did not accept inflicting mental harm onto others, especially those who didn't deserve it. She could feed from the fleeting feelings of mortals or the dreadfully passionate emotions of Gods or Demi-Gods. It made her strong, but watching others fall in despair would not fulfill her like it did her mother.

Figuring out her own kleos was basically unobtainable unless she hurt others cut deeper than any wound inflicted and hurt more than a stygian swords knick. That finalized Nisha's feelings of her Godly parents' status.

Oizys was not a good parent for even having a child that was doomed to fail. Nisha was not a good daughter for disregarding the nuances of their relationship for temporary ignorant bliss. They both were two in the same, practical mirrors of each other with different pathways carved out for them.

Nobody was able to see the swirling wisps of darkness shimmering between Nisha's fingers. It shone like the night sky meeting a purple nebula; a dark beauty made from the clash of light against the deadly shade of her mother's mystified being.

Luke's long fingers made their way to cup the back of her neck. The Hermes counselor pressed down on a soft spot of her nape with his index finger, and her head hung down immediately.

The teen girl's once laid back and nonchalant stance stiffened into one of forced obedience. Her head dropped like an imaginary rope holding her head high snapped. She suppressed an irritated scoff as Luke squoze her sensitive neck gently in warning.

Nisha watched the man do this trick plenty of times on numerous kids in his cabin, especially Connor and Travis Stoll. The teenager was quite persuasive when it came to negotiating punishment or consequences, but Olympus wasn't Camp Half-Blood.

The God's were not reasonable; especially Zeus.

The stygian iron nameplate necklace she received as a child dangled around her collarbones and started to heat around her neck. Luke ignored the gentle hiss of the black gold colored jewelry, and began to speak with not a hint of a tremble in his voice.

Nisha could practically hear the gulp of saliva that was Lucas swallowing something bitter like a lemon, but it was just his unsaid words. It was his pride.

“King Zeus,” He started. His nose scrunched from where he was bowed and his chin swayed to the side in anger. An acrid smell of rotted cherries wafted from his skin and the teen girl mourned his damaged dignity for him.

The counselor continued after a moment of gathering his thoughts. Nisha glanced her amber eyes upwards to peek at Zeus, who did not budge or react to Lukes pitiful attempts at salvation.

The God's were not forgiving; especially Zeus.

“I can assure you, It is impossible that Nisha is one of your children. She is an exceptional camper, but no child of The Big Three.” Nisha could tell that Luke was speaking off of the experience of knowing a child of Zeus.

Thalia was like a whirlwind, Demi-Gods said. Nisha didn't socialize much with her fellow campers, especially in recent years, but she did listen to the Aphrodite cabins daily gossip exchange.

The child of Zeus was brave, kind, and courageous. She died with the sweet glory that every Demi-Gods who sucked up to their parents legacy dreamed for: kleos.

Once you got swept up in her hurricane, you weren't ever going to be the same.

Nisha had never formally met Thalia, just sat against her protective tree at night and breathed in the scent of artificial pine wood, sticky sap, wet soil, and almost scentless kiwi. It was strange to be able to smell that Thalia was in a state between life and death, suffering and Elysium.

Most campers practically worshiped her as their idol, and Nisha swore she would never gain kleos if it meant having children idolize her for dying for a useless cause. Especially considering her kleos would most likely bring suffering to those around her.

The God's only cared about glory; especially Zeus.

The man didn't say anything as Luke droned on his argument on her behalf. He just stood and stared at her with his thick arms linked behind his back in expectancy. His electric eyes cut into her own like lightning striking soil on a stormy eve; he anticipated the moment she would start apologizing or confess her atrocities.

Nisha attempted to contain her giggles of amusement into her hand. Pressing the back of her fingers to her plush lips to contain the escaping snickers.

The Gods disliked disobedience; especially Zeus.

Blue orbs lit up with a translucent azure glow that reflected bolts of unforgiving, electric fury.

Luke's hand clamped around her neck tightly, attempting to push her down into a sloppy bow. She pushed against his strong hand, forcing the weight of her entire body up and forward to shake his grip slightly.

A scowl was ticked upon his face and he huffed with a growl bass rumbling out his mouth. “I'm helping you,” he whispered. Dark raven curls fell in his glaring obsidian eyes as he lowered his head own to speak to her.

The muscle in his strong arms bulged as anger thumped hard in his hot natured blood. His fists curled tight against his sides and shook as he clenched them tightly, veins of powder blue straining, and skin staining a reddish pink of fury.

Tart cherry juice and dead willows filled the air around the pair; frustration from his heart and anger in his soul. Luke Castellan smelled like a boy throwing a temper tantrum because she didn't listen, he also smelled like scattered ash.

Nisha's amber-brown eyes squinted slightly with a scrunch in the middle of her forehead. Luke didn't smell like ash naturally, he never had before, and Nisha could tell that scent was not his.

The scrambled voice of a man lingered in her memory. That was not darkness stemming from her peculiar abilities speaking; it was someone, not something. It was a person, not an idea figment from her mind.

Shadows and dark mist spoke ideas and suggestions; not temptations.

Nisha covered his shaking hand with one of her own calm tawny ones. Luke's eye's threw geode splitters into her body as he soaked up her shorter form while glaring. His hand attempted to wrap around her wrist with force, and Nisha dug a plum colored acrylic into his rouged skin.

The shimmer of a dark galaxy started to crawl up the teens skin, making a shiver wreck through his body and goose bumps raise on his toned arms.

Nisha tilted her head towards the God who looked at the pair with a raised eyebrow. Immediately, she lifted her fingers off his loosening fist and let go of his hand.

Anger dissipated and ran hot in her own veins but she controlled it like a woman with poise; not a reeling man.

“You're being pitiful,” She stated to the Hermes cabin counselor. He stared at her with cooling coal orbs, wrath simmering in his body and morphing into numbness. Inhaling his scent of bitter peanuts and unblossomed cherry trees, she knew the comment must've hurt his feelings consciously but he couldn't react.

Taking in a deep breath of the intoxicating scent he possessed, she trapped his neutral smell in her lungs. Compared to the pungent scents of the Gods and centaur he could've been her own personal perfume.

He almost smelled hurt, and she almost cared; maybe she would've if it weren't for her mother's looming presence and Zeus's impending storm.

Pink lips started to rough over chapped in the humid room; she took a breath from her mouth and kept her nose plugged to the smells of destruction.

What was one supposed to say to the God of all God's, when that God thinks you've stolen his instrument of war? Even worse, what were you supposed to do when he claimed to be your father? It was a double conundrum of assumption; all just because she didn't parade around singing praises of Oizys.

Nisha knew that claiming Oizys to be her mother, openly, would cause mass hysteria. A primordial goddess of the original Cosmos and Chaos having a child with a human was unheard of.

Zeus’ brows scrunched together with anger at her lack of acknowledgement. He didn't even seem to acknowledge Luke's attempts of persuasion.

Nisha thought Luke should've kept his mouth shut. She was appreciative of his advancements to come to her aid, however, one couldn't sway a God. The pair barely even knew each other, but it felt like in the short span of fifteen minutes something had clicked when she used her powers on him.

