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flowerflamestars · 3 years

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Nesta Under the Mountain part 3: acomaf, the later half

So while some extremely painful flirting is happening, so is plot. Azriel periodically disappears to try to infiltrate the Queens palace. Morrigan splits her time between Velaris and trying to keep Keir remotely in line. Amren and Lucien teach Nesta how to use magic, Cassian readies the legions for war.

So Nesta, unlike Feyre, has multiple sources for her most important questions: What the hell is Hybern doing? Trying to build an empire of old. Reaching for glory that isn’t there, because Prythian is wealthy.

Why Amarantha? Why was she so powerful?

It’s Rhysand who answers her, one day when they’re alone. He’s drinking on the roof- Nesta is inclined to make a comment about lordly behavior but doesn’t because she knows, she knows, from the look in his eyes, that he’s going to answer for real.

Amarantha liked to talk in bed. And Rhysand had, eventually, put the pieces together: Amarantha was the invading force alone, because Amarantha needed to earn Hyberns favor.

What did Hybern have? A kingdom crippled without its slaves. A King who’d ruled so long the world forgot his name. No heir, no other ruler. No son, only daughters.

Amarantha sought to earn her place in succession- with her father’s stolen magical secrets and a taste for vengeance.

Nesta accepts this, and has a drink.

There’s an interim of weeks, while Amren relearns a dead language and Azriel tries his last, worst plans. Nesta is so ready to tear out of her skin- Morrigan succeeds in getting Nesta to go out with her.

Morrigan pulls her over cobblestones to Ritas, and Nesta absolutely doesn’t tell her Lucien had found the place on his first city walkabout and been toasting their bitter victories there every one since.

Cassian, as he tends to wherever Nesta is, appears. They haven’t spoken since she came back with the book. Lucien trickles in with glitter in his hair, Azriel silent, offensively handsome drawing the light by his side.

And Morrigan watches. Cassian will spend the night quietly pressing fresh drinks into Nesta’s hand and glaring like absolute murder at any stranger who tries to get near. She sees how Cassian, her friend for five centuries, is contextualizing this: service, gladly rendered.

Understands he will make it small in his head and it means the opposite- the very opposite- that Nesta is letting him do either of those things for her. That she trusts him, to be near at all.

Morrigan and Nesta have a very different talk afterward than her and Feyre would have. Mor thinks it might be a good idea to make it really clear she herself doesn’t ever want Cassian, in case, that too, is standing in the way.

(Nesta also just...so clearly doesn’t have a single negative thought about Lucien doing...whatever Lucien does. They’ll get insouciant and mean and discuss the attractiveness of anyone. Nesta, unlike Feyre, reacts to queerness without even blinking)

So Mor and Nesta might not enjoy each other, exactly, but they respect one another. When Rhysand poses his insane Nesta you were mortal, let’s meet the Queens on mortal land plan, Morrigan, more than anyone, is the one who listens when Nesta explains that the Queens hate faeries.

Hate magic. Hate, even, it seems, the mortals that live along the wall for existing in proximity to Prythian.

It’s like letting go of a dream- for the chance of something real. Five centuries have passed, and that’s not much for Mor, but it’s everything, to mortals. Their bright lives are so quick, so valuable in an eyeblink- and that’s why Nesta’s here at all.

A mortal heart.

Azriel and Nesta team up- she scoffs that infiltration has fails, laughs outright at the idea she should be a diplomat, and proposes something else. They veritable army of spies, why are none of them mortal? Hundreds of humans work in Court of Queens. Voiceless, unrecognized. None of the magical protections would stop them.

So instead of Keir, or the Veritas, or her sisters- we bring back the lady mercenary. We bring in a whole bunch of lady mercenaries. A new network of information, passed from overlooked woman to overlooked woman, carried in shadows, all the way back to the Court of Night.

There’s no meeting. Because Hybern is already there.

And Nesta thinks its the most insane thing she’s ever heard- they want to live forever?

Morrigan tries to comfort her, Lucien tries to stop Morrigan, because he knows- Nesta doesn’t regret. And she tells them all that, looking over the war map, each grim face and strange shred of sympathy.

Nesta says, I know I’m a monster and I’m glad of it. I will never belong to just one Court, never go home. I cannot, because that life was taken from me and I am glad, because it will take a monster to protect the humans from other monsters.

And Rhysand says, oh so very quietly: You can belong.

But it’s lost, completely, in two things- the way Lucien has stepped around Azriel to let Nesta, not lean- Nesta, sober, leans on absolutely no one- but to be there, close, in her orbit, and Cassian standing up.

It’s the Queens Meeting promise, dark chocolate version. Cassian wipes away that one tear on her perfect face. Says to her and her alone like no one else is there, that he’d done monstrous things his entire life in the name of what was right. But he’d become something worse, unleash a whole ocean of blood, to protect the innocents who needed it. Die a monster, in defense of those mortals with her.

