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#first person outside of the womb to hold her - I weep

lordelmelloi2 · 3 years

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Reines uses her unsavory jokes to cope with her history of being abused/almost killed at the hands of mage society

While we’re on the topic of Reines’ being absorbed in the Clock Tower’s politics and it shaping her entire worldview, this joke (one of many incestuous jokes she makes) is another big view into the way that she copes with it.

Reines, who from a young age has had literally no choice but to participate in the Clock Tower politics because of Kayneth’s death, has been enmeshed in these issues from the start. The conservative notion of magic circuit distribution and treating people like simply a womb or a sire in order to better magic circuit distribution is something she’s well aware of, even more so because female mages are regularly treated like simply wombs that will help create even greater mages further in time. It is not uncommon for young mages, teenagers and adults, to be in arranged marriages to ensure political gain or for greater magic circuit count.

I’ve spoken about it before, but Reines believes that mages are supposed to behave in a way that’s more beneficial to political gain rather than try to walk the boundary of humanity and magus.

What this means for her, who considers herself more mage than human, is that she will readily joke from a political point of view - but more specifically joke about incestuously eloping with Waver.

Waver, who considers all mages to be fundamentally human, is absolutely disgusted by it. And it should be noted as well that Waver also routinely teaches mages to consider their humanity a bit more as a fundamental of his practice in Modern Magecraft instruction. Waver may identify himself as a mage, but he is well-known for trying to balance what it is to be “human” with being a “mage”. He is more concerned with being effective because those he teaches are secure in themselves as people, rather than suffering under mage society’s ideologies that require one to basically consider themselves second to their pursuit of the Root or anything else.

The issue with Reines is this, though. Why does she keep specifically joking about incest with Waver?

Well, for a girl whose life is entirely dictated by political workings in the Clock Tower, who has exactly one person in a position of authority in her life who doesn’t believe in said politics and yet considers himself a mage, he’s an easy target. But more importantly, she wants to prove something.

For Reines, who was almost assassinated at a young age, the notion of being protected by others on the basis of her being a human ... was basically nonexistent. She is 15. There is nobody who is stretching themselves thin to try and rescue her or even comfort her from the torment of the political workings of the Clock Tower. Her life is constantly at risk. There is no other option for her, she believes, than to consider herself a mage.

But Waver is different. Waver, who calls himself a mage, acts so completely un-mage-like that he’s labelled a heretic. Not only that, he doesn’t hold any of the political ideology that denotes a “true mage” at all, and on top of that, he actively rebels against it, teaching the opposite in his classes.

Reines wants a justification for the suffering that she went through.

If she can somehow suggest that Waver is Just Like The Other Mages, she will be right, and the suffering she endured as a young girl at the hands of the politics of the Clock Tower would be justified. It would mean she could skip the work of having to ask why she had to go through any of it in the first place. It means that she doesn’t have to weep or mourn or get angry that she was almost killed, that she’s regularly almost killed, and she doesn’t have to think about how fucked up the place that she’s forced to exist in is. Reines does not have an out from mage society. She is next in line to be a Lord. For her to give that up would mean throwing the El Melloi house into even further disarray, and it might truly disintegrate the family and destabilize them enough to let them be totally wiped out again.

She has an immense burden on her shoulders and she’s coping with it by suggesting to the only person in her life who would say “this isn’t right, and they shouldn’t do this to you” that in actuality, the people who want this Are right, and that what happened to her was simply a matter of course.

It is very common for traumatized people to normalize the abuse that happened to them as a coping mechanism. It’s easier to normalize it than to fight against it, sometimes, because fighting against it means processing a lot of pain and having to face that the world was cruel to you.

Waver, to her, is a figure who is in her own words “blindingly bright”. He represents a future and an existence that says that the world is not naturally that cruel, and that kindness should be the base standard of how one acts and carries oneself.

She does not actually want to be hurt by him. But she feels, at this time, that she has no other choice than to suggest that he, too, would hurt her. Would drag her deeper into the abyss that is the political ideology that mages have - especially of the Aristocratic faction, the right-wing faction that the El Melloi family belongs to, the faction that 10 years ago told Waver that a mage’s bloodline is everything and that nothing else matters.

One day she might find out that she’s wrong, and one day she might learn that she's suffering, and that she didn’t deserve to go through what she went through as a child, as a teen, and what she might go through in the future.

Quite frankly, she just needs the right support, is all. And to know that she’ll be protected in the future. That’s all she really wants. It’s a very simple wish. But it would mean a lot to her, who was not protected in the past, and has to fend for herself as well. It would do her good to have the idea that a mage isn’t just a bundle of circuits reinforced to her. And it would also do her good to know that she is allowed to act like a teen girl at times, having girl’s talks with others, talking about nonsense, having fun. Gray provides her with a bit of an outlet, which is good, but really, she needs much more than this. Ideally she should be outside of mage society as a whole. But I suppose there’s a lot more work that has to be done before she can hope to be freed from any of that.

#incest ment tw #reines el melloi archisorte #have been wanting to make this post for Forever #lord el melloi ii case files #character analysis #lem2 manga

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a-queer-seminarian · 4 years

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we are taught to interpret Esau’s trading of his birthright for a bowl of stew as impulsiveness, even (in Christian language) as a ‘weakness of the flesh.’ He chooses instant gratification over the farther off but far more valuable thing, and thus proves himself unworthy of his firstborn status and all it entails -- Abraham’s wealth and social power, but also Abraham’s relationship with God.

i don’t believe that.

Esau gave in to Jacob’s demand because he knew that Jacob would never have the means to compel Esau to make good on his word.

Jacob was physically weaker. Jacob was set to inherit the tiniest fragment of the wealth and resources that Esau would inherit. how on earth would Jacob ever wrest the birthright and the blessing he was owed from Esau?

Esau’s ‘crime’ here is less impulsiveness, and more a trust in the status quo. his world of patriarchy and primogeniture promised him his inheritance, whether he was a good man or bad, an honest man or a liar. he could tell his younger brother whatever Jacob wanted to hear, but down the road he could trust that their father would bestow the blessing on Esau anyway.

his reliance on the status quo is what allows Esau to hand over his birthright so easily -- because he knows that merely saying it’s Jacob’s now does not make it so.

Esau’s great failing is that he assumes that his culture’s will is God’s will.

the problem for Esau is that God does not play by human rules.

____________

in the Book of Genesis and throughout the rest of scripture, we see God working within the bounds of cultural assumptions and norms, rolling with the binary systems that human societies construct -- right up to the point where Xe doesn’t.

In The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective, Jewish scholar Joy Ladin focuses on the elements of gender inherent to the system of primogeniture that places the firstborn Esau over the secondborn Jacob in every way. To her, biblical maleness comes in different “flavors” -- the roles expected of a firstborn son are different from those assigned to non-firstborn sons. She says,

“Jacob and Esau are both male and are born almost simultaneously, but they are assigned at birth to very different gender roles. Because Esau emerges from the womb first, he is considered the firstborn, heir not only to Isaac’s worldly possessions but also to the relationship with God that Isaac inherited from his father, Abraham. Though Jacob is born holding onto his brother’s heel, he is considered the second-born, expected to accept the authority of his older brother, who, after their father’s death, will be the head of the family. Like the gender binary, this law of inheritance, called ‘primogeniture,’ creates a lifelong, life-determining binary division between males who are and those who aren’t firstborn sons. And like the gender binary, primogeniture turns biology, in this case birth order, into destiny. The way male children are raised, the roles they are assigned, and the futures toward which they are steered are determined by whether they are or aren’t firstborn sons.” (p. 36)

Esau has grown up understanding that his inheritance is his destiny. It’s what he’s been born for, what he’s been raised for, what he is entitled to. Why would he believe that he would ever have to make good on his silly promise to Jacob to hand over that destiny? It’s set in stone, inviolable.

at least it is in the eyes of men. but not to God.

“If God were committed to the gender binary idea that people are unchangeably defined by the gender roles we are assigned at birth, then either Esau would have been destined to inherit Isaac’s relationship with God, or Jacob would have been born first. But as God reveals to Rebekah before the twins are born, God intends for the younger brother to usurp the elder, prenatally linking God’s blessing to trans experience. (Ladin, pp. 37-38)

in the ancient past and in the present day, countless roles get assigned to us as soon as -- or even before -- we exist the womb. biology is presumed destiny in so many ways: our gender, our race, the class and geopolitical location and family into which we are born, supposedly map out what our personalities will be, how our lives will go. and certainly these things do shape us, both by nature and nurture -- generational traumas come packed into our very cells, while our environment and how others treat us based on our assigned roles impact how we perceive ourselves and the world around us.

but even so, even so, biology is not destiny. especially not if God has any say in the matter.

for God is the great binary breaker, no respecter of persons or prejudices, unbeholden to the status quo. indeed, God almost seems to delight in upending our assumptions about who is blessed. secondborn sons and eunuchs, women and disabled persons, impoverished persons and disenfranchised peoples -- these are the ones whom God selects, again and again, to be recipients and agents of divine blessing. “blessed are the poor;” “the last shall be first.”

Esau assumes that biology, his status assigned based on birth order, is destiny. he does not fear his younger brother, who is rendered powerless by their culture to claim what he is promised in a moment of hunger. and probably this is safer for Jacob -- because when Esau does finally realize, too late, that Jacob is a real threat, Esau becomes murderously angry.

when Isaac is duped into giving Jacob his blessing after all, Jacob cannot stick around to claim the wealth and status that comes with it -- he must flee, or die under Esau’s hand.

i wonder if some of the violence we see in our time, and across every time and place, stems from the same kind of rage and fear that Esau experiences:

the rage of the ones who are raised to believe the world belongs to them, that they are entitled to certain blessings and privileges, only for the truth to pounce on them unexpectedly -- the shocking truth that biology is not destiny, that they are not inherently superior, that what they thought would be theirs without question might could be snatched from them after all.

the divine right to rule. manifest destiny. the ‘white man’s burden.’

white men who assume they are entitled to white women, so that the mere thought of a Black man winning a woman’s heart is enough to incite them to brutality.

white women who understand that the police are their personal body guards, to call down upon the bodies of Black adults and even Black children on a whim -- and are indignant in the rare circumstance that they are told otherwise.

men and white people who expect the best jobs and properties to go to them, so that anyone else advancing over them seems an appalling injustice.

cis women who perceive trans women as “invading their spaces;” cishet couples who think LGBTQ/queer couples ruin “the sanctity of marriage;” persons who are accustomed to being accommodated without even realizing it sneering at “safe spaces” and trigger warnings....

and on and on.

Esau had every reason to assume that his biology determined his destiny -- that he could make an impulsive promise, make a big mistake, and everything would still turn out in his favor. he was born into a world that told him so every day -- even that God sanctioned these human assumptions and systems. But God does not.

“God’s disruptions of gender in these stories make it clear that even the gender roles that matter most to human beings are not sacred to God. ...God in the Torah uses gender, but is not bound by it. On the one hand, God depends on gender to transmit the covenant across time and space, so that even after hundreds of generations, Jews will still see themselves as children of Abraham. On the other hand, God disrupts gender as a way of making God’s power and presence known. ...In these stories, faithfulness to gender has little to do with faithfulness to God. In fact, God counts on the fact that people are not bound by gender roles. The covenant with Abraham is founded on Abraham, Sarah, and Jacob’s embrace of trans experience: their willingness to live outside the gender roles they were born to and become the kinds of people they are not supposed to be.” (Ladin, pp. 57-58)

Faithfulness to human constructs has little to do with faithfulness to God. God blesses us when we can imagine beyond the narrative we are assigned -- as Jacob does in this story where he demands a birthright the world does not intend for him....and as Esau eventually does.

In Genesis 33, Esau catches up to Jacob after decades apart -- and Jacob expects violence. He sends gifts of livestock to Esau and conceals his most cherished family at the back of his huge household. But to his bewilderment, Esau is no longer murderously angry at having “lost” what he grew up assuming he was entitled to -- he rushes to his brother, throws his arms around Jacob’s neck, and weeps.

Esau was raised believing that he would own everything, and his brother nothing -- that Jacob would be one of many members of Esau’s household, subservient to him. But now, he does not even feel entitled to the livestock that Jacob offers him: “I already have plenty, my brother. Keep what’s yours.”

Jacob is relieved by this unexpected reconciliation, exclaiming to Esau that “Seeing your face is like seeing God’s face, since you’ve accepted me so warmly!” He never expected Esau to accept what Jacob has known all along -- that biology is not destiny; that neither of them are bound to human constructs like birthright; that they can live a different way than the way prescribed to them, one in which both of them thrive.

___________

now, this story is by no means perfect. Jacob was able to imagine bigger for himself, to escape the destiny assigned to him -- but he does not imagine big enough. he does not use his new station to liberate others.

he becomes a patriarch -- assimilates into patriarchy and the power to own other human beings, to rule over every member of his household, rather than challenging the whole system that once oppressed him. i am reminded of trans persons, persons of color, women, who once they manage to acquire power for themselves never use it to help their fellow marginalized persons up. they land positions of power and use that power to oppress others as they were once oppressed, rather than using it to try to forge a new, better system for all.

Jacob the second-born becomes Jacob the patriarch. his household will be fraught with all the woes that come with this system that stifles all within it. his wives will hate each other and battle each other for what little power they can grasp. his sons will do the same, subjecting the younger Joseph to violence when, like Jacob, this little sibling dares to dream of being something greater than what his society assigns him.

what if Jacob could have imagined bigger? what if he had used his one fragment of shining clarity about how patriarchy and primogeniture stifled his true self to empower others, not only himself?

what if we could imagine bigger? what new and beautiful world could we build?

#bible study #joy ladin #jacob and esau #genesis 25 #what do you think?#sermon notes #just some half baked musings so far so i'd love feedback #summer 2020 #log #grace internship #primogeniture #essays

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shortstories123 · 3 years

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THE SOUL CONTRACTS

Manasvi was a simple girl. Simple yet blessed. She was blessed with everything, a girl of her age would ever desire. A beautiful family with understanding in-laws, a lover of a husband, Anshuman, who would guide and protect her in times of need. Everything seemed to be pretty amazing in both of their lives until, a new wave of happiness knocked at their door. Yes, she found out that the pregnancy test kit in her hand was showing a doble tick mark, which clearly meant the beginning of a new life inside her.

She was beyond happy, no doubt, with all those tears glistening on her pretty face but at the same time, the practical side of her was exhaustively jittery, assuming and analyzing Anshuman’s reaction to this entire volcano of a news. Will he be as happy as her? Will he welcome this pregnancy news with open arms? He was always found in his comfort zone around children but will he be ready for this huge responsibility? Manasvi has never felt so nervous in her entire life like the way she was feeling currently. To her, Anshuman was her abode, her love, her life, her everything! She feared the circumstances, if Anshuman will not be willing to accept this blessing in their lives.

Taking its course of sweet time, the day went by and Anshuman was back home. Fulfilling his daily routine, he instantly got freshen up and was ready to discuss the entire day’s events with her. But on the other hand, Manasvi looked pale and lost. Anshuman was now worried, he simply asked her about the thing that has been troubling her. He was already aware of her morning sickness and dehydration since last few days, but what left him off guard was her nonstop weeping, when asked about the problem. He very gently, took a hold of her face and said, “You can tell me anything Manasvi, we are not two individuals living together, rather we are a part of our soul contract as one! Now tell me, what has been bothering my beautiful wife?”

“I AM PREGNANT!”, came the straight, to the point and firm reply. Anshuman was stunned to the core. His face showed the hint of no emotion. All the doubts, that has been troubling Manasvi, came true. She assumed, how fool of a person she is. Anshuman was hardly 27 years old and it is very conveniently, no desired age to be a parent and moreover, she herself was just 25. A lot has to be achieved before they can even think of raising their children. All these thoughts were running at the maximum pace in her mind, when Anshuman, all of a sudden hugged her. He hugged her like his life depended on this hug. She can clearly make out his tears at her back. He very slowly loosened up and asked, “Why the hell are you worried about such a great news? Oh, I can’t even express my gratitude Manasvi, I am beyond thrilled to know that you’re pregnant and we will soon be having a part of both us in our hands. Do you even realize, how happy and blessed you have made me feel?”

Manasvi didn’t know what to predicate out of all of this. The entire day she has been making plans to make Anshuman understand the gravity of the situation but, here the opposite of it was happening. He was making her believe about the reality of this blessing. This time, she hugged him and thanked him for this beautiful phase of their life which was about to begin.

……………..

Next day, they got an appointment from a wellknown gynecologist and Manasvi was undergone all the necessary tests and was now advised with full new eating plan for the upcoming nine months. Both of them were really excited and were very consciously listening to each and every detail prescribed by the doctor. Everything was done smoothly and both of them retired back to their sweet home. Though, now the new tension has taken a home in both of their heads, whether or not the reports will turn out to be normal or not, as the way Manasvi’s body has been responding to this new found pregnancy was anything but normal. She, for the last one week has feeling really unwell and perturbed. They had anyway decided to consult a doctor with her degrading condition.