Something was off, and she mentally pointed out the issue stemming from the smell of bergamot, alcohol, ginger, strawberries, and ash. Whoever was attempting to contact the pair were relentless with their actions; they were being as bold to try and whisper atrocities into her ear in the presence God's.

Tawny brown hands came up to excuse herself as she covered her grin of amusement and mild disbelief. She didn't want to accept that after years of remaining out of trouble from the God's, she was at the epicenter of a large plot point in Olympic history.

The girl defensively answered the God's prior assumption, sobering her laugh. “Okay, it would make sense if it truly was me,” she commended the man for his unfortunately wrong assumption.

Nisha would've rather had his assumption be correct and be struck down with lightning, than him be incorrect and haunt her til the end of her days.

The God's held grudges, especially when they were incorrect or put to shame; that of course, especially applied to Zeus.

Before Zeus could grow smug and actually attempt to strike her down with lightning, Nisha took a few steps forward. Fog white crackled between the Gods' thick hands, bolts of a million volts of lightning threatened to bounce around the Olympus hall.

Holding her slender hands up in surrender, she bowed her head obediently before the God could punish her. Disgust bit at her lip with a scowl as she spat out, “But I am not your kid. I have no motive to steal your master bolt,”

Apollo's shoes made light footfalls against the floors until they were directly in her sight from where she bowed. His expensive brown loafers were paired with cream socks that matched his sweater, she stared down at them unblinking, contemplating her next move.

A slender finger lifted her chin to meet his diamond blue eyes that had flecks of gold floating around inside of them. The immortal showed a sign of not being a perfect marble statue as his thick bottom lip was drawn down into a frown. His unusually sad expression had Nisha wondering where the coat of gold that usually encompassed the God had faded to.

And was it her mother or herself, unknowingly, that stole his light aura.

Apollo looked sullen. It was as if the moon had clouded his sun during an eclipse, or his favorite bow had snapped. His long fingers rubbed against her jaw bone gently as if he was caressing fine china. After a moment of his mouth gaping open and closed like a fish, he pulled away abruptly as if he'd been stung by her.

Nisha blinked with surprise, Luke's hand rested at her shoulder with a loose grip that caught her attention. She huffed, agitated. She wanted to be released from the prison that was Olympus and disappear into a flurry of darkness.

Apollos adam's apple bobbed, and a shiver wrecked through him as he spoke. “There hasn't been a Demi-God of Zeus in years Father,” Apollo advocates, locs of white-gold spiraled in tendrils across his shoulders and into his face once more.

Eyes of lightning scrunched with disappointment, Zeus's presence was intimidating as he was oddly silent.

Apollo was Zeus’ strongest, most formidable child. Everyone knew that fact, but they also knew the tension that built between the two over the years. The father-son duo were practically waiting on the edge of their seats to be able to take blows at each other.

Zeus was a horrible man, an even worse father, and Apollo was his favorite son. They fought with each other so harshly that wars broke out amongst the human realm.

“Only a child of The Three is capable of such a tragedy, you are lucky I do not strip you of your Godly status where you stand,” Sneered the dark skinned man. His hands crackled with lightning and threatened to strike the three others in the room as his patience dwindled.

Apollo sarcastically smiles with eyes of wet diamonds, liquid gold droplets glossing over them. “It would not be the first time,” He scowled, taking a step forward.

The ground shakes with a bolt of lightning outside of the Olympus office cracking a window. Luster shines throughout the room making Nisha's brown orbs dilate to accommodate the shine.

“And yet, your foolishness still remains after all this time,” Zeus condescendingly quipped. With a storm raging in his eyes and a snarl catching on his lip, Zeus was beyond upset in his faux safe haven of Olympus. His hand mades a swipe gesture that covers the room in a flash of light, a crackle of thunder booming from the immortal man's body.

Zeus was not a coward; he was going to attempt to kill his son of the sun because he would never back away from the challenge of another man. Nisha knew that his anger did not only extend to Apollo, but herself; his supposed Demi-God daughter, a thief.

Nisha's amber eyes wided and a gasp caught in the back of her throat as she prepared to welcome searing pain.

Apollo shielded her body with his own muscular form, his arms quickly locked around her shoulders as a bright light emerged from his body. Both the illuminance from a crackling storm and the flaming sun blinded burnt Nisha's irises.

She looked away, screwing her eyes closed and tucking her face into the knitted cream sweater Apollo adorned.

Sweet red currants and spicy flowers she couldn't put her finger on, overwhelmed the air around him. His body's glow radiated a warmth of the sun's gentle gaze on her skin and clashed against the zapping bolts of the storm god.

Apollo definitely wasn't scared or frightened; the archer was content. His embrace almost felt like the opening doors to the ascension of Elysium.

If there was one thing that all people knew on Olympus about Apollo, it was that the sun always came back. His shine would never die no matter how many times you attempted to dim it.

However, Apollo truly smelled content with fighting the storm God. His contentment was one of fruity embrace, awaiting the next step beyond God hood; not rotted acceptance that he would have to fight his father.

The only thing that could dim the sun was itself. After it exhausts its nuclear fuel, it will shrink down to a regular small star and create a supernova of elements before reassembling thousands of years later. Nisha figured that's what this performance was. Apollo was usually always theatric. However, in the moment, it felt like he burned all the energy he could've given his father.

Apollo chanted something in Greek that got lost in a wail that escaped Lukes mouth. “Dont!” He screamed before being blown back by a blast of heat.

The God's were selfish; especially Apollo.

His warmth was like the sweet kiss of unexpected death that made her heart pound furiously, and eyes snap shut with panic. He would come back to life totally whole because he was immortal; and she was set to die, stuck in the middle of a feud between two God's, and accused of being a thief.

The stygian iron and imperial gold necklace with her name on it started to burn at her chest satisfyingly. It tickled her brown skin and made a loud hissing noise similar to a boiling kettle rattling across her collarbones.

Zeus let out a cry of war, and lightning crack from above them. Apollo grunted, bearing down on his teeth so hard that Nisha heard a crack from his molars like it was stone being broken. She dug her face deeper into the man's neck, where she found no fuel for sadness or despair in his pulse point.

There no was no fear or misery.

No kleos for her own tongue, nothing to retaliate against the storm God with. Just the smell of candied mandarins, sweet cut-up red currants, and ginseng. The sun God was borderline excited, and Nisha detested the feeling of uselessness that washed over her body like a cold wave against hot sand.

Her brain practically hissed, creating steam of frustration and anger burning in her irises.

If Apollo and Zeus were truly fighting with all their might, Apollo would've used his Golden Bow and Zeus would've used any ability he possessed ending in the word ‘kinesis’. The fight was restrained but not because of the two Demi-Gods present.

If anything, Nisha would just be sad collateral, and the human world would perhaps forge another war. Olympus would still reign superior as every other living thing suffered the pair's consequences.

Nisha just wanted to walk out of Olympus without burning it to the ground.

She scorned the God's unlike a hero, but she knew their importance like any other Demi-God. The fall of Olympus would not be on her hands; she wouldn't be stained with the fault of ruining balance she wasn't prepared to fix.

Nisha knew one day she would die with the sins of causing others a miserable life. She knew and walked with a stride of concealed confidence because it was perhaps shameful to embrace but important to know. She might not walk out of the hellfire that was Olympus, but she wasn't willing to die there without a fight.

