Congratulations to (almost) 500 followers! 🥳 Let the fun begin. I'm curious about L & 12 for the precious Darkling. Maybe the darkling never admit his feelings for the reader and now it seems like it is to late for any confessions... Thank you for the opportunity for this special prompt game. 🥰
Thank you. And thanks for all the support you have given me over the past few months. 🥰
I had my outline for this one almost finished before I realised you probably wanted one where the reader is arranged to marry someone else, making the Darkling think it's too late to be with her. But unfortunately my brain had already gone down a different road, and this plot bunny had already made residence with no hope of getting rid of it.
Anyways, I hope you enjoy the end result, even if it is different from what you were expecting. As you say, let the fun begin!
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L. Arranged marriage
12. ‘I’m trying to help you, dammit!’
Kirigan watched as you hopelessly tried to clasp the necklace behind your neck. It was a fiddly little thing, and you had been trying to put it on for the last five minutes to no avail. He had offered to take care of it for you, but you had just about bitten his head off when he so much as stepped close to you.
Not what he had ever envisioned married life to be like, but then again, yours wasn’t a normal marriage.
Two months ago, the King had announced to Kirigan his plans to marry off his niece to a suitor of his own choosing. One month after that, the two of you had been married.
The worst part was that Kirigan genuinely loved you. He had done for ages. Your position in the Grand Palace meant that the two of you had met frequently, and you had developed a mutual respect. Some would even call it a friendship. And you were just so… kind. And cheerful and beautiful and smart and a million other things that made falling in love with you impossible to resist.
He had never admitted his feelings, however. You were not Grisha and he would lose you in the end, so he had preemptively shielded himself from that pain.
And now it was too late to change his mind. He doubted you would ever love him now that you had been forced to his side. You wouldn’t even let him put a damn necklace on you.
‘Please, milaya,’ he said. ‘Just let me do it for you.’
‘I told you not to call me that!’ you snapped as you once again failed to loop the chain into the clasp. ‘I don’t need you.’
‘I’m trying to help you, dammit!’ he snapped back. He regretted it immediately, but there was only so much of your stubbornness he could take. ‘Why must you fight me on every little thing?’
You put down the necklace and then turned to face him, eyes narrowed and full of righteous anger. ‘What did you expect?’ you seethed. ‘For me to be an obedient little wife? Someone who is happy to be nothing more than a pawn in some political chess match. Well, tough. I am neither of those things and I will continue to make sure you don’t forget it.’
‘I am not responsible for this,’ said Kirigan through gritted teeth. ‘The marriage was your uncle’s idea. Not mine.’
‘But you still accepted,’ you said, surprising him. He hadn’t realised you had known about that part. ‘My uncle gave you the choice. You could have said no to the whole thing. But you didn’t.’
‘Because then he would have given you to someone else!’
That, you hadn’t known about, judging by your shocked expression.
At your fearful look, he sighed and lowered his voice. ‘The King had a whole list of possible suitors for you. I was just at the top of it. He would have let them do what they would with you as long as he got an advantage out of it. I know I am not who you would have chosen for a husband, but I couldn’t let something like that happen to you.’
You may have shared a bed, but Kirigan had never touched you. And he never would, not without your consent.
He doubted the other men on the list would have had the same reservations.
‘Why not?’ you asked in a small voice. Kirigan wasn’t sure if he was saddened or insulted.
You must have realised how your question had sounded, because you soon rephrased it. ‘I mean, why do you care so much that you would make such a sacrifice for me?’
He would have liked to have been able to say that it was for completely selfless reasons, but that would have been lying. You weren’t totally unjustified in your anger towards him. He did have completely selfless reasons… but he also couldn’t stand the thought of you being someone else’s wife.
‘How could I not?’ he asked instead. When you didn’t answer, he held his hand out. ‘Please, milaya. Let me be a proper husband for you. Let me help. That’s all I want.’
You stared at his hand for a moment before you picked your necklace back up and carefully placed it in his palm. You turned around, baring the back of your neck to him.