Two days later, Anshuman received a call from Dr Bakshi and was asked to visit her with Manasvi for the reports. Unfortunately, their biggest nightmare turned out to be true and Manasvi’s reports came out with a significant set of complications and troubles for the mother to be. It was a crucial situation for both of them and unfortunately, this very time they had no clue how to deal with it. Dr Bakshi, on the other hand advised the couple to think about all the pros and cons of this pregnancy and if in case they are still willing to go for it, it shall take every ounce of faith and determination from both of their sides to endure this period of 9 months, which also meant accepting all the risks involved with the baby’s birth.

Sitting on a bench, just outside the doctor’s cabin, both of them were in deep thoughts. On one side, Anshuman was worried about Manasvi and her health and he knew that nothing in this life is more important to him more her love, her Manasvi. Whereas, Manasvi on the other side, was worried about the baby, the new life which she was carrying inside her womb. Nothing mattered to her more, than their child! She was set clear, that she will be bringing their baby to life, even if it meant to sacrifice her own. Very clearly, she told Anshuman what she wanted and promised him that nothing bad is going to happen to the three of them because it was her firm belief that God has tied this the three of them in this serene soul contract and till the time the almighty is protecting them, nothing worse is going to make them apart in this lifetime.

Anshuman had no other option that to agree with her and also, he had always been the support system for her, whenever needed. So, how can he let her down, at this particular phase of time, when she needed him the most. The period of her first trimester began and both of them took every possible precaution and prescription given by the doctor. Anshuman even organized a private yoga instructor for Manasvi, which was a great move according to Dr Bakshi. It helped Manasvi, to keep her body flexible and the baby in proper motion. Both of them left no alternative to be foreseen for the betterment of Manasvi and the baby. Manasvi even followed the strict and to the point diet chart advised to her, inspite of being a brat when it comes to healthy eating and indulgence of green veggies.

Soon the times past by and it was her 8th month in going. With the passing of each day, Manasvi’s jitteriness started to take an increment proportionally. Due to Manasvi’s complicated case, Dr Bakshi has already revealed the couple about the pre-term birth of the baby, which meant Manasvi will have to encounter the birth pangs latest by the end of 8th month or even before. It was a lovely sunny morning of May 11th, Manasvi after following her regular chores was reading a book on ‘Good Parenting’ by Afboz Cleopha. Anshuman, on the other side was getting ready to leave for office. Suddenly, the day took its turn and Manasvi’s water broke! She just couldn’t fathom the pain that she was experiencing currently. Anshuman too lost his cool and just called for the ambulance, without a second thought. Soon Manasvi was admitted in the hospital and Dr Bakshi took her charge with her team. Taking her complications into consideration, Manasvi was taken to the operation theatre and it was decided to go for a cesarean delivery, in her case. Ever single minute felt like a demise to Anshuman. He called his parents and Manasvi’s parents and informed them about Manasvi’s sudden labor. Everyone in the family was now in constant prayers for the mother and the baby. It took every ounce of strength in Anshuman, not to break down and believe in God for the safety of her Manasvi and the life breathing inside her.

Finally, after three hours Dr Bakshi and her team came out of the OT. Her expressions gave a hope to Anshuman, who was nearly shattered in the past three hours. She chuckled and said, “Congratulations, It’s a daughter! Both, the mother and the baby are pretty safe and fine.” Anshuman couldn’t believe what he heard, his happiness knew no bounds and the tears flowing down his cheeks and the neverending smile on his face clearly gave justice to his current state. He without a pause ran towards the OT. The scene before him nearly made him skip a heartbeat the love of her life, her wife was lying unconscious, but safe with their bundle of joy, their very own blood. The nurse gently took the baby from the cot and handled it to Anshuman. He, with trembling hands took the baby in his secured embrace. Their daughter was an exact replication of his Manasvi. She was just like a tiny little blip, safely and securely wrapped under a white cotton sheet. After a few moments, Manasvi too came into consciousness. She was unable to set her emotions correctly seeing Anshuman holding their daughter. The tears of happiness emerged in both of their eyes and it was nothing but a gratitude shown after have been fighting the biggest battle of their lives and eventually coming out of it with a blissful new feeling of being parents to their baby daughter.

As Manasvi mentioned, it was the Almighty’s fabricated plan to enforce their ‘Soul Contracts’ and bring it into action in 3D for this particular lifetime.

************************

#oneshot #long reads

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farplane · 5 years

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liberty or death

septembre 2019: morgana arroway, castrum oriens, and a family’s past; a direct continuation of the taste of defeat. ffxiv patch 3.56 & minor 4.0 spoilers. 18+ nsfw. 16,136 words. (read on ao3)

When the smoke cleared, Morgana was alone.

Alliance soldiers swarmed the Wall under orders to ‘secure’ the castrum—some magitek stragglers and little else, after the Griffin’s stunt, but the arrogance had to be expected of the Grand Companies. The survivors from the Resistance were so few that their involvement may have seemed like a particularly vicious nightmare, if not for the bodies of her comrades lying dead everywhere she looked. Her whole unit decimated; dozens of friends fallen not upon imperial swords, but the mad plans of one of their own.

She would have spat on Ilberd Feare’s corpse, if not for the cowardice of such an act when she had not taken his life herself; if not for the fact that there was nothing of him left in the primal’s wake. She would have done a lot of things, if she’d had enough sense to be angry.

Rage was easy; rage had kept her warm all these years when her belly was filled only by gnawing hunger that dragged an unshakeable chill into her bones. But everything around her was senseless, and there was none of it in her mind and in her heart, either. Sense would have taken her back to Little Ala Mhigo, back to what remained of the Resistance on their side of the Wall—and thinking of the wrong side as theirs made her want to choke on the very word—while the Alliance took hold of the castrum. The only thing that had made sense for the last twenty years was acting for the Resistance, for Ala Mhigo; to survive long enough that she may see her homeland freed, and give her life when it mattered if she must.

Now, she could hardly even conceive of leaving the castrum at all; there was no clarity in her mind.

Her son was nowhere to be found.

She’d sent him off, naïve and barely trained, to face a man twice his years—a madman and a fanatic, but a man with more skill than any boy could have ever worked up from almost nothing in a matter of moons. She’d sent him off as an ally, but would that have mattered, to the Griffin? All those who had followed him were lambs for a slaughter, wood on a pyre. If Sairsel was gone, then—

She couldn’t bear the thought of it. The Griffin cutting him down, the primal consuming his body until he was nothing but one voice lost in a current of prayers and dying cries. Every waking hour, her mind worked up some new version of the horrors; every night that passed buried the knowledge, deep into her bones, that she had brought this on him.

Anything, she’d said, and twenty years of rage had made her believe it. Morgana would have done most anything, for Ala Mhigo, but not this. Not giving her son’s life away like it was some cheap coin—and certainly not to summon a primal. She should have seen through Ilberd; she should have seen through the mask of familiarity and recognition in the losses they shared and found how far beyond the realm of the acceptable his plans lay, but she’d been blind, and Sairsel…

She could not let him go. The Alliance settled in around her, making a proper occupation of the castrum, and every day Morgana joined the soldiers on the Wall who gathered the bodies, sifting through familiar faces and those of strangers looking for her son’s. Every day she asked the soldiers who shared this duty with her if they had found him.

My boy. My only boy.

As those days passed, she no longer knew what she could stomach. Would it be better, to find his body as she had found Gotwin’s—something cold and still over which to weep? Or should she be made to mourn him, halfway between grief and the foolish hope that he might have lived, as she had mourned Mathias and Havisa and every last person she had left behind in Ala Mhigo?

Even as the castrum was cleared, she never found an answer. It left her feeling as empty as those corpses, walking as though between worlds. I have survived everything that tried to kill me, she thought when the realm of the living pulled at her. I will survive this, too.

Would Sairsel want her to survive him?

Not even that found an answer in her mind, and it was the emptiness that cut deepest. She did not know what he wanted, what he believed. She barely even knew who he was.

So she lived, for the time being. She hadn’t been able to step outside of the castrum and into East End, not on her own—she could not set foot on Gyr Abanian soil again with no one by her side, not when she had left it with the family she was running to protect. But she looked at it. She sat at the edge of the wall with a bottle in her hand and she watched the sun kiss the mountain peaks and she waited for something that she knew could not come.

Most of the Resistance survivors worked below, deployed to make contact with their brothers and sisters in Rhalgr’s Reach, and the Alliance soldiers rarely spoke to her. Likely a number of them thought her mad. The heavy footfalls on the metal were of no concern to her; they always passed.

But not these. They came near, and they slowed, and they stopped. A silent presence, undeniable. And then her name, spoken in a voice deeper and rougher than she remembered—worn by twenty years and all the hardships that came with them. Her own voice had suffered the same.

“Morgana.”

She turned her head—not fully, her chin only brushing her shoulder, but she hardly needed more. There were too few men like him that she could not recognize even a glimpse of him: the Bull of Ala Mhigo, as fierce and proud as he had been on the bloodsands. His skin bronze in the waning daylight behind him, brighter than in the lights of the arena. He was stronger, wearing more scars, and Morgana was the same; they had both always been the same, and somehow, twenty years had not changed that.

The irony of the same man having taken so much from the both of them was not lost on her, even before she opened her mouth to speak to him.

“Been a while,” she said, sand scraping against her throat. “Have you come to arrest me, General?”

Raubahn took a careful step closer, then another. When Morgana didn’t stiffen or pull a knife on him, he lowered himself to sit beside her. “Not today.”

“You didn’t have to wait until we were both in the Shroud to pay a social call. Little Ala Mhigo was just next door; your little Ul’dahn soldiers knew the way well enough.”

The words were too sharp; they lingered like thorns on her tongue, so she attempted a bitter smile and presented him with the neck of the bottle in a silent offering. If Raubahn remembered her well enough, he had to know she was only abrasive because she no longer knew how to be anything else. I never was all that pleasant back home, either, if I’m honest, she’d said to him once. Some of us are just born bastards, I suppose. It’s only fitting that I had one of my own.

“I’ve been told you were looking for your son.”

“A fool’s errand; he was primal fodder. I need to accept it.”

“He may yet live,” Raubahn said. Morgana didn’t know whether it was a platitude, or something he truly believed. Both seemed unlike him. “He would not be the first to survive being thought dead.”

“And who would that predecessor be? Ilberd?” she asked, snorting derisively.

“So you knew him.”

“Aye, I knew him. Threw in my lot with him.” She shook her head. “I’ve always been a shite gambler.”

Raubahn smiled, melancholy and reserved, as he lifted the bottle to his lips and drank. “I still have never seen anyone lose at dice as many times as I have you.”

“I’m sorry to report it hasn’t gotten better.” Morgana sniffed, drawing her eyes across the rising peaks on the horizon. “I’m still not certain what it is I said that made him take off that mask, but he did. Told me his name and what he’d done. He asked me if I cared, and I said no; I told him it wasn’t turning against a brother when he turned against you.”

To that, Raubahn said nothing, and Morgana did not search his face for the unspoken. The mountains were silent, too, but they did not see her the way he did.

“And now, where do I stand? On the graves of all the brothers and sisters he betrayed, my son among them.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I think I do. The last thing I told him was to go to the bastard. Why else wouldn’t he be here, if not for Ilberd personally making a sacrifice of him? I ordered him—” she repeated, and her voice shook and died in her throat. She snatched the bottle from Raubahn’s hand, drank, and steadied herself, grasping onto bitterness in lieu of sorrow.

That was easier. She watched the mountains still as she poured a few sips’ worth of the alcohol over the edge of the platform, toasting no one.

“It is never easy to command one’s own child in battle,” Raubahn said. “But we give the orders that we think we must, and they fight with their own strength.”

“Right—you have a son, now, too,” Morgana said, mustering half of a smile. It was worth very little.

“I do. Pipin. I came into his life late, but…”

Morgana shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. I bore mine in my own womb and you’ve spent more of your life with yours than I did.”

“You didn’t go back to him? After the Coliseum?”

“I couldn’t. When they killed Gotwin, I—I was sure they’d come for me. I couldn’t lead them back to him. And after that, in the Resistance… I saw no point in going back to a child who would be without a mother either way,” she said slowly. That wasn’t the whole of it; she’d done it for herself, too, because leaving him the first time had been so painful she couldn’t bear repeating it. After a time, it simply became easier to be alone, leaving him to a better life than she could have given him.

“Did I ever tell you his name?”

“No,” Raubahn said, keeping his voice gentle.

“Sairsel. His father named him,” she said, wishing that he’d only ever needed this name, and not hers. It might have saved him from being led back to her. “Sairsel Arroway.”

“A good name.”

Morgana could bear to say nothing else, and Raubahn did not dare. He had to know she’d hate it, but he was still gentle and careful in the way he raised his hand to rest upon her shoulder. For as long as his touch remained, she thought of blindly reaching up and taking it, even if she couldn’t even look at him; her hands were heavy in her lap, gripping the bottle so tightly she thought she might break it. Her chest shook from the sobs that she wouldn’t allow to take breath.

Ever so slowly, she shifted towards him, like a quiet tide creeping towards the shore. She drew closer until her knee was against his and she could bury her face in his neck, a fist curling at his thigh. She did not weep, but she shook with sorrow and with rage and with shame, and he moved his hand to her back and said nothing.

“They don’t like us,” said Gotwin.

“Of course they don’t like us,” Morgana replied without looking up from her sword. She swept the whetstone one last time across the blade, blew, and lifted it up. “These gladiators, they’re just show chocobos, and they know it. Their whole purpose is just to fight and die on the bloodsands, and we show up, and we know real battle. Makes them look bad.”

Ul’dahns had been content enough to accept Ala Mhigan refugees within their borders, at first; the coin-lords saw profit to be made on their backs through cheap labour and desperate trade, but the veneer was beginning to wear thin for everyone else not benefitting as the moons turned. The gladiators themselves were, for the most part, most certainly not benefitting from the Ala Mhigans stealing their victories without, as Morgana had heard one of them put it, ‘paying their dues in training.’

She’d almost knocked his teeth out. Had they not paid their dues fighting for their lives when soldiers and magitek flooded their streets, looking to cut down any caught fleeing or resisting the Empire? Had they not paid their dues rising up against a mad king who had already spilled too much blood? Gotwin and Morgana had been raised with swords in their hands. They had paid their dues a hundred, a thousand times over.

“And maybe that sort of talk isn’t helping us all that much,” Gotwin said, his nonchalant irony making Morgana roll her eyes.

“You here to make friends, then? Because I’m not.”

“Not at this rate.” Gotwin threw a cursory look around the training grounds as he stretched, motioning with his head towards the man across the field who seemed hells-bent on decimating the striking dummy making a pitiful stand before him. “What about him, you think?”

“What, the Bull? Doesn’t look like the sort who likes anyone. And they like him even less than they do us.”

Morgana shrugged as she stood, rolling her wrist to spin her sword once. As far as she was concerned, the one they called the Bull of Ala Mhigo had a few damned good reasons to have that air about him. The first being that he was Ala Mhigan; that would be enough on its own, and Morgana figured that she would be just as wild and angry if not for the family that kept her sane. The Bull’s second good reason was that he’d been dragged to the Coliseum in chains to be executed upon the bloodsands—and lived long enough to free himself, but freedom was a strange thing to have without a home.

It was comforting, Morgana supposed, to know that at the very least, she and Gotwin had come to risk their lives on those sands by choice.

She bent to retrieve her shield and tapped the flat of her sword against it, catching Gotwin’s attention. Her body settled into the ease of a battle stance. “Come on, you lazy sod. You can make doe eyes at the Bull after we survive our next bout, and maybe I won’t steal your wife.”

Gotwin was ill.

With a healer for a wife, it meant his life was in no danger, but Havisa had a will of steel, and no amount of miserable begging on his part could convince her to force his body to bring itself back together enough that he could step onto the bloodsands. It also meant that Morgana was to be alone in the arena that night, and that the First Sword of the gladiator’s guild had a scowl on his face.

“I’m going to have half this town up my arse, Arroway,” he said, rubbing at his forehead. His attention was half on her, half on the bright-haired girl—no older than seven summers, by Morgana’s estimate—working on her form two feet away. Mostly on the girl. “Mylla, Thal’s balls, your stance is too narrow. I’ve told you a hundred times.”

“Her stance is just fine.” Morgana made a fist below her navel. “Women have lower root centers. She won’t be balanced right if she widens it,” she said, then put both hands on her hips. “Your arse is going to be fine.”

“You Ala Mhigans don’t understand how I make money. What do you think all these fine people will think, when I announce the Griffin’s Talons and give them a fucking one-legged chicken?”

“I’d say it’s going to be very hard for them to understand a word of your announcing because the little chicken ripped out your tongue,” Morgana said flatly. She clucked for good measure, holding his gaze with a withering stare.

He closed his eyes with a sigh. “Twelve, woman. Do you ever make anything easy?”

“No, man.”