“Miserys are unavoidable,” her mother whispered once more. She sounded closer than before and just a stretch away. The teen girl pressed the palms of her hands into her eyes as she groaned in increasing pain.

Chirons' hooves clicked against the marble floors. Olympus shook furiously as the centaur yelled in ancient Greek to the man, whose face illuminated with the glow of his stormy nature.

“Enough Brother! You have gone too far!” Chiron attempted to reason with the man, daring to pull at one of the man's hands with a strong force. Luke scrambled off of the floor with a grunt, clutching his side from the impact on one of the white stone pillars that circled the enclosed room.

Apollo's nose flared like an angry bull. He watched as the man he raised met resistance from his father. Nisha could feel warm heat huff against the crown of her head as the man stood with her gathered in his arms like she was one of the Muses.

He did not plan on letting her go, if anything he just held her tighter. Like a provoked bull, the externally youthful God roared in protest as Chiron was wrestled backwards harshly.

The brown haired centaur was skilled with training from the sun God himself; raised by the man to train heroes and guide them to kleos. He did not go down easily as he pushed against Zeus's thunderous hand on his hind legs.

“Too far?!” Apollo roared with the heat of the sun's core. Burning light beamed at Zeus's feat and shielded the half horse man. Another huff pushed from his pouty pink lips, and he yanked blonde shoulder-length locs out of his glaring blue eyes. They were as tough as diamonds and shining like a dreary cyan sky.

For once, they mirrored the selfish vexation that his father had.

“My child, my Chiron,” he called after the centaur in english. Chiron faced the man he called his father with dreary eyes of disappointment. Nisha held her breath at the sheer expression of loss on the camp activities director face.

“What is too far, for a man who struck down his own grandson?!” Apollo shouted in ancient greek. Anger and glee burned at his fingertips. The sun God knew he was too far gone in the argument, and that these last moments were the end of his immortal life until he was reformed.

Nisha wished they would just finish their fighting already and Apollo would die without her wrapped around him. They weren't even fully immersed in their powers, the fight would probably barely be a footnote in the history chapter of Zeus's stolen master bolt.

Freshly picked mandarins, rotting red currants and soured ginseng mixed with hints of an aromatic flower. It was a sweet smell that threw off her nose and instinct. It was so unlike Luke's who enamored her; Apollo's invigorated her.

He was greatness in the eyes of failure, and it slipped right on her tongue perfectly as she made his feelings fester.

“My kind son, my Asclepius!” he yelled, a broken whine stuck at the back of his throat. His child had long been resurrected after being slain by Zeus.

Nisha could only question what set the God off to want to collapse the sun in an explosion of hot white anger instead of helium and hydrogen. Her eyes fluttered open, oozing violet smoke with matching iries of blooming purple flowers as she felt around his misery.

Purple flowers.

Nisha was taken back to how Apollo stared back at her features again with a flat look of concealed anguish torn across his perfect face. He looked like his stare alone would have ripped her apart if he didn't cradle her upper body like it was made of stained glass. In the span of minutes, she was used by a God with selfish intentions, and handled like the most delicate of feathers.

Apollo gave her a light squeeze around her shoulder as his body's glow deflected a string of lightning.

Hyacinths.

Nisha smelled hyacinth bulbs in full bloom, with a robust and spicy scent unlike any other. Her eyes fluttered closed in realization as she grew the immortal man's misery tenfold. She'd never done it on a God and disliked doing it to humans, but meddling with his emotions felt like biting into forbidden fruit.

Both horrible and tantalizing.

She turned her head back to stare straight at Luke, who clutched something impossibly tight in hand while leaning against the pillar he was thrown into. His nose was scrunched with anger radiating off of him in waves of sour cherry.

Failure crawled around every surface of the universe; misery stared people back in the mirror when they saw their reflections. Nisha was victorious without the need of kleos.

Everything she needed to bring down Olympus was right in front of her.

“Watch them fall! You are inevitable!” something boomed in front of her. The distorted voice was not of thunder, and it made her flinch into the form of Apollo.

She sagged against the sun God's chest as Zeus snarled, “You disappoint me,” to his son. Apollo blinked away his golden tears and continued to snark.

“Finish the fucking job you miserable cunt!” Apollo roared with a grin of glory stretching across his face. Nisha thought that was her final moment alive. That she would be consumed by the affairs of men and be exactly who she was meant to be.

An utter failure.

A loud crack of thunder snapped above the pair.

Nisha didn't want to be responsible for splitting open the cracking ravine that was Olympian political affairs. Especially those that include Zeus' status amongst protests and coups.

However, she would not welcome death from a hand that swatted at her like a fly.

Death would come on her terms; failure, misery, and kleos aside. In death, that was the one thing she was able to grasp by both hands fully; as in life, her grip constantly slipped.

Her grip on life loosened for just one second, and she could feel herself fall from where she worked hard to steadily stand with control.

Darkness misted from around Nisha's fingertips, sparkling like dark stars in the deep depths of the cosmos. Her eyes clouded over with the color of amethyst gems cracking in her irises, and glossy black slowly dotted at the white of her sclera. Purple slipped between the dark haze around her fingers like thick crystal shards; all sides smooth and ends pointy.

Apollo hesitantly jerked himself away from the girl, removing his locked arms as her necklace began to crackle with swirls of black curled sparks. He skidded back to a step in front of Zeus, who curled his hand forward in an attempt to strike him down.

The entirety of Olympus shook. Quakes harsher than Zeus' thunderous lightning rumbled the sky, greeted the Greek God's territory. The shaking came from the ground of Earth and vibrated in waves up to the sky of the 600th floor of the Empire State.

Zeus attempted to strike Nisha from three different sides. He thought he could overwhelm her with his advanced powers, and assumed the quaking was coming from her. Without Apollos' pity protection, she was easily vulnerable.

The sun God quickly pulled Chiron away from his angered father, and towards Luke near the elevator of the supposed safe haven. “Nisha!” yelled Luke who was held back by Apollo's Godly strength with ease.

The black iron and gold nameplate broke around the clasp as he yelled. It tumbled to the floor and began to spew out dark smog, and white silver flickers of sparked fire.

Zeus’ lightning made her see stars that were not there, although it didn't kill her surprisingly. Her head swam with pounding pain as Luke cried out to her once more. “Shut up,” she hissed, voice warping into a gravelly groan.

Someone cackled in her ear darkly, “Rise! Resurrect me!” It cried with a triumphant tone of arrogance. Nisha's body convulsed, shaking with lightning aftershock that had her teeth bite the flesh of her lip until it bled.

“Kill him! Kill them!” It tempted her. Her chest heaved as she rolled on her side, slapping her palms on her ears and screaming, “Shut the fuck up!” with a bass she didn't know she possessed.

Nisha didn't want to be her mother, who was notorious for having a breakdown in the middle of the hall of Olympus, and encouraged one of the world's first war's after Pandora's Pithos was opened.

Everything smelled like a buffet of her favorite foods being laid out in front of her. All the ambrosia in the world couldn't compare to the aroma that circled the room between two Gods, a centaur, and a Demi-God.

Lucas Castellan made her senses go haywire. He took a step forward, and it was like her world was held together by a thin string that could only be broken by his lack of presence.