He fought the temptation to bend down and kiss it.
Instead, he draped the necklace around your throat; no more and no less than what he had offered to do.
‘I would have chosen you,’ you said suddenly, making him fumble with the clasp.
He got it secure on the second try, but he didn’t step back, frozen in place by your words. He met your eyes in the mirror in front of you and saw the same longing that was in his own.
How had he ever missed it?
You turned, bringing you both chest to chest, so close that you were sharing the same air. ‘If I had known you cared so much, my uncle would not have had to put you on a list.’
His response to that was to crash his lips to yours, pouring all his hope, longing, and fears into the kiss. It was only a second before you were returning it with equal passion.
Maybe it wasn’t too late after all.
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im thinking about possession aftereffects that linebeck experiences immediately after the events of phantom hourglass, so here are bullet points i have down for my own ideas
he’s out cold for roughly five days after the fight. he’s conscious for a bit after being freed, but it doesn’t take long for him to collapse once he’s transported back to the great sea. link finds him when he reaches his ship to see him again (he takes a lifeboat or w/e from tetras ship its a whole thing and not the point) and ends up having to take care of him for those five-ish days.
while he’s out cold, he develops a bad fever, and has a good few physical injures from being possessed; all of his wounds from being possessed manifest as burns, the worst wounds bring cauterized and mostly closed, while smaller ones are still open wounds. the largest wound is a large burn covering most of his back, which is cauterized by the time he passes out, and then there are smaller, still open burns on his upper arms and legs. (the smaller wounds are manageable by link when he follows some medical instructions, [there are some medical books on the ship] the larger one is also manageable, but takes a lot longer to properly heal).
(link asks tetra and her crew to stick around for a while to keep linebeck stabilized while he’s unconscious. when linebeck wakes up, tetra and her crew are good to leave because then linebeck can better report what’s going on, and knows how to handle injuries).
linebeck’s fever persists after he wakes up, and he experiences… pretty much every fever symptom, with especially bad chills and full-body aches. the aches are really bad for the first few days after he wakes up, he’s extremely physically weak and shaky for a while, too. that weakness and shakiness get better with time, but he doesnt go entirely back to normal without actually moving around and doing things to build that strength back up.
he’s delirious and struggles to stay awake for those first few conscious days, too, which makes that weakness and shakiness worse; he struggles to eat and drink water, and struggles to string together thoughts or words to talk to link, and both of them figure out pretty quickly that they’ll have to wait a bit longer before so much as an attempt to coax him out of bed can be made.
beyond existing problems with food, linebeck struggles to keep anything down while he recovers, and becomes ill pretty much every time after he eats anything, so a bucket is kept near his bed. with water, he obviously needs to drink a lot of it considering that he’s feverish, injured, and vomiting frequently, but while he’s sick he has a bit of an irrational fear of water (along with an irrational fear of air and the wind, which makes him hesitant to go outside while he’s sick).
he’s generally pretty irritable, which isn’t particularly new, but it makes him prone to refusing help with certain things. he’s less irritable when tired and just resting. he’s also especially nervous, and despite the overall fatigue, he struggles to sleep for very long while he’s sick, and as said before, is often delirious and even confused when things are bad.
along with the other difficulties eating, linebeck has a hard time swallowing for a bit, and salivates a lot more than normal while he’s sick. he is soooo fucking dehydrated the whole time and that really doesn’t help.
while the weakness and shakiness stays for the entire time he’s sick and even a bit afterwards, for the first few days after he wakes up he’s stiff and also experiences some muscle spasms and numbness in his limbs, and has a hard time keeping his balance the first few times he gets out of bed.
once the sickness clears up fully, linebeck has to still be careful with the scar on his back; it’s sensitive to touch for a while and hurts when exposed to the sun or air for too long and when he stretches his back too far, but eventually just reaches the point where it’s a bit sensitive but is otherwise just a large scar.
obviously he’s also going through the wringer in an emotional and mental illness sense too but those would require a whole new bullet point list.
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