“I’ve a bout set up for a pair and only one fighter. You can count far enough to understand my issue, yes?”

It was Morgana’s turn to sigh, a long and measured exhale. “My brother will fight when he’s well enough, and not a moment before. It isn’t like I’ve come to beg you to pay him regardless of his presence—I’m informing you that I’m here, and he’s not, and I trust your clever sense for profit to make this work like you would with anyone else.”

The guildmaster leveled a cynically tortured expression at her, but Morgana maintained her refusal to offer any semblance of sympathy for a man who made a living training men and women to die in an arena. There was honour in the training of warriors, and no Ala Mhigan would dispute that—and Morgana was under no illusion that she held any moral ground as a gladiator—but she was growing weary of the manner with which he always seemed to want to make it into some sort of great plight.

His gaze drifted to the girl as his mind worked. Morgana snapped her fingers in front of his face.

“I’ve got as much claws on my own as I do with Gotwin. You’ll have a show whether he’s here or not.”

“Aye,” the guildmaster said, a solution forming in his mind. “And gil will flow.”

When Morgana saw the bout rosters an hour later, she swore, but he wasn’t anywhere to be found to hear her complaints. Another hour later, she stood inside the tunnels with the crowd roaring beyond the gate at a skinny Miqo’te in a desperate bout with a coeurl. In the tunnels on the other end of the arena, five prisoners with crude weapons awaited the battle that would cost them their lives, hoping for freedom in the blood of their would-be executioners.

She could have been their sole executioner, and it wouldn’t have made a difference, but the guildmaster—and the coin-lords who sank their gil into the Coliseum, and the people who gambled for a piece of their fortune—had wanted his show.

The Bull of Ala Mhigo stood beside her, silent as a monument.

“Is there anything I should know?” Morgana asked as the Miqo’te avoided a sweep of the coeurl’s claws with a somersault where his hands did not even touch the ground. “Or would you rather keep all your old injuries and blind spots to yourself so that I don’t know your weaknesses if we ever have to face each other in there?”

“I can already tell you yours. I’ll cover them.”

She snorted. “Is that so?”

“You can’t turn your head fully to the left; your brother compensates by staying near your flank. He’s left-handed, so you favour back-handed—and underhand—strikes more than the average warrior. It makes you unpredictable, but your momentum tends to be more rooted than mobile.”

Morgana didn’t know whether she was irritated or impressed; her meager smirk seemed to be reaching for the latter.

“All right, so the quiet one is good at watching.”

“I rely overmuch on charges, you might have noticed from the name,” he said, a tinge of self-derision to his voice. “It is a gamble; I’m left open as I recover. My heavy strikes are slower. Also, I took a Garlean arrow to the knee on the Ilsabard border,” he said, tapping his right leg. “I still can’t pivot quite well enough.”

“You might pivot better if you didn’t rely on kicking anything and anyone that gets close,” Morgana said, her mood alleviating.

“So you do watch, too.”

“I see. There’s a difference.”

Rather than countering the statement with a request for clarification, the Bull nodded as though she made a fair point. He moved a hand, palm face-up, in front of Morgana. “Raubahn.”

His hand was far larger than hers, but Morgana always kept her grip heavy. When they shook, it was as equals. Out in the arena, the coeurl fell limp, and the Miqo’te dropped to his knees with the relief as the crowd cheered for him.

“Morgana.”

The gates opened, and the light swept in. The Bull and the Talons of Ala Mhigo stepped onto the sands as equals, and left the arena bloodied—and as comrades.

“How did it go?” Gotwin asked, propping himself up in bed with some degree of misery. Two summers ago—perhaps even less—Morgana would have joked and called it his deathbed, but now, the words seemed violently out of place.

“Well, as you can see, I’m still standing with all my limbs and all my innards where they should be.”

Gotwin managed a pitiful little smirk. If he’d voiced his concerns, it would have earned him Morgana’s ire, but she knew as well as he did that sending her off to fight on her own when they always fought at each other’s side had worried him. He didn’t have to speak to show his relief; placatingly, Morgana gave his cheek a pat, and that was that.

“I know you’re just fine; if I still haven’t figured out how to kill you, no one else will,” he said. “I meant the bout.”

“There’s not much to be said of it. Our wise and respectable master wouldn’t let me fight it on my own, so I didn’t,” Morgana said, giving a resigned shrug. “The other one didn’t die, so maybe he’s just going to replace you, now.”

Gotwin wrinkled his nose; Morgana thought that he was about to sneeze and took a gratuitous step back. “Who’d he saddle you with? He better not have used the Griffin name on an Ul’dahn, that slimy—”

“Don’t get yourself all worked up; Havisa is going to skin me alive. It’s fine. I was the Griffin’s Talons on my own. Our good friend the Bull of Ala Mhigo already has a good enough name for himself.”

“The Bull?” Gotwin said, raising his eyebrows. “I suppose it makes sense. How does he measure as a partner?”

“The man’s seen his fair share of battles, that’s for certain. Mhigan through and through. I was surprised; he’s watched us fight enough that he knew where to stand with me. Crowd seemed to like it.”

Gotwin nodded. Before he could manage even one other word, Havisa appeared behind Morgana as though she’d stood there the entire time. “It is far too late for you to be up chatting,” she said, pointing a threatening finger at her husband. “And you should know better than to encourage him.”

“He looks like the very image of health. Only slightly green,” Morgana said, almost at the same time as her brother spoke.

“I’ve been confined to this bed and to sleep all day, my love. Surely—”

Havisa’s tone cut without mercy. “Surely you can yet rest through the night.”

“Tomorrow,” Morgana assured Gotwin, relenting. “I can tell you both about the match then.” Around Havisa, she softened; her smile was easy as she glanced down at her, pressing an affectionate kiss to her sister-in-law’s cheek and drifting towards the doorway. “Do as your wife says and get better, Gotwin, or I’ll end up getting paired with a bull for the rest of my fighting days.”

Morgana had spent too long in the woods; every night in Ul’dah made that abundantly clear. The way the stones drank the warmth of the sun to carry it through the cold desert night choked her, and the starry sky above appeared only to be a patch of something that she knew to be greater, endless—and there was irony in that. Under a canopy of trees, the Shroud only lived up to its name, the sky veiled by branches and leaves as far as the eye could see; how could it ever compare to the endless expanse that arceed over the Gyr Abanian mountains from one side of the horizon to the other?

Thanalan was more open than the forest could ever be, but she still felt trapped. Through the worst nights, a voice inside Morgana urged her desperately to go, to leave, to move, even if no part of her knew where. She had enough of running; her family had enough of running. There was nowhere else she could—not should—be, and she laboured to write those words into every fibre of her being.

The nights laboured to erase them: they swept over those certainties as though she had traced letters in sand, and replaced them with the voice of a babe. How many times since parting with him had she been woken by her own imaginings of Sairsel’s fragile whimpers? They had no place here, but she still found herself, far too often, on her feet in the darkness of her cell before she was even fully awake—only then realizing, as her skin touched the cold stone, that the voice she heard only screamed within the confines of her own mind.

She ached for him, for those searching eyes, for his tiny little mouth and his primly pointed ears. She missed the smiles that he had begun to form. Being without him was an emptiness worse than even the losses that sundered her time and again since the fall of Ala Mhigo, a weakness she’d never known to endure; how could she have? Most of her life, she’d scarcely ever imagined herself as a mother, and even less so a mother without a home whose son belonged neither quite in the Wood or at all in Ul’dah.

The emptiness, she usually shook away through keeping awake under that night sky, with a sword in hand as though it might serve to slice her a larger few patches of black velvet and shining stars. A practice sword, but a sword nonetheless.

As she crossed over from the gladiator barracks to the training grounds, Morgana found that she was not the only one to have had the idea: the rhythm of repeated strikes against a striking post echoed through the night’s silence long before she was even inside the practice arena. Hesitation bound her for two faltering footsteps—she had no particular desire to share the space with an Ul’dahn from whom she kept as much distance as they did from her—but she pressed forward, more desperate to wear herself to sleep than she was for complete solitude.

It should have come as no surprise that it was her countryman, rather than any other gladiator, going about thrashing the striking post. Morgana could have pretended that it was exceptional Ala Mhigan discipline, that it did not go as deep as it did—but she knew better than that. Not one of his moves took shape in the manner of real training; there was no pursuit of betterment in the way he unleashed his ferocity upon the post. A man who trained was sharp, focused. He was lost in it.

Morgana watched him for ten moves. At first, she studied his stance: narrower than when he truly fought, his torso angled nearer to the post than it needed to be. In a real bout, an opponent might exploit the change in his balance, use his momentum to topple him over—but this served him to unleash the full weight of his titanic frame, and the striking post shook in its foundations from every blow. Despite the chill that fell over the city at night, he’d elected to train bare-footed and shirtless; the low torchlight turned his sweat-slick skin to gleaming bronze, shadows shifting across the lines and curves of his muscles. As the tenth blow fell, she regarded the tense set of his jaw, the stiffness in his grip, and decided to step forward.

“You fight two bouts in one evening and it still isn’t enough to sate your appetite?” she asked, leaning against a pillar and crossing her arms over her chest. “Rhalgr himself couldn’t find a more eager pupil.”

Raubahn met her lofty tone with an exhale that could have been a scoff as much as a sigh, glancing fleetingly at her—down, up, away—before directing his attention back onto the striking post. “I do not sleep,” he said, his voice clipped by the effort of his next blow. “Not as long as there is any fight left in me.”

The weight of the unspoken weaved between his words could have choked a man. Morgana understood, and he knew without looking—without knowing her outside of the intimacies of shared battle—that she did. Those truths hung in the air, silent but for the thunderous rumble of his blows.

“It’s a marvel you haven’t exhausted yourself into an early grave.”

He grunted, spinning on his heel to deliver a backhanded strike. “Early, timely; I no longer know.”

“Don’t wonder. It’s a waste of energy better spent on surviving.”

“And you?” Raubahn asked, finally falling still. “You’re here.”

“I’m here,” Morgana said. She pushed herself off of the pillar, crossed the length of the arena until she was standing with a hand against the striking post he was abusing, eyes steady on him. “So maybe you could wear yourself down on something that will actually hit back.”

Raubahn considered her, his gaze trailing down again; this time, it caught on the pink scars at her throat, and there was something strangely disarming in that. She preferred the brief new flashes of interest that he now allowed himself, looking away before crossing the border into impropriety.

“Fists or swords?”

Morgana smirked and turned on her heel, going to a basket full of training staves and tossing Raubahn one. “The Mhigan way,” she said as she took up a staff of her own. She spun it in one hand, tossed it to the other, and clasped both hands around it behind her back to stretch. “It’s how my mother taught me to fight.”

“See, I learned with pitchforks. One of my friends did not have very good aim,” Raubahn said, pointing to three small, puckered scars just above his hip bone. Morgana grimaced. “It was real swords and the military after that.”

They both gravitated towards the center of the training grounds, walking onto the square: a mat fashioned with supple leather and filled with enough straw to feed every chocobo in Ul’dah upon which the gladiators fought and wrestled, replicating the unsteady ground of the bloodsands without the mess. Morgana angled her body away from Raubahn’s and widened her stance, knees bent, whipping out the staff at her side in a perfect line that followed the length of her arm. She said nothing else to him; battle spoke more clearly than any of her skill with words ever could.

“Let’s dance, then,” Raubahn said as he fell into his own battle stance.

It had nothing of a dance, even before the first strike: they circled each other as predators might a prey, and grace was forgotten when Raubahn charged forward.

His staff cracked against Morgana’s as she blocked with both hands, the force of the blow reverberating through her arms like coursing lightning. She pushed back against him and snapped her right hand up to strike the side of his jaw with the end of her staff. Startling, but not meant to injure; it was only enough to make Raubahn shake his head, blinking against the surprise. Morgana smirked, but the Bull of Ala Mhigo was not stunned for long.

What ground she’d gained on him, negating the advantage of his reach, he took in driving her back with three heavy thrusts. She parried the first two, and the third struck her shoulder with a burst of pain. A few strides were enough for him to push her nearer to the edge of the mat, but her back heel was firm against it, and his next move was familiar: the gamble of a charge, the sheer mass of him a weakness as much as it was a strength. It could have sent Morgana stumbling out of the square, but she bent at the waist to dodge and snapped her staff across his back, twirling away as he grunted.

Her breath rose quicker in her lungs, the thrill singing in her veins. They traded harsh blows, more evenly matched than she’d expected, both blocking and parrying and striking back with such efficiency that the clapping of staff against staff echoed in an erratic rhythm through the arena like a fall of rain. Pushing in, pulling back; driving each other away only to come charging back in.

Morgana had Raubahn down on one knee after a series of quick thrusts that allowed her to get close and rob him of his balance when he tried to kick her back. His staff rose to block her two-handed cleave, and he jabbed a fist into her gut, knocking the wind out of her lungs. Precious seconds flew from her hands as her shoulders drew in, even as she did her best to mitigate her body’s instinct to curl in on herself; she tightened her core expecting another punch that didn’t come. Instead, Raubahn knocked her staff up and away from his, then swept it under her feet.

She landed on her left shoulder with a groan, breathing hard. Raubahn was back on his feet; his towering frame moved towards her, but his staff did not meet Morgana’s throat yet. Curling in on herself, legs swinging, she rolled away and got up on her feet in a low stance, one steady leg extended for balance. When Raubahn made to strike her again, she shot up to stand and snapped away his staff, bearing down—he blocked—then spinning away with a flourish to deliver a backhanded blow, her body sideways, arm extended—

It didn’t land. Raubahn was closer than she’d judged, and he caught her arm under his left, pinning her by the sheer force of his body. Morgana felt the proximity of bare skin on skin like the crack of a whip, or that coursing lightning, looking up into his face as she tried to wrench herself free. He had her firmly trapped, her grip tight on her staff but useless; she panted and watched his parted lips, felt the rise and fall of his chest against her.

Perhaps he expected her to surrender then. He raised his staff, aiming for her throat, but Morgana raised her empty left hand to catch his wrist, fingers as hard as claws. She held firm even as he pushed against it.

“Did you think you had me?” she asked.

“I have you,” Raubahn said, low in his chest. His gaze moved down to her mouth, too, and for a moment it seemed like he might say something else.

Morgana had no intention of turning this into a conversation. She tipped her chin up and her head back—carefully measuring the angle, prudent enough to remember that this was only a spar—and smashed her forehead into Raubahn’s nose. This time, he didn’t just grunt; he swore.

He might have stumbled back, if not for how closely they were locked together, but his grip faltered, and that was enough. Morgana ripped his staff from his hand and her own arm back from his hold, moving away from him and tapping the two staves together with a smug, satisfied look. The rush coursed along her spine as Raubahn stared at her, a hand covering his nose, and smirked in astonished delight.

“Bleeding?” Morgana asked.

Raubahn sniffed, wiping his knuckles underneath his nose and glancing down at his hand. “No.”

“Probably not broken, then,” Morgana said, nodding her head to one side. Her time in the Coliseum was turning her into more of a performer than she’d ever been: she twirled both staves in her hands, sweeping one arm up around her head while the other curled around her torso, and fell into a low stance with both staves poised like twin swords after one last spin. “I’m not done with you yet.”

Pleasantly resigned, Raubahn readied himself with his fingers curled into loose fists and, this time, waited for Morgana’s first move.

She had no intention of fighting him with both staves—they were far too long for dual wielding without some degree of encumbrance, and putting him at a disadvantage could only end up boring her—but she delighted in seeing him take a defensive position. He displayed surprising agility, for a man his size: he met the new onslaught of her blows with quick, careful dodges, bending back and deflecting Morgana’s staff with the palm of his hand. His breath came sharp when she struck his side, muscles tensing.

It was a good show, for a matter of seconds, but Morgana found that she wanted to fight him up close again. She tossed his staff up with another spin, caught it in her sword hand, and discarded both staves together off the side of the mat.

They shared a grin—sharp and wild—and met each other with hard, unforgiving blows. Morgana punched and kicked, avoiding a jab at her flank at the cost of taking a hit against her chin that snapped her head back. The surprise destabilized her, and she was forced to crouch to avoid a sweep of Raubahn’s arm meant to grapple her. She sidestepped, moving in a sharp line towards his back, and kicked the side of her foot to the back of his knee.

He didn’t even bend long enough to touch the mat, but it was enough, lowering him closer to Morgana’s own height: she wrapped an arm around his neck to keep him in a tight headlock against the side of her chest. It forced him to bend forward, one arm falling around her waist to try and grab her elbow and break the hold, his other hand closing around her wrist—Morgana was relentless.

“Thinking of surrendering yet?” she asked breathlessly, a smirk growing on her lips. “Or shall I put you to sleep?”

Raubahn growled without anger, the rumble of his voice spreading through Morgana’s arm. Her legs were beginning to tire and shake from keeping herself so firmly grounded, but she held firm against his thrashing—pointless, she thought, and then everything escaped her as she felt the stunning blow of his fist against her head. It was little more than a tap, far from the ferocity with which he might strike in a fight to the death, but her hold weakened on him, and he was quick to seize the advantage.