She couldn't stop as a wave of disappointment and sadness enveloped everyone in the room. For a moment everything stopped. All the thoughts that constantly fought in her head were quiet. All the pain from restraining her power and making others miserable or feeding off their pathetic emotions stopped. It was just quiet.

If that was what glory felt like, smelled liked, and tasted like, not for the Gods but for herself; she thought she'd never want it.

She yearned for it even more than a God fought to keep their immortality. She savored the taste of chocolate covered strawberries, sticky marshmallows and heady jasmine flowers.

But she couldn't stomach the fact that misery stemmed from her being and affected other's. She would accept it and its power, but that is not how she wanted to be remembered.

“Nisha – ” Luke cut his sentence off sharply with a ragged gasp. “Get the fuck away from her!” He yelled, the harsh words falling on deaf ears.

A mist of a hand curled around her camp shirt and grasped her shoulder tightly. “Miserys are unavoidable,” her mother started, but the gentle words came out reprimanding for once.

A sad tone laced her voice which was usual for her mother who was usually melancholy. Tan sepia skin materialized from black smoke and dark ash that swirled around her body moments ago.

The child of Oizys couldn't hear the flurry of voices calling out to her, only a white noise buzz swimming in her head, as if she'd slammed her head into a rock. Technically, Zeus did when he electrocuted her and she collapsed.

Tranquility washed over Nisha with control forcing its way into her hands. She took a deep breath and smelled nothing but clean oxygen. Amber-brown eyes returned, and they snapped back into focus from a temporary haze.

Oizys took the form of a beautiful woman adorning all the finest riches in the world, to compensate for her external despair. She wore a long dress made of onyx silk that flowed around her form with elegance that only rivaled Aphrodite. The garment had cut outs around her shoulders, but was long sleeved with gold sewn into the top half of the dress. Intricate patterns that looked like regal spider webs were encrusted into thin plates of imperial gold that matched the back of Nisha's nameplate.

Her mother wore a crown that was webbed with celestial bronze, and the material even was incorporated into the dress. Mesh guards around the cuffs of her sleeves and tips of her long dark nails were made of the ore.

One might say that Oizys looked like Nisha just with smaller almond shaped eyes and an eternal empty gaze that caused others to shiver. She looked like she possessed no soul, and what was left of it was standing right infront of her.

Black tears of stygian iron welled up in her eyes and glowed like water from the river styx. Nisha turned her body to look back where the elevator door was placed on Mount Olympus, and another zap of residual electricity made her shake.

Luke had taken several steps away, and his back was pressed to the side of the elevator as he looked at Nisha. His body was held back by Apollo who was not better than him with a sword, but outmatched his strength infinitely.

Luke was screaming, his forehead popping a red vein as his thick lips spewed words he couldn't hear. Chiron rounded to block Luke's view of her and vice versa to the teen girl. The older centaurs white-silver horse haired body turned as he moved his cheek to look at her.

Chiron and Luke both had looks of sadness in their eyes that matched her Mother's bitter gaze. A mist covered the pair as they spoke, only allowing Nisha to follow the figures of the three outside her Mother.

“I would say that I am proud, my child,” her mother's voice was like a warm sigh in a bitter ice wind. She spoke breathily in her mother tongue of ancient Greek and placed her iceberg hands on her child's hot cheeks.

Oizys smiled, smoothing her ring-covered knuckles over the slope of her childs brow. Nisha noticed how her Mother had a beauty mark beneath her lip making her seem even more ethereal. She commented once as a child that she bore the same beauty mark on the side of her jawbone.

Oizys pride was unshakeable at that moment. “You're born from me. Miseries are unavoidable,” The child's small grin faded into neutrality at the words.

The dark mist around them shimmered a translucent color for her to watch Apollo and Zeus screaming at each other with Luke cornered by Chirons large body. He looked desperate, seething, and probably stunk of sour cherries left out to shrivel.

“What does that look like to you?” Oizys asked in the common tongue of English. Her dark eyes looked like stygian iron ore in its purest form in the underworld. A grin of smug glee tore at her sullen face as her eyes glowed midnight blue.

Nisha couldn't find joy in their suffering with control restored in her. The lack of Luke's scent made her head go blank, but she craved it all the more. She shook her head at the weird thought.

Zeus's teak skin looked like it would finally start aging poorly and Apollo gripped his hair with such a tightness she thought he would rip his carefully crafted locs out.

Chrion’s disappointment was far, few, and in between to see, but for the first time Nisha saw it crinkling at his long face. She knew she didn't want whatever smell it had to infiltrate her nose ever. The centaur looked besides himself as his brother and surrogate father swore each other to the deep depths of tartarus and back.

“Pain…suffering. Sadness.” Nisha said, going slack jawed. She had no energy to clench her jaw in anger or just sheer dumbfoundment.

She avoided claiming misery to make her own life easier, she avoided claiming misery to make sure those around her weren't miserable; yet all she did was fail. She watched as the two Olympians argued senselessly and Chiron barred himself between them for good measure.

Tears flowed onto Oizys tan cheeks like poison, making Nisha choke on guilt and resentment. Her mother smelt sweet for once, her smell usually was concealed when in her child's presence, but leaking the essence of greatness on the Solstice.

The child glared at her mother with a scornful scowl. “Did you make him even more sad?” Nisha asked plainly, referring to the circle of emotions Apollo cycled through previously.

“Yes,” Oizys answered honestly. “The distraction of Apollo's outburst was necessary,” She nodded with resolution smoothing in her eyes. The influence of frustration and sadness lingering in Apollo's soul diverted the attention from Nisha to him.

Zeus was arrogant and vain, he would be angry at his child quicker than he would be at a theft.

Nisha's nimble fingers toyed with the ends of her braid as she casted her gaze to the mist-covered floor. “Sadness, you said?” Oizys asked once more, running her palm over the slicked back hair of her child.

Nisha's head bobbed in agreement. Oizys hummed, “Good.” The teen girl's eyes peered through her dark lashes to look at her mothers firm nod of approval.

She grimaced as her mother smirked. “That means you'll never be me then,” She claimed proudly. Nishas eyes squinted with anger attempting to surge in her veins only to be quelled by her mother's calm shushing.

Nisha turned her head away from her mother who breathed in deeply and huffed a defeated laugh. “I do feel bad,” she started without an ounce of remorse.

“But all I see is power,” She strongly emphasized with a grin. “This is my strength, it is yours as well, to an extent.” She stated, smoothing her hands down her silky dress that draped the pristine floor.

Darkness completely blinded Nisha's view of Olympus, and she only caught a glimpse of Zeus who was paralyzed in fear. He looked like he was about to be slain where he stood and Nisha could feel her breath hitch before shadows swallowed the land of the mighty Olympians whole.

“Miseries are unavoidable.” Nisha nodded, repeating the words in the ancient tongue of God's to herself like a broken record.

Oizys grabbed her child by both her shoulders and gave them a slight squeeze. Then she grabbed both sides of the teen girl's face. Stygian ice mountains must've been the Mother's favorite location in Tartarus, as her cold hands froze her entire body with warning.

“They are. Misery is something for you to harness, to understand, to accept.” Oizys started with a look of urgency in her black-blue eyes. She looked like if Nisha didn't get the next part through her head, she would be doomed.

“But it isn't something you must cause,” she stressed. Her face was covered in the essence of misery, tears of the fallen and glory of the failed. For once Oizys looked like a scared mother; someone to look up to for guidance and assistance rather than a sore that never healed on Nisha's side.

Nisha truly tried to like her mother, but she could only find love for her in her heart. She knew who her mother was, and she knew the woman was doing what she was fated to.

But there was something about how she was so caught in a loop of failure and disappointment as glory that made Nisha resent her. She could never like her mother in truth.

Nisha smiled at her mother with a quivering lip. Oizys was a good mother, despite not believing that sentiment. In retrospect, she was a horrible person, but she was compelled to do what felt right to her; they were too different people.

Nisha was her only child and her only daughter, she loved her fiercely regardless.

“You are you,” she proudly stressed with a slightly frustrated hiss. “Be who you want to be. I may not be who you wanted as a mother, but you can still choose who you want to be as a child,” She told her girl child.

Nisha slumped into her mother's stomach, the woman an entire foot taller than her. Oizys bone skinny fingers clasped the stygian iron necklace back around her neck, and her fingers found their way to petting at the baby hairs on her only child's nape.

“ Breathe… ” Oizys said into the shell of her ear. Her skin erupted with the calming smell of sweet ginger milk, warmed lavender oil, and chocolate chunk brownies.

Nisha did, hoping to take another inhale of her mother's scent, only to pinpoint the scent of cherry fields and strawberry jam.

She gasped, the smell filling her mouth and making her drowsy. She hoped to taste a nectar so sweet that stemed from the smell of a boy with a scar running down his cheek, only to catch herself in realization.

Nisha could feel her eyelids drooping like heavy Victorian curtains against her wide eyes. “ No…I can't sleep, they'll kill me,” she slurred ancient Greek.

Zeus was not one to be trifled with; he would kill her once he got his hands on her.

Oizys used a classic trick only herself and Hypnos were capable of producing. The primodial Goddess was able to change her own scent to cause a cognitive distortion to Nisha's nervous system. Hypnos was able to doze all with a wave of his hand, but Oizys had learned a way around the trick from her younger sibling.

Nisha actually falling for such simple trickery was laughable. Especially considering how many times her mother performed it on her. However, her mother's scent never changed to that of Lucas Castellan's. She frowned, her face sour with confusion.

Oizys hummed and traced her middle finger down the bridge of her child's nose before sweeping at the hairline of her daughter. “They will not touch you,” She affirmed to the child.

Nisha's head was fading blank again, no thoughts or feelings to latch onto for a spark of energy. She puffed another breath of Luke's scent combined with the taste of contentment.

Contentment was new for Nisha to feel or taste herself, she could always pinpoint the scent on others though. She hummed in disagreement at her mother as she swallowed thickly; attempting to ignore the taste of sugary pastries and willows. Her head lulled forward, burrowing into her mother's midriff as her amber eyes fluttered closed.

“Let me be your mother. Just this once,” the woman pleaded. Nisha felt like she was floating on her mother's shimmering cloud of mist as she nodded subconsciously.

Oizys may have been a book very true to her cover; she was sad, miserable, and deceitful, but she had the smallest ending note tucked inside the last page for Nisha. A small love note at the end of a book in dedication to protect her only child.

As Nisha's body went limp against her mothers form, the woman conjured a cloud of shadows from the tips of her fingers to lift her child. The dark mist carried the teen girl as she slept, a worried scrunch crinkling between her brows. Oizys smoothed out the worried line with her thumb, and whispered, “Let me protect you, just this once.”

More dark tears slid down the woman's face in perfect lines of agony. They were not tears of concealed joy from stealing people's happiness or causing mental harm to others. They were not from the power she could aquire in the room full of Olympians, who were inferior to her power, but mighty with worshipers.

She shed tears of worry.

Worry for her child, and worry for her childs livelihood. She was worried because Nisha could turn out like herself, feeding off of failure, and being miserable with power no matter how good that destruction felt, smelt, or tasted.

Oizys was worried that she had failed the one thing that was a true success in her sorrowful life.

Nisha was born from failure, Oizys was created to fail. They both had their fates, but neither were the same by a long shot.

Oizys knew Nisha would make sure of that fact; simply because she knew her child loathed to be like her, but accepted a sham for a fate she was not destined to follow.

Success was the child of failure in every sense. Both were a step away from eachother but so similar.

Oizys cried because she could only have hope in a world where there was none. Oizys could only hope that her child would fulfill a fate that left her content for once, instead of constantly greedy for more power like herself.

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genericpuff · 6 months

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saw this pop up on /r/UnpopularLoreOlympus and I-

Full analysis post that inspired this post can be read here, it's a good read, go check it out!

Now my natural reaction to not assume the worst (shocking, I know) is that what Rachel's actual intention behind making Leto a sun god was due to her being Apollo's mother and her clearly having a stronger relationship with him rather than Artemis. I'm abiding by Occam's Razor here, it's the simplest answer and it keeps my brain from getting too riled up right off the bat LMAO

There's a lot of emphasis put on Apollo being the god of the sun in LO, despite the fact that Apollo is one of the MOST prolific gods in the Greek pantheon, Rachel only ever really focuses on him being god of the sun with some loose references to him also being the god of music (as we see with him playing his lyre). There's really no real referencing to him being the god of medicine though (aside from that scene of him condom-bandaging Persephone's hand in Episode 22 ?? which is silly now in hindsight because she's a fertility goddess who can heal herself but ok lmao and the fact that Rachel established him as a LITERAL DAD with his doctor son Asclepius which ... just feels weird to have in LO tbh) and there's absolutely no referencing (from what I can find or recall) of him being a protector of the young, god of prophecy (for some reason he just magically gives Kassandra the ability to read prophecies... just so she can read his prophecy ??) or archery. Like, he's shown doing a lot of these things but they come across more as just side hobbies or extensions of him being Artemis' brother (like his archery) rather than aspects of his godliness or domains that he presides over. It's just like yeah, Apollo can shoot arrows and bandage people's hands I guess LMAO

All that said, I can see Rachel deciding to make him primarily the god of the sun and then going "oh! let's make his mom a sun god! then she could be a common enemy for both Persephone and Hades!" because Hades doesn't like sun gods yadda yadda.

But... we know Rachel has used front page Google sourcing in her comic before.

(literally the 'source' was copy pasted from a 2004 study guide for Princeton.edu. And we KNOW this was taken right from the first result because it just says 'www.princeton.edu' with no slug attached, which is what showed up back when we first looked into this, the princeton version was deadass the first result with this definition word for word. She didn't even remove the typo where there's no space between Xenios:"Zeus !!!).

And while a bit more into sus territory rather than outright confirmed like the xenia thing above, there's the whole Metis / Métis theory, that has us wondering if Rachel seriously googled "Metis" on its own and accidentally used Indigenous Métis cultural depictions in her version of Metis, the Greek God.

The fringe in her outfit, finger wings, and dark orange/red color really got my attention the first time I saw her design years ago, because she set off so many, "Wait a minute, is that an Indigenous woman???" bells in my Mi'kmaq/Cree brain LMAO And not even in a bad way, but now it feels a little :/ because of how much her character has been assassinated and how clearly accidental it was for her to look like that.