Before Morgana could act, Raubahn pressed himself against her back and seized her in a stranglehold, strong arm tight against her throat as he lifted the other hand to the back of her head, locking her tight. Morgana struggled, at first, thrashing as he had against her, hands grasping his forearm. She elbowed blindly, meeting only hard muscle, as her lungs burned and her breath came less and less.

All she had to do was tap his arm, she knew, lift two fingers in his eyeline to show her surrender, but bowing to her own obstinacy was something she still hadn’t learned to do. Her fingers tightened against Raubahn’s arms, and she did all she could to shift her balance and throw him to the ground. His feet barely even shifted on the mat.

Morgana dropped to one knee, then the other; Raubahn followed her, lowering himself—she felt his stance shift, his feet widen behind her. Was he in reach? She let her hands fall from his arm, and breath returned to her by an inch as he loosened his grip for an instant, thinking her defeated.

She could move, if barely. Blindly, she reached a hand back, fingers meeting Raubahn’s ankle: opportunity. All at once, Morgana shifted all her weight to the side, pushing back against him, and moved her shoulder behind Raubahn’s leg. She wrapped an arm around it and pulled.

The beginning of his fall tugged her back, but he let go before slamming down onto the mat. Morgana twisted and took hold of his leg, lifting his lower body, smiling even as she took desperate, gasping gulps of air. His back arching up, Raubahn tapped his hand twice on the mat, and Morgana relented. He stared at her as he lay still on his back, breathless, and she burned.

Not for the fight. She thought she ached for more of it, more of that thrill, more of this exchange, but she realized as she stared at his mouth that it was more of him that she wanted, the warm and hard press of his body. It didn’t have to feel like a war—not against him, not with herself.

She had been fighting for so long that she no longer knew how else to be, but she tired of it. So she chose not to fight; not this time. She moved before she could hesitate—from where she knelt on the ground by Raubahn’s feet, she drew nearer, swinging a leg up over him to straddle his hips, and leaned down to crush her mouth against his.

Raubahn lay stunned for one heartbeat too long, as though he’d had his head smashed into something far harder than the mat; Morgana was moments from surrendering and pulling away when he tangled his fingers in her hair, his hand a steady weight against the back of her head. In this, they both cultivated little grace, too—too weary to delve into the art of it, too fiercely animated by the thrill of battle. Morgana was harsher in her kisses than she was in a friendly bout of sparring, and Raubahn matched her ferocity in a way no one else had.

They met in the bruising of that kiss as sharply as their staves had. Morgana slid her tongue against Raubahn’s as though she could still taste the fight on him, fire spreading down her throat even as she breathed through her nose. When she pulled back, her breath nearly hissed.

“All right?” Raubahn asked, concern flashing over his face as he propped himself up on an elbow to lift a hand to her neck. For all his strength, the touch of his fingers was delicate against her throat, not daring to brush against her scars. “Did I go too far?”

Morgana smiled, sharp-edged. “I’m fine. Don’t patronize me.”

She laid her hand over Raubahn’s, then slid it over his wrist, grazing the taut skin of his forearm with blunt nails. He shivered; his fingers trailed down the expanse of her neck, down the hollow of her throat, down her chest. His grey gaze burned hot on her—every inch of skin, of muscle, of the shadows falling over her scars—and she found that, for once, she delighted in the flames.

When she kissed him again, there was no surprise: he met her lips open-mouthed, breathless and wanting. Her hands ran down his bare chest; his slid up under the thin fabric of her tunic, thumb running along the bottom of her ribcage. Finally, Morgana shivered, too.

Raubahn pulled back to look at her again, meeting her eyes before letting his gaze fall, unreserved in its trajectory and its hunger. He kissed her neck, and Morgana almost expected him to bite, to at least graze his teeth—that would come later—when his lips parted, soft and warm alongside the scratching of his stubble.

She rocked her hips down against his—and, Twelve, she could feel him, almost as well as her own arousal, slick and hot between her parted thighs. Her fingers, bent like claws, slid ever down Raubahn’s chest as she rolled her hips and drew a moan from him, rumbling low in his chest and against her neck. One of his hands fell to her thigh, holding her as an anchor, and Morgana decided that she’d had quite enough of the fleeting touches. How did he seem to know so well how to make her want?

When she shoved his shoulder down onto the mat, it was almost as though they were yet fighting, but Raubahn did not resist it. He kept on touching her, hands roaming torturously, eyes watching her as she moved. Morgana sank her teeth into her bottom lip to keep herself from keening as he pressed a thumb between her legs, tugged at the laces of her trousers so roughly she half expected to snap them, and shifted her weight forward on her knees. Courteously, Raubahn helped her push the fabric down as far as it would go while she unlaced his trousers.

He stroked his thumb against her while she wrapped her fingers around his cock and pulled it free, her breath fluttering in her belly. And, gods—he almost smiled when she swatted his hand away, head bowed, one hand coming to steady herself against his chest.

“I won,” Morgana breathed, rocking her hips down and along his length, still held in her hand. It made him heave a shuddering breath. “I get to have you how I want.”

Raubahn’s eyes briefly moved to the sky, letting out a sharp sigh, before his mind could grasp at the words again. His voice was low and rocky with want. “Is that how it works, then?”

He tried to push himself up again, and she kept a heavy hand on his shoulder, keeping him against the mat. The same unspoken rules had carried over from their spar: he had only tap against her arm, against the mat, and she would end it. But he didn’t. He only drank her in as she spoke.

“Tonight, it does.”

Morgana held Raubahn’s gaze as she moved a hand down between her legs and pressed two fingers inside herself, only dipping in—though she stole one greedy second of pleasure in curling her fingers up. Her fingers came away slick, even more so than she thought. And she was glad for it; she wanted to waste no more time.

Morgana took him in her hand again, flicking her wrist for two slow strokes that spread her wetness from her fingers. Raubahn’s fluttering breaths made his chest shift under her other palm; she spread her fingers wide over the hard planes of muscle as she leaned forward onto her knees and guided him inside her and lowered herself onto him, ignoring the shaking of her thighs. Her fingers curled in against his skin.

After how their fight had ended, Morgana’s breath still burned on its way through her throat. The rest of her was afire, too, with her muscles trembling and her skin burning everywhere Raubahn touched, even in the cool night air. And she ached with want, ached from the fullness and the pressure and the pleasure, and her mind spun as she took in all of him. It stopped her thinking; there was only Raubahn, strong and hot and just as lost as she was, and the same urgency with which they had fought. She didn’t need to catch her breath. She only needed to move.

One of Raubahn’s hands slid up her torso as she began to rock her hips, trailing over the now-fading white lines on her belly, feather-light along her ribs, and up to cup her breast. Morgana pressed her own hand over his, fingers tight, and sighed as she bowed her head. He breathed hard, too—quiet, at first, thrusting up shallowly in time with her rhythm, until she grabbed his wrists and leaned forward to pin them to the mat. Her heavy kiss muffled his moan, and she tightened her thighs around his hips and kept on holding him down. When her fingers slipped between his, linking their hands, she drew back and rose up again.

She steadied herself with her palms on his chest and rode him hard, losing herself in the sensation. When Raubahn shifted his hips as she pushed up, her body jerked, and her voice cut through the air with something that was half a gasp and half a moan; he drew that sound out again, pleasure rippling through her in waves.

That was when he pushed himself up so that he was almost sitting, one hand coming to Morgana’s lower back to hold her close as he stole a kiss from her lips and rocked along with her quickening pace. She hadn’t expected—or wanted—the closeness, but now she wrapped an arm around his shoulders and her chest brushed against his and—gods, she only needed a little more.

Morgana brought her other hand down to where they were connected, feeling him move in and out of her against the tips of her fingers as she rubbed tight circles over herself, familiar and sure, building up until all her pleasure crashed over her—and she moaned and dug her nails into Raubahn’s shoulder as she let the tide wash over her, jerking and clenching around him. He groaned against her throat.

“Morgana,” he breathed, taut, as her rocking slowed. His fingers tapped twice against the side of her thigh—surrender.

She lifted herself up shakily and reached back, fingers touching his wrist as he quickly finished himself off, his moan muffled against her shoulder.

They fell still for a while, panting and trying to catch their breath, sweat cooling on their flushed skin. Morgana felt the echoes of her pleasure still coursing through her, slow and tingling—it was a pleasant enough sensation, but she was wearier than she’d expected, and she was now simply aching all over.

She considered kissing Raubahn again, didn’t, and readjusted her trousers as she pushed herself up to stand. She was a wet mess, and she appreciated his courtesy of warning her before he could make it worse.

“Do you need a rag?” she asked.

“I’ll, ah, manage,” Raubahn said as he tucked himself back into his trousers.

Morgana didn’t look at him or linger long; the last time she had, she’d grown too fond, and ended up with a bastard in her belly for her trouble. She busied herself with getting the staves back with the rest of the training supplies as Raubahn got to his feet, just as worn in his every movement as she was. When Morgana glanced his way, he seemed to want to speak.

“Should have no problem sleeping now,” she said before he could.

Raubahn chuckled, weary and bashful. “Aye. It was a good fight.”

“It was,” Morgana agreed, soft enough to smile. She made no more ceremony of it, and went on her way back towards the barracks, putting a hand on a pillar to spin back around to face him again. “Maybe some other time I can let you have a chance at winning.”

They were too evenly matched, and they both know it; it never was about chances. It wasn’t about the fight, either, but the exchange—clearer in battle for the both of them than it could ever be in words. Still, Raubahn smirked; it was the last thing she saw before she showed him her back again.

“I’ll not let you get bored of me,” he said as she left.

Morgana slammed her hand down on the table so hard that it rattled and shook the dice. “Bugger me to the seven bloody seas!”

As though to taunt her, the pale die—the one that looked like whitewashed bone, the greatest pain in her arse—tumbled off the edge and fell to the floor on the exact number she had needed to win.

“Has anyone checked whether she’s got a knife?” someone asked from behind, through the drunken gathering of gladiators watching the game and waiting for their turn.

Before she could think that that was a splendid idea, the brute force of Gotwin’s arms wrapped around her middle and dragged her up from the box upon which she sat as though she weighed nothing—and she was pound upon pound of drunken muscle.

“Come on, now, Mora. Time for a bit of water, hey?”

“I ain’t paying you a single gil,” Morgana shouted over her brother’s shoulder as he steered her away from the table, “you mousy little shite!”

Gotwin patted the side of her head. “All right, all right; ‘s’all just dice. Keep that anger for the sands.”

In one last act of petty frustration, Morgana stiffened her body and clenched her fists before slumping like a ragdoll. Gotwin laughed quietly and set her down. Morgana hadn’t drunk so much that it changed her speech or made it hard to stand, but it slowed her senses enough that she didn’t see the oncoming blow when she turned to face her brother: he flicked her nose the way he did when they were children. She grimaced and swatted at his hand.

“Stop antagonizing everyone here. We have children to feed and it won’t help us if the whole barracks hate us.”

Morgana’s already foul mood soured even further. “Children,” she scoffed, shoving a hand without much force against Gotwin’s chest and lifting the other to her forehead. “A child, you mean.”

“Mora—”

“No. Let’s not. I hear you, loud and clear. I’ll endeavour to make friends,” she said, like chewing up a particularly bitter plant.

Gotwin crossed one arm over his chest and scratched the thumb of his other hand under his chin, considering; he had an air she didn’t trust. “And here I thought riding the Bull was making you—well, I wouldn’t dare use the word ‘happy.’ Less prone to bouts of unsanctioned violence?”

Morgana's fist connected with Gotwin’s shoulder harder and quicker than she could think to deny it. “Don’t you ever say those words to me again,” she said as he rubbed his shoulder. Then she stopped, took a breath, and didn’t look him in the eye. “How did you bloody know?”

“Maybe I’m a fate-walker. You don’t know.”

“You’re too thick to be a fate-walker.”

“Well, now you’ve hurt my feelings,” Gotwin said, then smiled as he nudged her shoulder. “Look—I only want to know that my little sister is doing all right. This happening for the right reasons?”

“The right reasons?” Morgana asked, grimacing; trying to keep her temper from jumping straight to insult. Usually, it was easier with Gotwin than most, but tonight everything gnawed at her. “I’ll thank you to stay worried about the things that do concern you. Gods, really—we have no home, the woman I loved is living under the fucking imperials’ heel and I’ve no way of knowing whether she’s dead or suffering, and my son is being raised in the forest by strangers. Should I be singing and dancing just because of cock?”

Gotwin coughed awkwardly, his gaze catching on something behind Morgana and growing uncharacteristically furtive. “You’re right; things are… difficult. I’m sorry. I, ah—I should go check on Mathias.”

It wasn’t like her brother to try and shuffle away, but the way he raised his hand, only half-up in a cursory greeting, gave her a fair idea of the source of Gotwin’s discomfort even before she turned and saw Raubahn. She didn’t know how to read his expression—amused? curious? offended?

No. He wasn’t the type. And neither was Morgana the sort to play coy, to ask how much he’d heard and try to make her words less crude; especially not when she’d drunk enough to give even less of a damn than she usually did.

“It’s good cock, for what it’s worth. And everything else,” Morgana said, flat but genuine.

It made Raubahn laugh: that low, rumbling chuckle of his that she was finding she enjoyed more every time she heard it. “I am glad to hear that I please.”

Morgana smirked and began to walk alongside Raubahn, slowly and aimlessly, away from the common room; the rowdy revelry growing more distant with every step felt like a blessing, as did the cool breeze blowing in from outside.

“Not gambling with everyone else?” she asked.

“I won enough for tonight. I like to step away while the winds still blow in my favour.”

“Twelve, I wish I could say the same. About a lot more than dice, too,” Morgana said unenthusiastically.

They ambled towards the training grounds without even noticing where their feet took them—somewhere they both felt a bit more right. Morgana leaned her shoulder against a pillar and crossed her arms, and Raubahn stood with his back against it next to her. “Did you have a woman, back home?” she asked. “Children?”

Raubahn shook his head. “No time for anything that lasted; not with the fighting. Between the mad king and the imperials, I never settled anywhere long enough after I left home.”

“Where?”

“Coldhearth,” Raubahn said, and Morgana gave a few slow nods. She saw the distance in his eyes, the pull of memory, of three words she didn’t hear—liberty or death—and then he found her again. “You had a woman and a child back home?”

Morgana forced her jaw not to tense. “A woman, aye. She stayed behind for her parents. I haven’t the faintest idea whether any of them is still alive, naturally,” she said, sighing. “But my son was born on this side of the Wall. He’s only seen a few moons.”

“Congratulations,” said Raubahn kindly.

“There’s not a day that I don’t regret bringing him into this world,” Morgana said like cold steel, the words coming unguarded. “I still think, some days, that I should have gotten rid of him while it was still time, but I couldn’t do it to his father. Kind man. Better father than I am a mother.”

Raubahn said nothing—without the dulling of the alcohol in her veins, she might have actually found some concern as to whether he reserved some judgement for her, but he was silent to listen. Half-drunk, she understood that.

“He’s Elezen, my boy’s father. I’m—I think I’m afraid that Ala Mhigo will mean nothing to him,” Morgana said, all in one breath. She felt like she was drowning in her own blood as she turned her head and looked at Raubahn. “Not the imperials’, or the mad king’s—our Ala Mhigo.”

“It is our duty, no? To keep it alive until we can set it free.”

Morgana breathed in once, then out. When they had first come to Ul’dah, she could almost fool herself into thinking that the cooling rock and sand in the evening air smelled the same as it did in the Lochs, but it faded away a little more with every passing day. Now, all she could taste was dust.

“I don’t think it exists anymore.” Morgana sniffed, then made to turn away. “Anyroad, you didn’t have to listen to me whinge. We all have better to do.”

Raubahn caught her wrist, his grip loose enough that she only needed slip her hand out to break free. She only stopped and looked down at his fingers, thick and strong and scarred. A hundred fights, a hundred battles, and there would always be more.

“Would you rather we remain strangers?” he asked. “I want to know you. We have all lost too much not to gain something here.”

Morgana kept her gaze down as she shifted her hand to touch her fingertips to the inside of Raubahn’s wrist, and he let go; she trailed her fingers down into his palm and released her grip on her own guard. When next she let herself be tangled up in his arms, Raubahn kissed the scars on her belly as though she had taken them in battle—understanding that it was a battle all on its own.

Morgana did not like to be cornered, and even as a gladiator, she did not like games; not when she felt she was more a piece than a player. She also knew that any man who hid in hoods and shadows were not the sort with whom she would do business—but this was not business. It was, after all, a game.

The rules were that the pieces were not to think too strongly on the blades that gleamed at their backs. That they were to face forward, towards the wall of the dead end in that dirty alley near Pearl Lane—and not to think, either, of the blood they might have to shed if they touched their own swords. The rules were what the hooded man conjured out of thin air, weaved out of nothing but words. For now, Morgana decided to obey the rules, but it did not stop her skin from pricking, her senses to feel like a sharp edge cutting against the bonds of sense.