Of course, there's still a more likely explanation that her design was based on this vase:

But IDK y'all. That vase is very distinctly orange while the character itself is depicted in dark garbs and with light skin, so Metis being distinctly red-toned with finger wings and fringe?

While the Xenia thing is definitively copy pasted from the first search result on Google (literally there's no denying that at this point, Rachel's REALLY bad at doing research and then pretending like she was being smart by sourcing it from a university website... completely ignoring the fact that that website literally hasn't been updated since Rachel was working on The Doctor Pepper Show) the Metis and Leto depictions are definitely a lot more up for debate as to what 'research' Rachel did and whether or not they got confused with something else during her searching.

And really, the whole thing with Leto being a "sun god" doesn't make sense really when you think about it. Why is Leto a sun god? It's not even like you could argue there are "some versions" of the myths where she's a god of the sun, or other translations out there, or whatever vague source that could be used like what has been used for other gods like Hades and Persephone. Leto is not affiliated with the sun in any shape or form. Remove Apollo, her eventual son, who didn't exist when she was born and given the title of 'sun god', and it quickly falls apart as to why she would be a sun god in the first place.

She is a goddess of motherhood though, and that's NEVER mentioned in LO. If anything, Rachel makes her a terrible mom on purpose. Because god knows we can't have anyone in this comic be a good mom except for Persephone and Rhea (who are literally just carbon copies of one another). Basically the only thing Rachel gets right with Leto is the fact that she's a Titan and that she had Apollo and Artemis after sleeping with Zeus. That's it.

Unfortunately, unlike the xenia thing, there's no outright proof of what Rachel's reasoning was behind these designs or sources. So I'm not gonna accuse or outright state it as fact that Rachel confused Metis for Métis or ripped the idea for Leto being a sun god from an anime, because the odds of that being true in any way are fairly low.

But they're never zero.

#lore olympus critical #lo critical #anti lore olympus #antiloreolympus

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moonlitlex · 7 months

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i have so much to say abt chalice of the gods so im just gonna copy paste my review from goodreads here. you can also read it on goodreads

ok. i promised i would hate this book. and i do. i hate this book. i also hate rick riordan. in addition, i hate capitalism. i promise that’s relevant.

let’s talk about the book now. i’ll cover the things i love first. i love percy jackson. i love grover. i love annabeth. i love sally. i love paul. i love percy annabeth and grover together. all of these things are very obvious and self-explanatory. percy is hands down THE main character of all time. i have nothing bad to say about him. his literal fatal flaw is loyalty. he’s actually perfect and has no flaws. this is expected from the son of sally jackson, the perfect person. paul is sweet and kind to sally and that’s really all that matters. annabeth is awesome and supportive and so is grover and they’re all besties forever. you get it. you’ve read percy jackson.

the jokes are better than before. there are definitely some legitimately funny jokes in this book, which i was really missing from the last few rick riordan installments. and i don’t think this is because rick suddenly got funnier. i think it’s because this style of joke works for percy. of all of rick’s protagonists, percy seems the most natural fit for these jokes.

sally is great. grover and annabeth are generally on form. so is percy, as much as can be expected from rick riordan at this point. i will elaborate on this later.

now to complain. this is the stupidest premise i’ve ever heard of. percy is a high school senior. he is going to go to new rome university. he needs 3 divine recommendations. this is already a stupid premise but don’t worry, it gets worse. poseidon reveals that the reason percy needs these recommendations is that it’s a special requirement for him specifically made by zeus. and the reason he gets to have this stupid requirement is that he’s a child of the big three and shouldn’t exist.

hello. zeus. yes, lord zeus, it’s me. alexis.

what the absolute FUCK are you saying.

this doesn’t MAKE SENSE. the only reason percy shouldn’t have existed was that the gods had a stupid pact to not have any kids because of a stupid prophecy. two things here. one - that prophecy is OVER. everything turned out fine. thanks to percy jackson. you’re welcome, gods of olympus. two - percy has literally saved olympus TWICE now. two times. this is genuinely such a dumb and made up reason to send percy on a quest that i can’t even turn my brain off and enjoy it. it’s not fun. leave percy alone. LEAVE HIM ALONE.

it’s literally insane how stupid this setup is. rick keeps writing books about how the gods are horrible and take advantage of the demigods and the demigods live terrible lives. in this book, percy has LITERALLY saved olympus TWICE and motherfucking zeus (literally) had to be talked down from making him get 25 letters of recommendation to 3. this is AFTER percy spent 3 years in pjo almost being killed and got his memory wiped for 6-8 months depending on which book you read in hoo and then got sent on a quest to save the entire world AGAIN. this CHILD got like a 2-4 month break (depending on which book you’re reading) and he woke up with no fucking memory and had to spend like 2 more months fighting monsters and the literal primordial earth goddess. and now he has to go on literally pointless quests that someone who didn’t just get back home from saving the actual world could ALSO just do. because he needs to get some fucking letters of recommendation.

look. genuinely. percy jackson should snap at this point in the story. this boy should’ve snapped like at least 5 books ago. at minimum. rick wrote the perfect setup to show us percy’s instant descent into madness. he should LOSE it. all the gods have done for the ENTIRE time he’s known he’s a demigod is treat demigods like disposable tools. this is the point in the story where percy goes. wow. luke was right. you guys are all assholes who don’t care about us even a little bit. i am NOT saying what needs to follow is a fanfic-esque dark!percy story where he successfully destroys olympus or something. what i AM saying. is at bare minimum this is where percy goes you know what fuck you i hate you guys and washes his hands of being a demigod at least temporarily. at the very least he should sit back and think yeah, i don’t really want to go to new rome university. it’s not worth it. i will just go to a different university. look. it’s percy jackson. he can literally one shot all but the most fearsome monsters (typhon, the giants, a drakon, etc). he is literally going to be 100% completely fine going to mortal university AND he wont have to deal with zeus’s annoying ass.

listen. MY percy jackson wanted to kill smelly gabe as a 12 year old because he abused his mother. MY percy jackson doesn’t like bullies. MY percy jackson challenged ares to a fight just on the basis that ares was a fucking asshole.

MY percy jackson is not going on useless fucking quests to go to new rome university of all places.

which reminds me. why DOES he want to go to new rome university. this is percy jackson. he LOVES new york. why is percy “what did they do to my city” jackson going to university ACROSS THE COUNTRY from the city he loves. why is he doing that. and hey look. sally and paul (and soon estelle) are ALSO going to be in new york. so like WHY is he leaving for real. percy my fatal flaw is loyalty jackson. IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE OK! it’s percy he is seriously not going to have issues with common monsters attacking him. we literally saw him fight off titans and giants a fucking hellhound isn’t gonna get his ass. WHY is he leaving. it does NOT make sense.

there’s this scene ok. where sally tells them she’s pregnant. and percy’s like oh my god…. i’m going to be in california…. and my sister is going to be here…. and i was just sitting there going. yeah bro. why are you going to california. i literally do not understand. you literally are from nyc. you live here. your family is here. your friends from chb are like a short pegasus ride away. there are like 50 universities in new york. just go here. why are you leaving. you are percy jackson. being a new yorker is literally one of your defining traits. stay here. WHY AR EYOU LEAVING I DO NOT UNDERSTAND PERSEUS

and listen. if your argument is that annabeth is going to be in nru. why the FUCK is ANNABETH going to nru!!!!! WHY WOULD SHE DO THAT!!!! EXPLAIN IT!!!! percy LITERALLY says annabeth is such an overachiever she’s already run out of ap classes to take. he literally says that. why the fuck is this girl going to nru where let’s be real her admission is guaranteed. annabeth is 100% someone who would want to go to an ivy. and would you fucking believe it there’s an ivy right here in nyc. like let’s be fucking realistic here. annabeth started her architecture career at SIXTEEN designing the city the fucking GODS live in. so like. don’t you think she’d want to be a bit more challenged. don’t you think she’d want to go to a university that is actually recognizable to mortals. annabeth did NOT love new rome that much like did richard forget what he wrote. this girl was freaking out about new rome until percy said he only likes it because they could live together there. she literally does not care about new rome and she is WAY too ambitious and academically inclined to be happy with going to some small as uni 99% of employers have never heard of.

this isn’t even the worst character assassination in the book. that award goes to the way rick wrote percy. percy. my darling percy. my beloved percy. perseus jackson. light of my life. as i said before, he is MOSTLY on form. the him really wanting to cali thing is definitely ooc for him but it is NOTHING compared to the sheer amount of times rick portrays percy as stupid in this accursed novel. his internal monologue is constantly shit like i’m always so behind annabeth and omg i’m being so dumb right now and annabeth calls me seaweed brain because i’m an idiot and blah blah fucking blah.

dick riordan has forgotten that perseus jackson is, in fact, not stupid at all. he is INCREDIBLY clever. he is just not particularly academically inclined/not very book smart and it would also be perfectly understandable given the fucking books that riordan wrote to interpret that as percy being very discouraged from engaging with his studies. he genuinely enjoys chiron’s class at yancy because chiron is an engaging teacher and encourages him. he spends 90% of his time in pjo deducing what’s going on with extremely limited information because rick decided none of the characters can tell him anything because of plot and exposition reasons. in son of neptune he literally just coasts on having sherlockian (not bbc that’s a whole other angry review) powers of deduction. to the point where the characters around him are amazed at how he’s figuring stuff out. literally in house of hades annabeth’s pov’s are constantly her commenting on how she gives percy shit for being a dumbass but he’s actually really clever.

it genuinely feels like at some point during the writing of mark of athena rick decided to just slowly start making various fanon ideas canon. percy being stupid is very commonly accepted fanon because he doesn’t realize how smart he is (and fans don’t realize he’s an unreliable narrator) and the fans also love to infantilize characters with more in your face adhd (leo is another victim of this phenomenon). we’ve spent 5 books in percy’s head and he doesn’t think he’s particularly clever so it makes sense to ignore the mountains of evidence pointing towards his quick and creative thought process in favour of haha percy is dumb jokes.

the wild thing is, percy isn’t even that hard on himself in pjo. he obviously doesn’t see himself in the same way we later come to find out other people see him (mainly thinking about hazel and frank in son of neptune, which is the only time in hoo he genuinely feels like the same character as pjo percy) but he’s not really dealing with crazy self doubt and self esteem issues. he does have his down on himself moments but they’re all extremely understandable given the context because he literally faces impossible odds in every single pjo book. at one point he’s disappointed he couldn’t tell that ares and luke manipulated him… like yes bestie that’s a very valid thing to feel upset and betrayed about. it doesn’t mean that he’s actually stupid though and genuinely he comes across more as humble and not realizing just how awesome and cool and interesting he is than anything else. percy consistently shows that he is really clever. half of pjo is percy figuring out a new and interesting way of defeating his enemies and the other half is percy figuring out how to bait his enemies into a duel to improve his odds. it’s horrible what rick does to percy in his internal monologue.

it’s to an insane degree. yes i realize i have already written 500 words about percy not being stupid alone but i must stress how egregious this is. it’s literally characters who have previously acknowledged percy’s intelligence who start remarking about how he’s stupid. in house of hades percy and annabeth get out of fucking TARTARUS and reyna makes a jab about how percy wouldn’t be able to find his way out of a paper bag without annabeth. that is an INSANE thing to say for reyna and for rick. rick has not written a stupid character so it’s weird to make that something a character does without really trying to show them being wrong. from reyna’s perspective, this is a guy she was complimenting a few short weeks ago. this is a guy she immediately wanted to make a leader at the camp that she loves and is her home. this is guy she barely knows and she pretty much immediately proposes to him. WHY would she suddenly start making jokes about how dumb he is? it’s not like she actually knows him better now. he came to the battle with reinforcements and basically immediately dipped after the feast. how are we to accept reyna treating our beloved perseus in this horrific manner? we simply cannot. it is unnacceptable. this is inaccurate.

it’s so WRONG to do this to percy. yES I UNDERSTAND I HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THIS FOR TOO LONG. I DON’T CARE. PERCY JACKSON IS MY BEST FRIEND IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE AND I NEED TO DEFEND HIM FROM THIS SLANDER. I AM ONLY PARTIALLY JOKING. listen. liSTEN. this is the guy whose signature move is manipulate your enemy into dueling with you when you’re outnumbered or outmatched. he very coolly manipulated bob into killing his own brother (btw this was very hot and sexy and clever and attractive perseus is king of gaslight gatekeep girlboss). he is NOT stupid. he is impulsive. he is extremely oblivious about some things. he is NOT stupid. i watched perseus jackson grow up for 5 books and he is not stupid. i always say this. i always say that percy is not stupid and richard riordan refuses to listen to me.

there are such horrendous lines as “i am a guy of limited talents. if i can’t kill it with water, a sword, or sarcasm, i’m basically defenseless.” richard how DARE you say this about my beloved perseus. he is NEVER like this. he literally would never say that. even at absolute worst percy’s internal monologue was “this plan is stupid and will get us killed. but it’s the plan i have.” he’s NOT a being defenseless guy. what hte fuck are you saying. richard did you read your own books. RICHARD. DID YOU. at one point he says that he is constantly several steps behind annabeth’s thought process. he has literally never thought this before and it is also untrue. richard. i hate you. read your own fucking books oh my god.

ok. i think i have sufficiently harped on the fact that percy is not stupid. now i will complain about another thing. and this was just in one part but it bothered me and this is my review so i get to talk about whatever i want. if you don’t like it read someone else’s review. don’t hate read my review. i didn't charge you money to read it

at one point, percy has to wrestle a god who hercules once wrestled. and annabeth says something about hercules brute forcing it. and look. i GET that hercules was freakishly strong. i get that. i understand it. but when annabeth says hercules just brute forced it they’re both like ah shit i can’t do that. perseus. beloved. you ripped the minotaurs horn off its head with your bare hands as a 12 year old with no training. you are literally insanely strong as is. that is an insane thing for a 12 year old to be able to do. hell, that would be an insane thing for a grown adult to do. i don’t think rick realizes how op percy is. he was so caught up in making percy cool (which is, you know, extremely understandable and right and correct percy jackson is the coolest man in fiction for a reason i get it) that he forgot that he made percy extremely unbelievably powerful too. with the curse of achilles he was potentially matching minor gods in power level. he fights while sustaining mini-hurricanes and explodes glaciers and shit.