And Gotwin—Gotwin was so calm he seemed to be standing before a stall at market to haggle with the fishmonger. No—calmer by far; back home, haggling was a serious and fierce affair.

“My friends have taken quite a liking to you on the bloodsands,” said the hooded man after dispensing with the understatements that he only wanted to talk and that this was simply good business. He twirled a dagger in his hands, pressing the point against the pad of his forefinger so that it dipped into the flesh without piercing it. “The bravery. The ferocity. The, well, beauty—a little something for all inclinations, eh?”

Morgana bit down hard into her cheek; she’d heard some of the stories. Gladiators in the beds of the rich of powerful. Handsome rewards, surely enough, but not the sort of arrangement that could be broken after agreeing even only the once.

“You and your friends may gaze upon us as much as you’d like,” Gotwin said evenly, then, more pointed: “on the sands.”

“Ah, of course! And that, yes, that, we shall. We’re all quite excited for the next real bout, aren’t we, lads?” the hooded man asked the thugs behind Gotwin and Morgana, drawing their assent. “Only two more nights of waiting, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Waiting for what, exactly?” Morgana asked, too sharp. “For us to lose on purpose so that your ‘friends’ can win their bets, or else you start breaking fingers?”

The hooded man laughed an absurdly enthusiastic laugh that bounced off the stones of the alley. “Oh, no. No! Quite the opposite, of course; why would we ask you to lose when you give such a show? Thal’s balls! That would be a waste.”

Morgana glanced furtively at her brother; the wariness she saw in his eyes was the same she felt. “Out with it,” she said.

“So you want us to win?” Gotwin said.

“Precisely,” the hooded man said, snapping his fingers and pointing to Gotwin in the same motion. From inside his robes, he produced a fat-bellied pouch, heavy and clinking with coins as he held it gingerly in his palm. “It’s quite the fight, you see, the Griffin’s Claws butting heads with the Bull of Ala Mhigo.”

“Like two wild dogs from the same pack tearing at each other’s throats,” said one of the thugs—the one behind Morgana. Not two summers past, she might have tried her chance with breaking his foot; now, she did not move a muscle, taking the blow.

“Ha! Well said, my lad.”

“So it’s two against one,” Gotwin said. “We’re confident in our chances.”

“Quite. However, you see, there is a… well, calling it a complication makes it seem so unpleasant, you see. A mere bump in the road. This Bull—your rival, I’m sure—has been making quite the stir since he arrival. A great and inspiring start, coming in chains and fighting his way to freedom out of his own execution; depending how you look at it. But my friends, they look at it rather from the side of all the losses his triumphs have been causing. It’s not a fight to the death, this bout, is it?”

“Guildmaster wouldn’t risk some of his best gladiators on a weekly match,” Gotwin said. His calm was beginning to fray; Morgana could hear it in his voice, in the tension with which he spoke.

The hooded man clicked his tongue almost mournfully. “But it is quite an unfortunate profession, is it not? Even in fights that are not meant to lead to death. Swords are oh-so-dangerous. Injuries catch.”

Shaking his head, the hooded man opened the purse and showed Gotwin and Morgana its contents: a pile of gleaming coins with, sitting atop it like a crown, a small phial filled with clear liquid. Something flipped inside Morgana at the sight; for good or for ill, she did not know.

“You need not count for yourselves: there is enough to house and feed sweet, young Mathias for, oh, nigh on a year. In better conditions than that gaol of a gladiator barracks, that is for certain.”

Morgana took a step forward, stopped only by her brother’s outstretched arm. “Keep his name out of your filthy mouth.”

“I did not mean to offend,” said the hooded man, raising a hand. “Merely to place an offer. You take this purse—let us call it your advance winnings—and use the little bottle as you see fit. It’s so versatile; genius work. Coats a blade nicely, or causes muscle weakness when ingested. Use your creativity! So long as the Bull, ah, loses quite squarely.”

Silence was all that met his words, and then Gotwin and Morgana both spoke at the same time:

“Or what?” asked Gotwin.

“And then?” asked Morgana.

She gritted her teeth and kept her eyes ahead rather than face the weight of the shocked look Gotwin tossed her way, holding the hooded man’s gaze even though she couldn’t see it. In the shadows, she could see his smirk crack through the veil of secrecy as the purse disappeared from his hand with a flick of his wrist.

“And then it is done, you already have your coin, and we never have to speak to each other again. Simple, no?” The hooded man spread his hands, the palm of his empty hand held outward. It might have been more of a peaceable gesture, if not for the dagger he still held between his fingers. “We have come to do business, not to make threats.”

“Where I come from, drawn swords are a threat,” Gotwin said icily.

“This is not Ala Mhigo,” the hooded man said. “This is Ul’dah, a nation of honest word and prosperity. My lads protect me on behalf of my friends; nothing more, and nothing less. If I were to make threats, I would speak them.”

Morgana could not stop her eyes from searching for the purse. Something inside her was recoiling, so violently it seemed like a serpent’s bite spreading poison through her veins, but she had been a sellsword long before she ever became a gladiator. A sellsword knew to behead those doubts swiftly and permanently. Knew to listen to the loudest surety—and in this world broken by the imperials, she only let herself look upon one path.

“Doesn’t matter. We’ll do it.”

“Morgana,” Gotwin hissed. “What has gotten into you?”

“I’m thinking of our family. Your son,” she hissed back.

The disdainful way with which her brother shook his head at her said more than words ever could. Watching Gotwin’s silent disagreement and the way Morgana stiffened, the hooded man clicked his tongue as though out of some misguided sense of pity.

“If I may—” he began loftily.

Gotwin cut in, his voice sharper than every blade between them. “You may not,” he said, taking hold of Morgana’s arm before she could think to reach for the pouch. “We will have nothing to do with this; find yourself another assassin. We are going.”

With that, Gotwin turned. His fingers found the hilt of his sword again, and he placed himself so that he and Morgana stood back to back, the way they so often did in the arena. Had she been more enthusiastic about their escape from the situation, she might have liked their chances; as it was, she thought her brother a noble fool.

“Now would be the time to make your threats with those pretty words of yours or let us be on our way,” Gotwin said to the hooded man without looking back. His voice was a rock, utterly immovable.

Morgana could only watch the hooded man and ready a riposte. With blades at their backs, disagreements—no matter how dire—always became secondary. Under her unforgiving gaze, the hooded man merely raised a hand to rub his jaw, lips pulled taut, and heaved a sigh.

“I cannot say I am without disappointment,” he said in that pale, milky voice of his, only thick with dishonesty, “but I have no threats to make. You are, of course, free to go.”

The thugs lowered their blades with the efficiency of automatons, and Gotwin reached a hand out to take Morgana’s wrist and guide her along with him so that she did not have to turn and show her back to the hooded man and his swordsmen until they were well out of reach. They picked up the pace and walked side by side, then, but they did not stop, and the breath did not seem to return to Morgana’s lungs until they were outside the city walls.

With that breath, she spat, “What in the seven hells is the matter with you?”

“With me?” Gotwin thundered back, his voice high on the wind. “Have you gone completely mad? Have we so wholly lost ourselves that we must play butchers for some rich shite’s convenience?”

“We are sellswords, Gotwin, I’ll remind you.”

“I have not forgotten. Not the way you clearly have forgotten that we still adhered to some gods-damned principle. The same rule since we were not even twenty: no job that does not sit right with even one of us.”

“You’ve gone blind with righteousness if you think we can afford to spit on a way to keep Mathias safe and fed for a year,” Morgana snapped.

“He is my son! I will not have him fed with blood. Not like this; not in his name.” Gotwin shook his head, his anger and disgust so bright in his eyes he seemed animated by the Destroyer himself. Still, he took a breath, and stepped closer to Morgana in the sand. He was no softer, but his voice had quieted. “Do you think I don’t see the way you look at Raubahn? How he looks at you?”

Morgana’s blood went cold. “Is that what this is about? Some bloody tryst?”

“It is about everything,” Gotwin said, low. “My concerns do not begin or end with him, but I can’t ignore it, either. You and I, we—”

“I am not weak,” Morgana said. She felt the rumble of her own voice low in her throat, raw with the disappointment of having to remind him, of all people.

“—swore to look after each other, and—” Gotwin’s voice trailed off, shock written into the lines of his face. His shifted a hundred ways in the space of a moment, through years and seasons, before it settled on understanding. “Mora. Caring for someone who isn’t your blood isn’t weakness.”

Morgana could only speak the way she lifted her shield to block the force of a blow. “It is a waste,” she said stiffly. “And we are fools if we let anyone get in the way of doing what is best for our family.”

“What is best for our family,” Gotwin began, breathing through his nose between the words as his anger took on an exasperated shape, the tension unyielding, “is that my son does not carry a legacy of cowardice and cruelty. I will endure every indignity the Coliseum holds for us, but I will not sully the name I’ve given him by stabbing a brother in the back for coin.”

He made to turn away, thinking he finally had the last word, but Morgana had never been content to let him have it.

“They only need one of us to agree. I don’t need your help to slay a bull,” she said coldly.

Gotwin turned towards her, his eyes no longer a fury. All Morgana could see as he stepped close to her was disappointment and disdain; both cut deeper than a rage she could meet. His anger, she knew: for nearly a quarter of a century, through the days of peace and storms, she had coaxed it out of him, quelled it, matched and outmatched it. But this—seeing him look at her as though she were lesser by her own design, no longer his equal—she knew not how to endure.

“Mark me, sister—” he never called her sister; Mora, Mo, bo-turd, but never sister, “if you go through with this, you will lose this family. May these cursed fucking sands be my witness.”

Gotwin ground his foot in the sand, making a trace in the ever-shifting soil of Thanalan; it would fade away, covered by the wind and dust in due time, but the scraping sound of it seemed to have been made to last in Morgana’s ear. She could almost taste the salty air of the Lochs on her tongue, fresh against the way the desert winds burned in her nose. Her brother said nothing else; he simply walked away, back towards the city gates, his shoulders taut and his fists still clenched. Morgana’s own fists were curled tight, so badly that even her short nails dug half-moons into the flesh of her palms.

She stood shaking in the desert for a long while—as though her body knew that, within a matter of days, she would be kneeling in these very sands again, cradling Gotwin’s corpse in her arms as the jagged slash in his throat wept crimson.

“I’m glad he’s alive,” Gotwin had said the morning after their bout, smiling with relief even as he rolled his bruised shoulder gingerly. “Even if he thrashed us.”

“He shouldn’t have been able to,” Morgana had said. It was easy, how things always mended between them, as though it were Havisa’s magic knitting them back together like broken skin. It had always been so. After everything, Morgana had moved on to sullenness. “Two of us and one of him. And I know all his tells.”

“Like he knows all of yours?” Havisa had teased.

They hadn’t spoken of the hooded man’s offer; not the three of them together. Surely Gotwin had kept no part of it from his wife as he always did, but Havisa hadn’t let it change her demeanour. She had met Morgana with grace even in the aftermath, and sometimes that grace involved beaming as her sister-in-law snapped a bloodstained rag in her general vicinity.

“I don’t tumble like I fight,” Morgana had said, inaccurately.

“Regardless. You were fractured, you two. Could see that well enough. Any wall breaks easier when it is already cracked.”

Morgana had sighed. “How is it that someone as thick as you married someone as wise as her?” she’d asked Gotwin, and Havisa had blown her a kiss.

Now, Havisa’s hand was clutched in hers so tightly that the metal of her wedding band dug into Morgana’s very bones, and the absence of her smile left her face empty and ashen with loss. They moved as specters through the empty hallways of the barracks, without shape and without colour, death clinging to them and to their silent footsteps.

It was like fleeing Ala Mhigo without the burning, without the screaming, without the violence; all of it was contained to the arena, where the ringing of blades was buried under the weight of hundreds of empty cheers. Hundreds of discordant voices calling for fabricated chaos.

Morgana had not understood quickly enough that it was the fabrication that was the deadliest—deadly, and unfeeling, and greedy enough to claim the life of a man who had survived too much to die like a beast. Everything was too empty without Gotwin, too stark. She walked with a hand on the hilt of her dagger because every part of her rejected that void, knew that something would fill it—and if it wasn’t Gotwin, it would be something to cut down in his stead. To protect his family.

The quickest way was far from the arena, through the hallways at the edges that lay open at the sides to let the air in. Familiar paths twisted so in this new realm for her to inhabit that they had become unrecognizable, their shadows spreading further, the low moon shining pale as a sickness on the stone floor. Morgana should have known to see the training grounds with the eyes that had guided her to them so many times, should have known that this place would not be empty—that they were as haunted as Morgana felt.

The Bull of Ala Mhigo was meant to be nursing the trifling wounds he’d suffered against the Griffin’s Talons, but that did not mean there was no fight in him. He was alive, and so it burned within him, a flame that could dim but never fade. Alive. The very sight of him leaving the training grounds made Morgana’s blood boil, when she realized that it was Raubahn and not some shade of an assassin; by then, she already had him pinned to a pillar, her forearm like a metal bar across his shoulders as the point of her knife touched his throat.

Her blood boiled, but she barely felt it. She was cold all over.

“Morgana,” Raubahn said gently. Even in the dark, he saw the smear of blood on her cheek—she’d pressed her forehead to Gotwin’s, touched his throat, stained her fingers with his blood—and Havisa’s haggard visage, Mathias asleep in his mother’s arms with his cheek pressed against her shoulder. “What’s happened?”

Morgana wanted to growl and bite and scream her throat raw, but it was Havisa who spoke. “They killed him. They killed Gotwin,” she said, not meeting Raubahn’s gaze.

His shock shifted quickly into a frown, deep with anger. “Who?”

“The ones who want you dead,” Morgana said through gritted teeth, pressing harder against his shoulders. Twelve, she wanted to draw blood. “He denied them. You denied them. And now they’ve slit his throat to make him pay for it.”

“Morgana, I—”

“Do not say my name. Don’t say a fucking word.”

“Don’t go,” Raubahn said, fierce even when he was quiet. “Don’t leave it like this. We’ll fight—we’ll fight them together, and they will answer for Gotwin’s life with blood—”

Morgana’s anger echoed on the stone. “If I stay, one of us dies!” Her fingers curled in the fabric of Raubahn’s tunic, clenching tight. She looked into his eyes and spoke: low, this time, and cold. “I would have done it without a second thought. I would kill you a hundred times if it meant my family could be whole.”

She almost jumped when Havisa’s hand touched her arm, gently pulling her back. “Mora, please,” she said quietly. Morgana didn’t know whether it was urgency or kindness for their countryman; when Havisa looked at Raubahn, her expression was unchanged. “She took his remains to a man named Osferth in Little Ala Mhigo, for safeguarding. If you would—”

“I’ll see to it that his last rites are taken care of with dignity; I swear it,” Raubahn said gravely. His gaze shifted from Havisa to Morgana, always drawn to her even in anger and grief. “Where will you go?”

“Where we’ll be safe,” Morgana said. The gods still had many a lesson for her—the next that nowhere was safe, and especially not the Shroud. Not for them.

She reserved no more farewells for Raubahn, her only goodbye the lowering of her blade. Still, he reached for her, and the point of her dagger was at his ribs.

“Watch your back, Aldynn. Stop making yourself weak. They won’t stop until they have a dead bull and my brother will have died for nothing.”

A great many deaths were for nothing. There would be no meaning in Havisa’s, either, and in what Morgana would believe was Mathias’.

The only meaning was for the living to find, and Morgana and Raubahn lived.

“One of your men addressed me as ‘Captain,’” said Morgana, forgoing the effort of a prior greeting.

Raubahn paused with his hand still in the bowl of water on the table before him, droplets of water falling silently from his chin. He looked at Morgana, straightened, and shook his hand out.

“I was told you’re a unit captain,” he pointed out.

“Aye, I was. But there’s no unit left. I was standing at their last rites—half of them without a corpse to recover—when it happened,” she said, then pushed out a bitter sigh as she realized that she sounded like she’d only come to complain. “I didn’t know the Immortal Flames of Ul’dah,” (and here Raubahn could only shake his head at her mockingly lofty tone, strangely fond), “recognized the ranks of the Ala Mhigan Resistance.”

“The Ala Mhigan Brigade does,” Raubahn said.

That gave Morgana pause. “Oh.”

Even after twenty years, Raubahn looked at Morgana as though it were still habit giving him the expectant look on his face, as though he knew something else was coming. “So?” he asked after a moment. “Shall I tell my men not to show respect for your position?”

Morgana sighed again. “No,” she said, and moved closer—Twelve, she hated the sound of footsteps in the castrum; metal, always so cold, so high, the same way it had resonated when they were dozens running through Baelsar’s Wall—to splash her own face with water, dragging a hand down over her eyes and mouth. “I wanted to thank you. For letting us honour our dead our way.”

“I insisted.”

The ripples in the water distorted her reflection, but Morgana was still startled to realize, as she looked down, that she looked like half a corpse herself. She set both hands down on the table and bowed her head.

“I really thought the Alliance had come to put those of us the imperials or Ilberd didn’t finish off in chains,” she said, wiping the water from her nose as she looked back at Raubahn. Suddenly, standing still and empty-handed seemed like an imprisonment in itself. “Still find myself thinking maybe you ought to.”

This time, Raubahn’s silence wasn’t one of waiting for her to speak; neither was he meeting her hard edges with a smile. His usual gravity was tempered in something else, something that seemed to make his frown pull at the scars on his face; when he spoke, she realized it was the harshness of his own ghosts.

“Would it make you stomach any of it better if you were in chains?” he asked. “The guilt? The betrayal? The pain of knowing you’ve failed those you love?”

Morgana wanted to say yes, but the words wouldn’t come.

“It does not,” Raubahn said. “It makes the shame no less heavy to bear.”

His face was a silent storm, dark with a memory that was still too familiar, too fresh. In the quiet that fell from his words, Morgana’s eyes drifted down: down to his neck, to scars she didn’t know, so strikingly similar to her own; to his left shoulder, uncovered by the black cape which now lay draped over the back of a nearby chair. His gaze followed hers, but he said nothing.

“Ilberd was a bloody fool,” Morgana said stiffly. “Rip off a bull’s horn, and he may well gore you with the other.”

Raubahn managed a small smirk and an exhale, scraping the palm of his hand against the stubble at his jaw. “Would you believe me if I told you I’d come to hope I would not have to face him in battle again?”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Morgana said. She moved closer to him and raised a hand—not to what remained of his left arm, but to his throat, fingers barely touching the old scars that, to her, were new. “Neither would I understand it.”

“Had it come to it, one of us would have died.” He held her stare, looking for familiarity, for understanding. “I did not wish to be the one to end his life.”

“You got your wish.”

“Some wish,” Raubahn said with a bittersweet smile, laying his hand over hers at his throat. When her gaze dropped, he bowed his head and touched his brow to hers.

They stood this way for long minutes, perhaps, or a mere few heartbeats. Morgana knew only that she was breathing, even though her lungs still seemed to fill with nothing true; that he touched her skin even when it seemed only like wind. She tilted up her chin and kissed him, and he wound his arm around her waist—and she felt not even half-whole, but at least she felt something that was not a bone-deep ache.

When they lay together—in those rare moments of peace that could be afforded in the routine chaos of Castrum Oriens—Morgana kept to Raubahn’s right side. She let him trail absentminded fingers up and down her spine, along scars both old and new; he had a favourite, she noticed, one that he always stroked even more slowly and delicately.

“I remember this one,” he said as Morgana lay on her front with her arms curled under the thin pillow of his cot. As general of the Immortal Flames, he had some privacy and comforts, but she still found it a minor miracle that they both could fit without being stacked on top of each other.

“You do?”

He spoke of the past because he understood that it stung less than the present. She still ached, bitterly so, but the old loss that she’d survived was more bearable than the sheer emptiness of looking upon Baelsar’s Wall and wondering how her only son’s blood had fed the primal born within those hard planes of steel.

“On the bloodsands. I was watching before my own bout; you miscalculated the reach of a woman half your size and took the tip of her spear, right there. Barely flinched.”

Morgana searched those distant memories, every night under the lights hazy but for a few. She could still remember the dark wormways under the arena, dark but for the drab afternoon light seeping in, the way they had looked on the day her brother had sealed his own fate.

“It was Gotwin,” she said after a moment, her voice strangely disconnected from the memory as it slowly returned to her. “He misjudged her reach and didn’t block when I expected him to. His wife gave him an earful about it while she was stitching me up.” She tilted her chin up on the pillow to look at Raubahn, frowning. “That was twenty years ago.”

That they should be able to even say those words was a blessing in itself. Twenty years of surviving every struggle, every indignity, every horror the fates thought to toss their way; there was beauty in that, in the new and myriad scars marring Raubahn’s hardened face. In him, she could see it, but in herself, it only felt hateful. Knowing that he remembered her in a time before the years had chipped most of her away embedded a deep sense of unease into her bones.

“Memory acts strangely,” Raubahn said, tracing his fingers down her spine. “I can scarcely remember my own mother’s face, but I still see you through the gate that night with the utmost clarity. I lost my bout right after.”

Morgana snorted weakly. “Because of me? Having a woman made you soft.”

“I was nursing an injury, if I’m not mistaken,” Raubahn said, mockingly defensive. When she said nothing, he slipped into a moment of thoughtful silence, then said: “Do you really still believe that attachment was a weakness?”

“Everything can be a weakness as much as strength. It’s in the clarity that it changes," Morgana said numbly. “If my brother had valued his attachment to his family over his precious morals, he might still be alive today, a father to his son and a husband to a living wife.”

Raubahn’s hand stilled on her back. “And I would be long dead,” he said, more of an observation than a judgement. Morgana only shrugged.

“You might have survived us. You survived everything else. I know they would not have stopped wanting you dead just because they’d gotten to slit my brother’s throat.”

The door to Raubahn’s quarters nearly shook from the urgency with which someone pounded its other side. “General,” said a muffled voice. Morgana rolled off the bed and began searching for her shirt—far harder to find than her sword belt among the mess of hers and Raubahn’s clothing and armour. “The Warrior of Light and the Scions have come.”

“Thank you. Tell them I will meet with them right away.”

Morgana raised her eyebrows at him as she waited for the footsteps to have receded to speak. “Making the Warrior of Light wait because you couldn’t keep your trousers on. Really. You’ve gotten sloppy in your advanced age.”

“I don’t wear trousers,” Raubahn said as he swung his legs over the cot and bent to pick up his tunic in one fluid motion.

Morgana was the first gust of wind to sweep out under the bright sky of East End, and Raubahn the second, taking his place at the war table with the other gathered Alliance commanders. The garish sunlight blinded Morgana, and it wasn’t only the result of being confined within the imperials’ cold steel walls; everything was too bright now, almost unbearably so. She already felt like half a corpse, some cursed spirit of resilience that wandered Castrum Oriens because the fates had bound her to it.

A part of her wanted to leave—perhaps she could find meaning in the fight again if she wandered out onto the lands to which her blood was bound. The members of the Resistance who had crossed over from Thanalan after the Griffin’s disaster were already moving back and forth to Rhalgr’s Reach, more familiar by the day; the Flames’ Ala Mhigan Brigade was moving with a vigour that, by Raubahn’s own admission, had never animated them before they had been able to return home. It could be so easy, not to be a ghost, but Morgana woke every night thinking that a blade was lodged between her ribs, as though telling her she had no place left in this life.

She was not the first to have lost; every Ala Mhigan fought because they had. Blood kin, lovers, friends, homes. They all went on living for the dead, but her loss tethered her to this place, to this empty in-between that stood with her old home on one side, occupied and bled dry, and the forest that had given her only child his first breaths, seen his first steps—the in-between where she could only believe he had breathed his last.

Nineteen years without him. Nineteen years without Gotwin, without Havisa, without Mathias. Could she live nineteen more, now that she had had her son within reach only to have him torn away so quickly? She had barely survived losing her family; now, without Sairsel, she thought that perhaps the fates had finally broken her—every piece scattered to Thanalan, to the Black Shroud, to the Fringes.

The worst of it was that she could not blame him the way she had blamed Gotwin; only herself. She had wanted to see Sairsel strong, to know that he could survive the Empire if he was truly so devoted to seeing Ala Mhigo back into the hands of their people. She had traced a bloody road for him in following the Griffin, foolish as she had been to believe in that man, and of course he had walked upon it—not because he was blind, but because she had been.

And now he was gone and there was nothing left of him but for a primal lost somewhere in Gyr Abania, made real by the suffering of hundreds like him.

He’d loved days like these: bright, with the sun golden in the trees and a quiet breeze that made the leaves sing. When Morgana thought it, she did not even ache. She only felt that emptiness, gnawing, filling her with a screaming void she only knew to quiet in those stolen moments with a man who, some twenty years ago, had felt her equal in battle and in loss.

She barely even had it in herself to want blood, the way she had then.

Then she heard his voice.

As quiet as that flutter of leaves, the way the wind whispered through life-filled branches—his laughter, of all things, weary but alive. She thought she was going mad until she ran forward and saw him among a handful of others, stiff under their grateful touches, leaning into the press of Leofric Snakesbane’s brow against his. She saw nothing else but him.

“Sairsel,” she breathed, the word burning on her tongue.

“Mother.”

He spoke so softly she barely heard him, his expression heavy with a hundred emotions that weighed upon her just the same, and reached for her as she did him. When she pulled her son into her arms, Morgana felt a quaking sob climb up her lungs, holding him so tightly she could feel his breath, too, shuddering as he buried his face in the crook of her neck.

“You’re alive,” she barely heard herself saying. It was strange, how long it took for her to realize that she was weeping. “Oh, my boy, you’re—you’re alive.”

Sairsel almost laughed. “Barely,” he said, sniffling.

She pulled away, taking his face between her hands—and she saw not Nimaurel in the dark evergreen of his eyes or the hawklike elegance of his nose, not Gotwin in the set of his jaw or his frowning mouth, but Sairsel. Her son. As she looked into his eyes, she smiled and pressed her forehead to his, stroking his cheeks with her thumbs. He lay a hand over hers, old scars on his palms of which she knew too little hidden away under scraps of fabric and leather.

When she drew him into another sharp embrace, Sairsel flinched.

“Are you all right?”

“Getting better,” Sairsel said, fingers against his chest as he pulled away. He tugged at his scarf, at the laces of his shirt, and showed her a few inches of his bare chest: sun-kissed brown struck through by a thin, ragged line just shades paler than angry red. Morgana’s fingers tightened around the hilt of her sword as though it were an anchor, but Sairsel had only a weary smile for her. “Ilberd’s parting gift to me. I suppose the Griffin we knew had claws of his own, too.”

Morgana put a hand on his shoulder rather than touch the scar, her thumb against the side of his neck; she could almost feel his pulse. “You found out who he was?”

“When you sent me to him. I heard you say his name,” Sairsel said softly. “I was angry; wanted him to pay for my friend. So I fought him—tried to, at least.”

“Oh, you foolish boy,” Morgana whispered, briefly closing her eyes.

“I know. I don’t think I would be alive if not for her.” Sairsel glanced over to the Warrior of Light, her tall, glorious frame gleaming in her armour. The title suited her perfectly. “She carried me out, did what she could to heal me. I think some of the Scions helped, but I wasn’t—I don’t remember everything.

“You were with the Scions?” Morgana asked, eyebrows high. “All this time?”

“At first. Ahtynwyb took me back to the Sandsea.”

To little Ashelia Riot, the girl who played mother to her son. In another life, she could have been her daughter—resilient and willful and brave. Kinder than Morgana herself was; kinder than Little Ala Mhigo, than her own mother, and her father’s absence could have made her. With that kindness, she cared for those who meant something to her. For Sairsel.

Morgana had to speak as though around glass. “She kept you safe?”

“Aye,” Sairsel said, nodding. “Safe so that I could come here and fight. If they’ll still have me.”

Nothing needed to be said; Morgana did not need to tell him that the fight would always have someone like him. More blood, more swords, more bodies. She could still believe in it—could believe in it again—so she put a hand up between his shoulders and guided him forward, past Liberty Gate. They stepped onto proper Gyr Abanian soil together.

#from the heart #c:sairsel #c:morgana #f:xiv

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wynja2007 · 5 years

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Gondolin, the Hidden

Chapter One: Birth

The birth of any City requires the blood of three individuals; a woman in childbirth, a warrior, an old person. This is the real reason there were few elven cities; elves were created immortal, and although childbirth and battle hold similar risks for elves as for humankind, old age is not something they know, just the weariness of ages.

Beautiful Tirion of the musical voice, he was born from the wisdom and sacrifice of one of the Maia, who foresaw the need for Cities, who had heard them sung softly in the Song of Creation, but it had been a brief threnody, growing stronger only when the theme of the rise of Men joined the melody. This one had thought it worth his life to take age upon himself and sit in the tallest tower of the city until the weight of his borrowed years crumbled him to dust that blew away through the open windows to be carried in the high winds across the land. Some settled like a blessing on the streets of Tirion, sparkling and glinting gold in the corners, for this was where his heart had ever dwelt.

(But some of his life force carried across the continent to fall elsewhere, to prepare the ground for further sacrifices).

The mother of Fëanor, Míriel Serindë, died shortly after he was born, but the deliberate sacrifice of all her strength to pour it into her fine, bright, doomed son began sooner, so that it was childbirth, his birth that began the process which took her life, and her essence of death was caught by the Maian sacrifice and mingled in the earth, waiting for the birth of the City. A son of Tirion, new to weapons and armour, died at Alqualondë, defending his friends amongst the shipbuilders, weeping as he saw friend turned against friend, brother against brother, and prayed for an end to kinslaying. (The same events saw the birth of Alqualondë from the ashes and flotsam of its broken fleet just a few days later, while Valmar, first of cities in Valinor, was last to gain her personification in the darkness following the silencing of the lamps.)

The Maia’s sacrifice, then, gave three cities the chance to grow and thrive. But this story concerns Gondolin, firstborn city of Middle Earth.

He was nearly born from the ice.

So many deaths, so much emotion, such need, calling out to anyone who might help, the sense of knowing the help sought would not come. The despair, the need, the need.

He stirred in Vinyamar, turning and stretching and testing out the bounds of the dark womb around him, but something held him back, some power outside himself, something with pity in its heart and awareness of his nascent agitation.

Finally, though, it was on the plain of Tumladen when the land shook, and shook, and shook that finally he broke free of the earth and stretched and stood tall, bewildered and exhausted from his difficult gestation and long-deferred birth.

Around him was a wide spread of the greenest grass, crossed with rivulets and streams. Above, the sky was unbearably blue and the sun was warm on his naked back. Around his feet, bursts of colour; Larkspur in bloom.

He felt a tug, a yearning in his heart, and started to turn, seeking the source, allowing his gaze to roam the landscape. There!

In the middle of the plain, walls of sheer stone rose up, forbidding and stern, beckoning, crowned with the towers and turrets and fine-made walls of Gondolin itself. Young as he was, new as he was, he could taste the people, their hopes and fears, their loves and their rivalries, the sense of relief, the sense of dread, and he saw himself reaching out to nurture them…

He smiled and set off towards the cliffs.

‘My lord? Can you come? There is something happening.’

Ecthelion, Lord of the House of the Singing Fountains and Captain of the Great Gate nodded and picked up his helm. He followed the sentry from his office – in reality a desk outside the armoury – through the passageways to the lookout point. His companions jokingly referred to it as ‘The Eyrie’, but such an appellation always made Ecthelion shiver; his friend Glorfindel spoke often of how he thought they were not so much blessed by visits from the eagles, birds of Manwë, as spied upon by them…

He repressed a shudder. They were all on edge, the secret city barely finished, the people still so recently arrived that sometimes they missed their way, still, nothing was familiar yet, nothing felt safe and so anything out of the ordinary was a cause for concern. The earthquake, in the night; had it been a warning? A sign that Morgoth was moving in the depths of the earth far away, sending his evil through the ground to shake them, to seek them out…?

There had been deaths that some said boded ill; a warrior, injured on the way and grimly hanging on to life, his wounds healing and breaking, had finally succumbed to injury and breathed his last on the plain. Then an elleth nobody had known was here had fallen, somehow, from the walls, and the saddest thing, the saddest thing, was that she had been about to give birth, but it was too late; the child had quickened, and died before any help could come. Ecthelion made a mental note to try to find a faster way down to the plain than the current system of tunnels and stairs and slopes with defensive corners and reminded himself he was not a superstitious elf, he knew a sign from the Valar would not come as an earthquake or an unexpected death, but as a formal, direct approach, a message or a visitation. After all, there had been another death, that of one of the oldest, earliest-born elves, who had travelled to Valinor and back again, and who had become world-weary and had said surely, this was what it felt to be old, and had faded, just two days ago. No. Not all deaths were bad, sad though they were for elves.

Ecthelion pulled his long, black hair back out of the way with one hand and passed under the archway that led to the lookout post before sliding his helm into place with the other; it was a fine piece of workmanship, decorative and elegant, and part of the uniform, but it was also topped with a high silver spike that sometimes got in the way and to constantly scrape it against the stonework was embarrassing.

At the lookout, the sentry saluted smartly, hand on heart, and stood aside. Ecthelion passed through to find the narrow ledge crammed with his warriors, all with bows drawn, arrows nocked and trained on a figure that seemed to be erupting from the greensward.

Ecthelion caught his breath; they were all jittery, fearing discovery, exposure. The king’s standing orders were to shoot first and question later; but there was something about the way this individual moved, the way Ecthelion’s heart had lifted…

‘Sir?’ The voice of the captain of the archers was tremulous, tight. ‘Orders, sir?’