some more things. the prose is… acceptable. the plot reads like a fever dream. there is a smoothie shop called himbo juice that annabeth percy and grover are evidently regulars at. and there are. himbos. that serve. juice. so you can imagine what this fever dream looks like. like the last couple rick riordan releases, this one reads like published fanfiction too, just with better quality of writing than the sun and the star.

there are some WEIRD continuity errors in here. one of them is fairly minor but i still noticed it - percy says his father compared his mother to a princess. this is not true. poseidon compared sally to a queen. specifically, he called her “a queen among women”. i know this because i am sally jackson’s number 1 fan.

more egregiously, however, is annabeth’s yankees cap heebie jeebies. percy puts on annabeths’s cap and gets the heebie jeebies while using it. and then he goes wow annabeth. you never told me that using the cap is like this. and annabeth is like yeah well. power is like that. richard. riordan. did you fucking FORGET that percy has, in fact, worn annabeth’s cap before. and it was literally completely. once again, richard, did you read your own books.

one more good thing - when percy fights geras/gary, who is the god/personification of old age, the way he does it is by imagining him and his friends getting older and embracing it. this was a genuinely good and sweet moment and it was very touching. the trio’s talks about this after the fact are also absolutely a return to form from riordan. for like, a few paragraphs. but still.

the biggest problem is just how obvious it is that this book is a cash grab. we had pjo. then we had a sequel series. then we had ANOTHER sequel series. and now we’re getting random standalone novels that are extremely unnecessary and don’t add anything. rick riordan has dollar signs in his eyes. these are not stories that make sense. these are not stories rick genuinely wanted to tell. these are stories that are being told because the purpose of publishing books now is to maximize profit. (sidebar - i told you the capitalism thing would be relevant. you should believe me more often. smh) the only reason rick is still writing these books is that they make money. they feel extremely empty and hollow.

percy is trapped as a teenager forever because rick refuses to let him age up. percy accepting old age would make FAR more sense for a percy who’s in his 20’s and just now realizing that he lived past all the shit he thought was going to kill him and he has a real life that he likes and he could actually grow old now. but percy must be a child for marketing purposes, so he stays a child. the world itself is trapped in a cycle of the gods promising they’ll be better and the gods literally not changing at all. and for the sake of the book series, it can’t change. if we had real change in the world, that would actually mean something, silly. we can’t have consequences. we have to reset every 5 years like a fucking comic book so that we can make infinite money. this is the infinite money glitch irl. just make trash that doesn’t need to be made. the end point of capitalism is making trash no one asked for that has no artistic merit just because you can make money off of it.

by the way, dr emily wilson’s iliad translation, which was also out on the same day, is LESS expensive than this book. this cashgrab nonsense novel is MORE expensive than a book a professor in classics who has a phd spent 4 years on. this is just wrong. the fun and stupid cashgrab book should NOT be more expensive than a book that someone spent 4 years meticulously translating from ancient greek. it’s just so clear and in your face. trials of apollo absolutely felt like a cashgrab but at least there was SOME semblance of effort there. this is literally just the most plain and simple cashgrab novel you can make.

hey. you know the infinite monkey theorem? the infinite monkey theorem is that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text including shakespeare. richard riordan is a monkey with a typewriter. you get it. you’ve read percy jackson.

rick riordan struck gold with pjo. it’s genuinely to this day one of my favourite things i’ve ever read, flaws and all. it’s FUN. it’s COOL. it’s THEMATICALLY COHESIVE. the characters grow and change. they feel like real people with personalities. it literally doesn’t even matter how op percy is because THAT’S how good of a character he is. he is so compelling that you want to read about him anyway even though you can tell right from the minotaur fight that this kid can decimate whatever opponent he has. the books are funny and moving because you can genuinely connect to these characters. the more i read rick riordan’s work, the more certain i am that pjo was a fluke. i don’t think he knows what he’s doing. i think he should retire from writing.

unfortunately for me, richard riordan seems to have no intention of retiring. he has announced another percy jackson book that will be released next year. i assume there will be at least 2 more books based on the setup in this one.

rick. listen. i know you’re listening because what else will you do with your time. rick, why are you doing this. hasn’t percy been through enough. when will it end. give it a rest. stop it. get some help. at the very least, read your own books before writing percy. i am right about him and you are wrong about him. you are the author and i’m killing you right now. i am strangling you and i am hitting you with weapons. all at once. i am very proficient at causing deaths. (this is a metaphor referring to roland barthes’ death of the author. i wish no bodily harm to richard riordan).

this book is… alright. percy is my smart king. sally jackson is queen of my heart. it’s a fun read but you do have to turn your brain off completely and read through some serious percy defamation.

[edit: i am downgrading this book to one star (was at 2). the more i think about it, the more angry i am. there is literally a paragraph tailor made to rub jason's death in our faces. it's about how he looks forward to getting old being married to piper and having grandchildren. it's a very low blow. jason is literally rick riordan's biggest missed opportunity and he's rubbing in how poorly he treated jason even after killing him off for apollo's character development.

annabeth still keeps putting percy down because rick doesn't realize how mean she is i guess. she's still scared of him. canonically. which is a really weird and fucked up thing to write imo. this relationship doesn't seem healthy in canon (they are healthy in my head, however, because i know what women are like) but rick refuses to address it or let them break up. i LOVE annabeth. i love her. but she is an extremely flawed character and rick never treats her as such. and it just makes it exhausting to read about her.

percy IS on form but it genuinely feels like he's tlt percy, not post hoo percy. his inner voice sounds way more immature than it has for most of pjo and in son. riordan also repurposes the "look, i didn't want to be a half-blood" line from tlt to make a dumb little joke about how high school is hard. it was a GOOD opening line. it immediately set the tone and told us so much about percy in literally just a handful of words. now it's a joke about how being a senior in high school sucks. it's this mcu-esque allergy to being sincere that pjo never had.

there is BARELY any grover in this book. i love grover so much that i was cheering any time he was there, but there is very little of him. he's in like 2 or 3 scenes and has his own side plot going on with juniper and being bad at understanding what his girlfriend wants or whatever. extremely unnecessary and not what i want for grover. this book kind of ends up feeling like it's about annabeth but from percy's perspective. she gets good moments at percy's expense. percy spends the book monologuing about how annabeth is way smarter than him and all he has is his sick ass water powers and the best swordfighting skill in 300 years, both of which are very downplayed. percy explodes a river and it's treated like this crazy freaky scary thing but two years ago in universe he made a volcano erupt and everyone was like yeah this makes sense percy is that powerful. in son he explodes a glacier and it's just a normal tuesday for him. he literally doesn't even react to it. and now we're supposed to believe his exploding and purifying a river feat is some unbelievable feat.]

in conclusion, i want a refund. no i did not purchase this book. however, i would like to be reimbursed about $5000 in emotional damages. i will also be suing richard riordan for defamation on percy’s behalf. good night new york city. and my beloved perseus jackson who lives in new york city.

#alexis.exe #pjo #cotg crit #rr crit #cotg spoilers #cotg #i hope yall who dont want negative stuff have the crit tag blacklisted lol dont come at me

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