Ecthelion stared at the figure. Tall, strong, gleaming in the sunlight with golden hair that shimmered and fell in waves to his waist, naked and obviously unarmed, he had begun to move slowly towards the cliffs below the lookout post. Slowly, but not cautiously; it was more that the individual was unused to walking, his feet sliding through the grass as if the landscape was flowing around him, carrying him forward.

As if he was part of the land…

Something, an unconscious connection in Ecthelion’s mind…

‘Send for Lord Glorfindel.’

‘Sir?’

The captain was right to question him; it was against standing orders, the stranger, by rights, should be lying dead and bleeding on the plain by now. But…

‘Keep your weapons on him, but do not fire yet. I think this is not an enemy.’

The message: ‘The Captain of the Great Gate demands your attendance, my lord,’ found Glorfindel, Lord of the House of the Golden Flower, in the midst of debating with his sisters on the merits of yellow over blue as a colour for the Festival of Spring, so that it was with some relief that he headed out. He paused to collect his sword and helm, slung his bright red cloak across his shoulders, and was on his way to the Great Gate before his sisters even had time to complain.

He had time on the way to consider the summons from his friend, his more-than-friend Ecthelion; the formality, the use of his military title rather than his name or even his House title made it clear that this was not a social invitation. Ah, well. Thel’s duty tour was over soon, and there’d be time then to meet and dine and talk and all that could follow after…

He did not blink as he went from bright sunlight to dark, torch-lit passages as he entered the tunnels leading to the Gate, his eyes adjusting easily, but he did slow his pace as he considered the wording of the summons again. Not a social invitation, fine. But… it was odd. There was no strategic reason that Glorfindel should be needed here; if it was something serious, then Turgon, the king, should be informed. So why call him…?

Well. He’d soon find out.

‘Lord Glorfindel, there you are. Take a look and tell me what you make of this, would you?’

No friendly greeting, no ‘Hullo, Findel, old friend,’ no wink, no touch of hand on arm… but even as he assessed this, Findel was making his way to Ecthelion’s side. Together, they looked out.

Glorfindel spoke first.

‘Company?’

The stranger was closer now, so much nearer to the wall that the angle at which the archers had to hold their bows had steepened. One or two of the guards were glancing anxiously at their captain as they strained to keep the target clearly in sight.

‘Apparently so,’ Ecthelion said in an almost-laconic tone. ‘Remind you of anyone? Anything?’

‘The hair, could be mine…’

‘Don’t flatter yourself!’ A whisper, a flash of a grin that made Findel stifle a laugh as Ecthelion continued. ‘He broke free from the greensward and has been making his way towards us steadily ever since.’

The stranger was near enough now to make out features, details. His ears had the pointed tips that all elves had; his eyes seemed to shine and glow and there was something to him that reminded Findel of a long-ago, long-missed lord…

‘Tirion. He reminds me of Tirion the Fair.’ Findel gave a half-sigh, half-laugh. ‘I had thought him a Maia at first, until they explained to me that he was the City, its heart and fëa, walking amongst us.’

Ecthelion nodded. ‘I never met any of the Valinor Cities, but I remembered your descriptions of Tirion the Fair. What do you think?’

‘I think…’ Glorfindel paused, thinking. Every city had its City in Valinor, of course, the embodiment of the settlement, its soul, its streets, its people’s fëar all wrapped up and walking about through its own byways and highways. ‘If he is, then your arrows won’t kill him. But if he’s… what? Newly hatched, newborn? He could be angry, and although he may be vulnerable, he will still be dangerous. And besides, do you think it’s polite to make our first action on meeting him to shoot at him? Turgon’s standing orders be blowed, I think we need to talk to this fellow first, at least. Maybe offer him a pair of leggings before we all go cross-eyes from trying not to look…’

Behind Findel, one of the watch suppressed an anxious laugh; others took it up and a glance around showed several of the archers grinning; the tension was broken, at least.

‘Very well. Send to Stores, spare tunic and leggings…’

‘Extra-long,’ Findel said. ‘And probably extra-large, too.’

They argued in official, formal tones about who should take the garments.

‘This is my watch, my lord Glorfindel,’ Ecthelion pointed out. ‘It is my duty, and my responsibility, to investigate.’

‘Yet we all know that if you do so, you will be countermanding your orders, Lord Captain of the Great Gate. This is not my watch-post, and therefore while you may protest my actions, your life would not be forfeit for such disobedience. Nor would mine, since I am simply investigating, and the archers are watching with you in command of them.’

‘Yet the paths and tunnels running to the plain are many and finding the quickest way will be difficult for you; I have the knowledge to reach this… individual more swiftly.’

Suddenly Findel relaxed, grinning.

‘Oh, I know a faster way than the tunnels,’ he said, and vaulted over the parapet wall, the bundled garments tucked under one arm.

Gasps from the guard. Ecthelion shook his head, striding forward to look.

‘The Lord of the Golden Flower has not jumped to his doom, never fear,’ he admonished them. ‘Make way, there!’

Glorfindel was seated on a narrow ledge just below the wall, booted feet dangling over the void as if he cared not a jot for the danger. He glanced up and back at Ecthelion, grinning.

‘If this is our City,’ he said, ‘I’ve nothing to fear. Watch him carefully… Ai, but he looks so young! See how blue his eyes are? Bluer than mine, even!’

‘Never!' Echtelion leaned forward to whisper in Findel’s ear. 'Never was there anyone, nor will be anyone, with eyes as blue as yours, my lord of the Golden Flower!’

Glorfindel grinned, but continued. ‘…And freckles, whoever heard of an elf with freckles…?’

Lifting a hand, he waved to the probable-City.

‘Greetings, down there!’ he called out. ‘I wish to parley, may I join you?’

Things were happening; people were clustering, there were… things… sharp, pointy things… arrows, directed towards him. He felt the intention, the wariness, sensed the leader’s hesitation, his unwillingness to take life without need. Compassion. It was good, good that one of the first emotions he felt from his people was compassion; somehow, he felt it would form him into a compassionate city…

…but there was fear, and weariness of fear, and he could also sense that these, his people, had been afraid for a long time.

He continued on his slow progress towards the cliffs.

A new arrival, a golden, shining figure, and he felt his heart swell and reach out; this one, whoever he might be, he was precious, he was beloved, he was dear to someone… he mattered…

The golden person jumped over the wall and sat, apparently unconcerned about the drop beneath; he could feel that, sense it even as he was aware of curiosity and intelligence, warmth and friendliness. A lifted hand, a wave, a call…

He waved back, looked at the rocks of the cliff and thought of how a person might get from a ledge to the ground in safety. The rocks shifted, slurred, melted and reformed into a stepped pathway down which the friendly golden creature could descend.

A murmur from the watchers above, but the golden one was descending, unfazed by the sudden stairway’s appearance.

The new-born City waited, a stirring of impatience troubling him. But above, there were still pointed things aimed towards him; although he felt strong enough to withstand such minor things as they seemed, and the intent behind them was not malicious, it seemed right to wait here until he knew more.

So much was still unknown, just guesses at the edge of knowledge.

Finally the figure reached the lower steps, jumped down the last two.

‘Hullo! I’m Glorfindel,’ he said, smiling, and there was no doubting the warmth behind the words, the… wonderful, happy feeling… ‘Here; some clothes for you. It’s a bright day, but still a little cool and we didn’t know if you’d be like an elf, or impervious, or what. So. Welcome to Gondolin… you are our City, I take it?’

‘Gondolin. I am Gondolin.’ The new City took the garments, shook them, tried to work them out. ‘This is Gondolin?’

‘This is Tumladen the plain surrounding the city. Look, here, this… you step in, one leg in each side. Sit down, might be easier.’

Gondolin frowned, concentrating, finding out the ways of the clothes. The leg coverings tied in front, and the tunic tied at the neck, and the fabric felt strange against his skin, confining.

‘I am Gondolin. Where are my spires, my towers, my fountains? Ah, I can feel them I can… there are markets and wide squares, armouries and fine houses… it is beautiful!’

‘Well, we like it,’ the golden one said.

Gondolin turned to him, taking him in.

‘Glorfindel. Golden hair, you are beautiful. Bright blue eyes and elegant ears. Strong but not heavy with muscle. You are a fine person.’

Glorfindel laughed.

‘Well, you’re not so bad yourself, you know. Better hair than me, bluer eyes, although Ecthelion says otherwise.’

‘Ecthelion?’

The City repeated the name, taking into himself all that he could sense of the bright warrior in Glorfindel’s heart. It was like to his own emotional response to Glorfindel, and he wondered if he would feel for all his citizens as he did now, if it were a normal, usual thing.

‘Yes, Ecthelion, Lord of the Great Gate, amongst other things. You know, you could have got into awful trouble, emerging like that, if it hadn’t been him on duty today; I’ve talked to him of my City, Tirion – my first City, that is. You’re my City now. But what I mean is, there are orders… to protect the city, that’s all, but that all strangers should be… forbidden entry and… not allowed to leave.’

‘This is a riddle. How can one not leave and yet not be admitted?’

Glorfindel shrugged. ‘Orders are for the guards to shoot first and ask questions afterwards…’

‘Another riddle, Glorfindel. For how…?’ Gondolin felt the hard meaning of the phrase, the sense of regret from the glowing, beautiful elf before him, and understood. ‘They would not harm me. No ordinary weapon could harm me.’

‘Well, no. Probably not. But you’re… new. I understand that newborn Cities are more fragile than those who are established. Anyway, that doesn’t matter, what matters is that Thel – Ecthelion, knew of Tirion through me, and wondered it perhaps you were our Gondolin.’ Glorfindel smiled, but his eyes were anxious. ‘Do you mind waiting here while I tell him it’s all right? Then he’ll send for Turgon, probably, our king, and… oh, you’re probably hungry and thirsty. You wait here, and I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

‘I…’ Gondolin frowned, puzzled at how suddenly he did not want Glorfindel to leave, at how much he wanted to stay at his side. Realisation dawned. ‘I love you, beautiful Glorfindel.’

Glorfindel smiled and twisted his shoulders, as if he felt awkward.

‘I love you, too. Or I will; you’re my City. And you’ll love all of us; we’re your people. So that’s all right, then. Only it might take a little time, with some of them. It’s been a long and hard road to get here.’

‘So…?’ Ecthelion asked as Glorfindel vaulted over the wall and onto the watch platform.

‘If this were my command, I’d stand them down. We have ourselves a City.’ He grinned suddenly, shaking his head as he saw the blank expressions on many of the guard. ‘What that means, essentially, is that Gondolin – or Gondolin, our new city – is important enough, vital enough, that it’s become personified; that individual down there, on the Tumladen – he is our City. He will walk with us, talk with us, share our fears and hopes, support our king. He will feel our pain, and he will strengthen our walls, he will care for us and we will care for him, and we will be the stronger for that. Now, someone should take meat and drink to our City, he will be hungry and he’ll want to meet you all as soon as possible. And if I may make a suggestion, we should send to Lord Turgon and give him the joyful news.’

‘And it is a matter of joy because…?’

Glorfindel clapped Ecthelion briefly on the shoulder, his eyes shining.’

‘Because, my dear Captain of the Great Gate, Cities don’t just happen at random; this means that Gondolin is here to stay!’

Notes:

With grateful thanks and acknowledgement to thecitysmith for permission to take their wonderful idea from 'Paris Burning' and re-imagine it for Tolkien's Legendarium. As well as the stories here on AO3, many wonderful tales for this inventive and fascinating new concept can be found on tumblr.

This story is in no way connected to, or dependent on, the amazing 'Hands of stone or hands of tallow' by consumptive_sphinx and our concepts of the City are a little different. But read it, read it anyway.

#thecitysmith

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writejiminie · 7 years

Text

Onsra ─ 3

Ⅰ Ⅱ Ⅲ Ⅳ Ⅴ Epilogue

Pairing: Jungkook x pregnant!reader x Jimin Genre: angst ✘ WARNINGS: Infidelity, mention of alcohol, slight violence, a hint of cursing Word count: 2.4k

Summary: You reach out for the only other person you can trust, your ex, who knew you better than anyone. However, someone wishes to come back for what is theirs.

“So…is it mine?” Jimin drew in a long breath once you nodded, confirming that it was.

Not long after Jungkook had stepped out, you yanked out your phone and asked Jimin out to dinner. And here you both were, dining on salads at the Bistro where you had first met Jungkook.

“That’s strange…” He mutters, “We used protection, no?”

You exhale, that’s right, but you and Jungkook did not. The ominous sound of plastic from that night cracks in your mind well. “Well, condoms aren’t exactly 100%…there’s always that 2% chance that you could still get pregnant,” You gesture lazily to disguise the nerves itching at your excuses, hands wrapped around a glass of red.

“Hmm, if that’s the case…you shouldn’t be drinking this!” Jimin scolds you teasingly, reaching over and removing the wine from your clutches, replacing it with a cup of water, “I’ll need to make sure you’re careful, especially since you, no, we have a child to care for now.“

In that brief moment, warmth blooms over your heart and already, Jimin was taking you both home. Your breaths turning even at the comfort provided within the security of his car.

“I’ll be a father,” he steadily reminds himself, you notice his hand has crawled over to hold yours above the lever before he pulls it forward into drive, “for our child,” He jerks his head to the side, meeting your eyes and he smiles, that oh-so-beautiful smile, at you softly. You grin back in return, but you cannot ignore the way your heart still hurts.

You cry out, wrapping your arms over your enlarged belly in pain as Jimin rushes over from the bedroom to you, who was struggling to stand from the couch.

“Woah! Careful now…” He takes both of your hands and slowly brings you up, leaning you onto him, “I thought I told you to call me if you needed anything!”

You observe the distraught expression on his face, scrunched and concerned and thank him as he assists you, “…thank you Jimin, I just needed to stretch my legs out for a bit,” Lightly, you tap your feet against the floor and he cautiously walks you to the bathroom. Your arms tightly wrapped against your fussy baby, moving and pushing inside your sensitive womb.

Jimin had settled back into the house not long after that night, progressively moving in his things and preparing to build a new life together with you, restart. As uneasy as it made you, you were more than happy to sleep in bed with a person, no longer lonely during the night in the wide availability of space as he would wrap his arms around your stomach in means to protect it from the shadows.

The weeks have been good and you and Jimin were something again. However, it was until one night as you were prepping the bed, that you noticed you missed a few calls and took the familiar text notifications into your hands.

???: Y/N

An unknown number, but you could already recognize the first few numbers. Jungkook?

???: It’s all done, the paperwork and the forms. I’m all yours!

Jungkook, no. Your heart drops, he couldn’t have.

“Something wrong Y/N?” Jimin checks up on you from the bathroom, a toothbrush hanging at the side of his mouth.

You shake your head, immediately tapping at the call button and pressing it tightly to your ear and he nods understandingly, hurrying back behind the door. Then, you rush out of the bedroom and out the front door, standing at your porch as you bring your fingers up to your mouth, nibbling nervously at your nails.

“Hello? Y/N?” Just when you thought you wouldn’t hear that melodic voice again, rough, but somehow comforting. A sound that made you feel safe.

“Jungkook, what have you done this time?” You’re desperately holding back on grinding your teeth, knuckles paling as your hand tightens around the device. The sky was dark, but the light-bulbs hanging over and brightening your porch blinded you from the stars.

“Ah I’m ready Y/N…I’m sorry you had to wait so long, but uh, I am divorced now!” Your mouth goes dry, how could he sound so cheerful over something so devastating and meant to be heartbreaking? The baby begins to stir again, making your insides feel bloated and twisted. He seems to be sighing, relieved on the other line, “I can build this family with you, Y/N. Let’s become one, for our child.”

“J-Jungkook, we can’t ensure yet that it really is ours-

“-Don’t be silly, the evidence is all there..it’s our fault we didn’t use protection, but that didn’t stop a miracle,” His excited tone frightens you out of your skin, this wasn’t right. He shouldn’t have done that to her, but he interrupts you when you try speaking against it.

Meanwhile, after Jimin had finished cleaning up, he glanced over to his brightened screen and answered the call.

“Jimin! I’m so worried, when will you come back? How exactly long do you plan to stay with her?” The female’s voice is cracking and Jimin can tell she is resisting to sob out loudly, on the edge of sanity. They both knew that it wasn’t supposed to end up this way.

“No, you know I won’t ever leave you. You know I love you jagiya, I’m so sorry…But, I’m sure you also know that now isn’t a good time for me to leave her alone either,” Jimin closes his eyes, fingers prodding at his nose bridge stressfully, “Just a few more…months, okay? I just need to be with her for a little longer…She’s carrying my own child, you must understand. Wait for me, jagi. Let me fix my mistake…”

“It’s been 6 months, Jimin!”

A pained flash glimmers in his eyes, he knows. He’s kept track of the calendar. He looks around cautiously as the female voice continues to weep, careful and prepared to hang up the moment you walked in, foot first.

“How could your heart still cry out for him? He was the one who left you first, the one who did all that sh!t to you!” He exasperates, “He’s a cheater for crying out loud Y/N, I will never forgive him for doing any of that to you…For all we know, he could be cheating on another partner with you right now and you wouldn’t know. And yet you choose that kind of guy over the baby’s real father?”

It was no use trying to deny, the evidence was all there with you and Jungkook. It was a mistake on you both whose hearts were meant to be with another or at least, without each other. But, for a reason you didn’t know, you still made excuses.

“Jungkook,” You interrupt, your head is starting to hurt and your mind spins, “We don’t know yet and you’re right, Jimin is a cheater…But, he’s the only one that I can count on for caring for this baby right now. For its sake, I have to trust him. But, you should not have gone through with that divorce Jungkook, doesn’t this make you just as bad?”

“W-what? But, I did this for us…Y/N..” Jungkook is scoffing out in disbelief, edges of hurt can be heard, “I didn’t do this recklessly, you understand don’t you?”

The front door creaks open and you hang up immediately, it was Jimin.

“What’re you doing out here? It’s cold outside,” Jimin cocks his head, closing the door and wrapping his arms around your own freezing ones bare in the short sleeves of your t-shirt.

“Ah, just a call from Bora,” You smile up at him and he flinches. That’s right, your best friend. “She wanted to see if I was doing okay wi-” Your face hardens, Jungkook’s name close to slipping past your lips.

But, Jimin fails to notice as he focuses merely on Bora’s name floating in the air between you two. The name of, the one he now loved.

“Ohh is that so?” Jimin laughs, his guilt slowly absorbing the last of what remained of him. “Well, come inside, I’ll make you some soup.”

You smile at him, the wrinkles crinkling at the ends of your eyes to his soft pair as he goes to open the door for you. Jimin would make a great father, you thought.

“Let me fix this, Bora.”

After Jimin hangs up, she drops her phone and her eyes wander in the quiet of her house, their house. Her head is heavy with regret, but her heart aches still with guilt. Many of the things that occurred should’ve never happened, but they did.

The loud music of the party still trembles in her ears, to be specific, it was a friend of their’s wedding. After the ceremony, the rave music and the beverages were out as people were hitting the dance floor of the banquet.

She and Jimin had always been close friends, she was there to witness the first few times you and him started dating during college and she encouraged the proposal he confessed after you all graduated. But, then why was she there? Her lips moving to the slow rhythm of the song, her mouth to his? Why was she sighing and giving into his touches, when her best friend was going to be arriving soon. Or when, you were already there. The scent of alcohol was strong between the both of them, her flavor of champagne mixing with his scotch. It was all so wrong, but within the mist of treachery and sin, there was love.

Goosebumps slide across her arms and she shakes, traumatized by her act of betrayal. Yet, even still, she felt a sickly kind of satisfaction to the shining metal that looped around her left ring finger. But, you were pregnant and she prayed to all the spirits roaming throughout the world that it was Jungkook’s. It needed to be, Jungkook’s.

“Just…one date right?” Jungkook asked hesitantly, staring at a picture of you sent by Bora on his screen.

Bora nods, “Just one, she needs it…she hasn’t gone outside in months, it really worries me.”

Soon-hee lingers in his mind, could he really do this to her? But, it’s just for one day and the intentions are good, simple and nothing more.

“Plus,” Bora forces out a chuckle, “She probably isn’t intending to contact you further after it, knowing her.” But that was exactly it, Jungkook didn’t know who you were and he didn’t have any expectations.

“I guess it can’t be helped…” Jungkook shrugs halfheartedly, grinning at Bora, “Everything going okay with Jimin though right?”

Just one hang-out to help two friends and he wasn’t required to do much more than talk with you, it seemed easy enough and soon after, he would delete your number and return to his normal, lovely married-life with his beautiful wife Soon-hee. However, that didn’t mean he didn’t find you just as beautiful…maybe even a little more?

That had been the plan, until his heart would not stop beating as his head was only filled with you and the small discussions replaying through his ears. Soon-hee’s kisses began to feel different, ineffective once he had known the feeling of your kisses. And as it turned out, Jungkook was in love with you.

“Bora,” he called her that first night at the hotel, you were curled up and sound asleep in the sheets, softly snoring as he murmurs, “I-I think I like her…I like her, a lot.”

“But, what about Soon-hee?” Bora whispers, she feels herself go tense on her line, but finds her eyes widening to Jungkook’s relieved sighs.

His fingers were running through a couple strands of your hair, falling over your face, “What about her?”

The phone falls uselessly through his fingers, falling to his floor with a crack sounding in the silence. It was his child, yet she resorted to her ex to care for it. He laughs out with frustration, his fingers tugging through his hair. Soon-hee’s loving smile interrupted his thoughts; how oblivious to it all she was. In all honestly, there was no actual paperwork being done. He wanted to keep Soon-hee in bliss ignorance as he kept you in lies laced in white, for the very mention that you were carrying his baby, would break his wife’s heart and ruin the marriage he cherished so much. Yet, the thought of his own child coming into the world meant just as much.

But, that was exactly it. You were having his baby. So instead, he told her he would be going on a company trip for a few months. Just a few months and he would be back for her. Jungkook became greedy; he wanted both.

His fingers twitch in debate, should he or should he not? He’s standing before your door, listening in on the playful bickering between you and that guy, something about the soup being chicken or pork flavor. He heaves out a sigh and knocks, his wedding ring sinking and forgotten in his pocket when a rather averagely-height man opens the door.

“Hel–” Jungkook’s first instinct is to punch him in the face before he realizes who exactly this familiar person was. He freezes once the blonde man falls back, feet shuffling back inside as he curses loudly and then he sees you. Your eyes are big and you’re rushing over in a panic.

“Jungkook?! What are you doing?” You’re turning the man around and checking over the bruise Jungkook smeared on his cheek, purple and blue already.

“Jimin, is that you man?” Jungkook questions and the latter’s face drops.

“Jungkook, why are you…?” Jimin’s confused gaze remains on him for awhile longer before he turns back to you, hugging your stomach, and he quivers, requesting an explanation.

Jungkook shakes his head, what a small world. “I’m not sure why you aren’t over there, being with Bora,” He grits his teeth, everything seeming to fall into place on a twisted puzzle he never suspected, “Sorry to burst your bubble but, that’s my baby she’s carrying.” And Jimin’s eyes blow up in high concern and worry, not knowing what to believe as he keeps his hurt expression hard on yours.

“Y-Y/N is that true…? Is it not mine, but his child?” Jimin croaks and you feel like you’re falling apart, your insides all in the wrong places and you want to vomit.

Suddenly, all three of you see a car pulling in and Jimin’s face goes pale. When you spot her, you immediately feel yourself crumble away.

Bora walks out and she hurries straight for Jimin, both you and Jungkook out of her line of sight as she begs for him back. The kicks in your belly beat a little harder and you hold in your threatening whelm of nausea.

That was the last straw.

A/N: I’d appreciate any feedback, comments, and thoughts~ Uploading this chapter made me the most nervous!!! (it was the hardest to write gahh ;;;;;) I hope you enjoy reading! > u <;;;)b

#kwriterskollection #boy group writers net #bangtanwriters-net #bts writing squad #jungkook x reader #jimin x reader #bts fanfiction #jungkook angst #jimin angst #x reader #preganant!reader

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beaflower77 · 7 years

Text

Help Me !

The attack came early, swift and brutal. No one truly noticed where they had weaseled in from. Or who was not patrolling them. So sudden it had happened, taking all off guard during a particular warm, balmy night. It took all but three seconds for anyone to actually register what had happened, and by then, the dwelling of the Lord and his people were under severe, maniacal attack.

One moment, the evening was warm, serene, with a light breeze blowing, wafting about. Light chirping, tweetering lingered through the sulfurous evening air, laying tranquil lanquidity on lords, ladies, the few elflings inhabiting their dwelling. The next, all hell broke loose. Allowing birds easy access to the sky, fleeing in rapid flight, screeching, taking to the air. Elves frozen in terror, stunned, running hither, nither for flight, some little niche to hide, shelter, to stay alive, to sequester away in, scared of being found out, or standing ground with no other alternative but to fight, to kill and survive with whatever methods they had at hand.

“Can you believe it? Look at her.,” the newly visiting ellith asked her companion, rebuking the only woman in attendance. “She is definitely not fit to be here.,” the ellith continued. Sneering, sticking her nose in the air, agreeing with her companion, “I hear, she tried to have Lord Lindir’s elfling.,” quietly the second young ellith whispered. “No!,” the first fathomed, shocked for a moment, then snickered, snorted a little too loud. “Look at her. She thinks she is so clever to be able to wear a gown of that color! Why, it does not even lay well on her. Just look at those hips. So wide, so undignified. Does not anyone assist her? How she thinks Lord Lindir would even dare look her way, is beyond me. Let alone, to choose her to produce an elfling!” The other ellith glanced at the lone woman kneeling beside a little wooden cradle, playing with the occupant within, and lingered her superior gaze down the path where the woman sat, “Well, her hips are not that wide, but, I still could wager the woman could fit a whole cow inside her womb.”

They had a ball with that remark. Secretly laughing away in merriment, the two young, uncouth ellyth giggled, jested over Beatrice, her obvious unelfish figure. Little did they know, certain other elves overheard their tete-e-tete. And as Haldir watched on unawares, he kept these thoughts to himself. Some ellyth could be quite nasty, he thought, watching the two whisper back and forth. Rude, he even ventured to himself. Little do they know whom they jest at, or whom that woman is married to.

Haldir surveyed the grounds surrounding the beloved city of Imladris, the elves standing, walking about, quietly talking, murmuring, laughing with one another, enjoying their company. Haldir was not immune to conversation, but rather than feel the absolute need to take part in every waking moment of raptuous talk, he enjoyed his solitude, much like Imladris’ own Captain Athlidon did.

Sitting back, taking in the surrounding parties, watching, eyeing male and female alike, his gaze, his eyes, and thoughts turned toward Beatrice. I am still quite positive she was one of the females who had spied on myself and fellow companion bathing not so long ago, Haldir agreed with himself. As Beatrice played silly human, childlike games with Gwingnis’s infant elfling, Haldir secretly glanced back and forth between her and Lindir, and enjoyed the evening’s strong refreshment. Taking in Lindir’s amused, animated countenance with friends, acquaintances he hadn’t seen or heard from in many years, Haldir could not but wonder, did Lord Lindir desire one of those? Those elflings? With Beatrice? Had that topic of discussion even been broached yet, or had it been stifled once and for all?

Haldir continued to wonder these thoughts and continued to scrutinize Beatrice. She obviously brings joy here. And to him. She has made it this far, Haldir thought to himself. How far will Lindir take her? How far can she take herself? And Haldir watched. And as he watched, the young, immature ellyths continued making, poking fun at one they did not even know, nor seem to care about. If Lord Lindir could hear them, Haldir mused, he would not be pleased at all. Lucky for them they are too far from his ears to hear, or react from. I just might have to box their ears myself, he imagined. Leaning against the wall, Haldir noticed another elf slowly, purposefully striding toward his same, lone wall. “Haldir.,” Athlidon nodded, gesturing to the ellith beside himself. “My wife, Gwingnis.,” he introduced proudly. As Haldir gracefully bowed to Gwingnis, all he had to say was, “Athlidon.” And Haldir proceeded to lean once again against the wall, joined by Athlidon, as Gwingnis smiled down at her elfling and caretaker, Beatrice.

Sitting, kneeling before the tiny elfling, Beatrice cooed, played patty cake and other similar nonsense with Gwingnis’s infant, while the little elfling’s parents, enjoyed a little time to themselves, a needed respite. The night was fresh, warm, inviting, most straying out and about late into the evening. Elves moved, sauntered, talked and enjoyed the happy, pleasant, contented calm before the approaching storm.

As soon as it started, several things happened at once.

With a loud, forceful rumbling, orcs invaded, advanced throughout in a steady, thundorous downpour over the concrete bridge that separated the wasteland from the civilized world built in secrecy. Many shrieks were heard throughout, many slippers, boots suddenly paraded the paths and walkways, running, scattering, hiding, seeking weapons, or shorter blades for closer combat.

When it began, the first thing crossing minds of both mother and caretaker, was a look of utter shock, turmoil, despair. Their eyes locked onto each other, Beatrice’s and Gwingnis’. Take her, hide her, run, run, find shelter, hide, I will find you both. Go Beatrice. Run, run, please, get away from here, this madness. Do not let yourselves be caught. Go!, urged Gwingnis, recognizing the futile attempt to cross the path herself, gather her elfling or help her friend. “Get away from here! Go!,” Athlidon urged his spouse, commanded her. “No!,” was Gwingni’s reply. “I will stand with you!,” as she found, grabbed hold, picked up, an already abandoned sword laying close by. “Beatrice will take her to safety. Our daughter will be safe with Beatrice!”

I will take her, I will hide her, I will keep her, keep her safe for you. I will do this!, thought Beatrice, trying with her face, her eyes, to convey these words of love, of loyalty to the elflings’ mother, for Beatrice could do no les than that. Gathering the bundle tightly to her bodice, Beatrice sought Lindir’s eyes for help. Knowing there was no chance of a rescue from him. Lindir caught her eyes for that instant, knowing what she carried on her person, and within. Mouthing the words, Io te amo. With such calm, one would think nothing was amiss that night. “Go.,” Lindir softly commanded from not more than six feet away, and suddenly, pointedly turned to clang his sword off an orc blade, cleanly, neatly slicing into the flesh of his opponent.

But for a moment Beatrice panicked. Pure chaos clamored round her. Not knowing where to turn, where to flee, looking round her, the fighting, the running, the screams, horrific screeching. Three seconds. Three seconds Beatrice knew, that was all it ever took, to take in an entire situation. Then Beatrice ran. She ran pall mall, dodging brutal, screaming, crying jammed up traffic. Spotting, spying two of her other little charges, “Faelor!,” Beatrice yelled, not knowing if her voice could carry over the clamorous fighting, the panic. “Faelor! Galearon! Galearon!,” she screamed, hoping they could hear and respond. They didn’t. Their Ada heard her. “Remove yourself from me, Faelor! Go to Beatrice! Take your brother! Go! Run!,” “No Ada! No!,” cried Faelor. Galearon looked on, cowering behind a pillar in panicked turmoil, and proceeded to weep.

Shoving little Faelor off his person, pushing him towards Beatrice, she grabbed at his tunic, “Faelor!,” Beatrice cried. “Come on! Where’s Galearon?!,” as she tugged, and tugged against his will to leave his Ada to fight alone. Spying Gaeleron hiding, she swiftly motioned for him to come to her side. Grabbing him, Beatrice ran with both the little elflings, while holding the littlest against her chest, inside the marbled halls of protection, only to find inside it was not much better. Dodging, forever dodging it seemed, till they found their way to some empty bedchamber high above the outside mess.

“Get in here!,” Beatrice hissed at them, shoving them forward, looking over her shoulder for any other nightly intrusion. The bedchambers’ great wardrobe was unusually filled with much of some unknown ellon’s robes, tunics, boots and other paraphelia. “What is all this crap?,” Beatrice demanded of no one. “That is a bad word Beatrice.,” Faelor insisted on informing her, as she assisted him up and in. “Shush.,” she replied. “Squeeze in there.,” shoving aside large, heavy garments. “What a mess.” Galearon kept his mouth still, instead finding, reaching over, winding his fingers round her thigh, as she too climbed in. “Mama.,” he said only, in such a tiny voice, inching himself closer against her skirts. She forgot to close the chamber doors. Outside, emitting from the hallways, were sinister, foul sounds and smells. She forgot. She forgot to close the chamber doors. Crap, Beatrice thought, I cannot, I shouldn’t go out now. The four stayed that way for some moments. When at last some quiet came, the sound of small foot patterings could be heard. Beatrice spied through the crack in the doors of the wardrobe.

She saw the two ellyths that had insulted her earlier, running back and forth, up and down the hallway. In that dreadful moment, Beatrice made a decision. “Stay here. Be quiet.,” Beatrice told, instructed the two elflings, scrunched up behind clothing, handing the infant elf off to Galearon “Don’t go.,” said Galearon. “They are not nice to you. They are mean to you.,” Faelor mentioned, as Beatrice climbed out, was about to close them in. "To leave them out there, exposed, would be meaner.,” Beatrice reminded Faelor. “Mama.,” pleaded Galearon, and she had to swallow, not to reply. “Stay here. Stay still. Quiet now.,” Beatrice insisted.

Looking up and down the hallway, finding no one yet, the ellyth scattered by again. They looked shocked to see Beatrice standing in the hall. “Come here you two twats.,” Beatrice commanded in a hushed tone. They didn’t register her insult, nor understood. Shoving them roughly, the ellyths fell over each other into the room, as Beatrice tried quietly to close the door. “Help me.,” Beatrice demanded, starting to push a small desk in front of the doors. “That will not stop them.,” the one said, while the other looked around for some safety. “Get in there.,” Beatrice told them, nodding off her head to the wardrobe.

#Lindir And Beatrice Fiction #Under Attack #Haldir Fiction #Imladris Fiction #Aiutomi #Aiutomi!#To Be Continued...

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