And Nesta just looks at him. Like she can see all the way through to his aching soul, and nods.

One commander to another. Absolute, perfect, understanding.

So what happens, if the mcguffin of the book cannot work?

Nesta says, like Cassian isn’t still staring at her, like she isn’t leaning into Lucien’s bodyheat like a refuge- the book is to control the Cauldron, but why can’t we just go after the Cauldron?

Steal it? Break it? Use it ourselves.

No ones answers particularly satisfy her- they can winnow. They can move unseen. There’s more power in this room than whole kingdoms possess, why the hell can’t they just break in, touch the Cauldron, and winnow away?

Cassian says it’s suicide. The castle is a deathtrap. Guards, wards, magic.

And, Rhysand adds, the Cauldron might not play along. It’s too powerful, too old to just treat like an object. The Cauldron itself could resist.

They’re all piling out of the townhouse, after the unsuccessful meeting, when Lucien goes white. Freezes.

And Nesta knows.

Knows that despite every precaution, the words that have never, ever escaped her lips in Prythian. Despite Tamlin dead- someone, somehow, found out that Prythian’s vengeance has two vulnerable, mortal sisters.

Nesta is grabbing onto Lucien to winnow away before anyone can ask what is wrong. Because something is wrong, so, so wrong- at the last second, Cassian snatches her hand, and ends up dragged along.

The Archeron estate is on fire.

There’s no time to ask- no time to talk. Cassian starts killing Hybernian soldiers left and right, no one here that can actually stop him.

Nesta runs straight into the fire, Lucien on her heels, keeping the flames away. Not that he needs to- Nesta is shimmering with power, every Court’s strength right on the surface, teeming to be used. She kills six men before she finds Elain, kicking and screaming in a soldiers arms.

That soldier loses his head- that man, Lucien turns to ash.

It’s Cassian who finds Feyre, hidden in the kitchen, standing on top of table having just dumped a small ocean on lye on her attackers. Despite making short work of the burnt, pissed off faeries, she’s still throwing shit at him when Nesta, screaming her name, is finally close enough to be heard.

Nesta almost stabs Cassian in the back getting to Feyre. Fey jumps off the table, straight at her sister- there’s no pause for thought, no flinch at her faery face and bloody hands, just an armload full of her taller baby sister, an easy weight to carry now.

When they make it out of the collapsing house, Azriel and Rhys are waiting.

It’s Rhys who says, in that tone of voice that makes Nesta want to beat him to death, the voice that insists, I understand, who says, you have a family?

Nesta doesn’t answer. Nesta doesn’t say a goddamn word to anyone at all except for Feyre and Elain as they take them back to Velaris. As she settles them in the roaring warmth of one of the palatial sitting rooms, wraps them in blankets. Conveys, solely with a head jerk and a glare, that Cassian should make himself useful and provide hot beverages.

Nesta doesn’t say anything until the burns are healed by Lucien, her sisters understand where they are, and what has happened.

It��s Feyre who snaps first and bodily pulls Nesta down on the couch between them. Elain who leans hard, shoulder to shoulder, and wipes the blood off Nesta’s face.

They love each other- they still love her, don’t blame her, and that is what makes Nesta’s choice.

She introduces them to Lucien, her friend. To the others without explanation, the odd bedfellows of war Nesta really is starting to like despite herself. Except Rhys. Rhys can fall in the damned ocean.

It’s a long, long evening, and they all get settled eventually- Feyre, in particular, with a shy smile and an extra mug of Cassian’s hot chocolate.

Everyone goes their separate ways, and Lucien, quietly, slips off to find Nesta in the dark.

He knows what she’s going to say. Hybern came for her family- Hybern almost killed her sisters. Nesta doesn’t give a fuck about the book, about Rhysand’s alliances, or hangup on the mortal queens- Nesta wants Hybern to pay.

Lucien sometimes looks at his life now- free, safe as he choses, the dark eyed smile of man who fears no part of him- and thinks it’s all because of Nesta Archeron’s heart. Nesta, who believed in loyalty enough to buy his safety. Nesta, who had every reason to hate Spring and still been the only person to look close enough and see, that Lucien was just as trapped.

No one in his life had ever given him that, so easily. No one had cared.

Nesta didn’t even think about it- he was in her corner and she was in his, friends. Best friends, only friends they had. Lucien would have still chosen her, every time.

Choses her now- Nesta says, I’m going tonight. I’m going alone. I’m not waiting any longer.

And Lucien squeezes her hand, and tells her, not alone.

They winnow to the castle like bone across the sea.

Lucien might not know why he can break wards, why foul enchantment can’t touch him, but he knows how to use it. How to fight and kill, and does just that. Lucien stands guard, Lucien gets Nesta to the Cauldron.

No Book, no plan, just this- Nesta’s will do what is right.

Two hands on the Cauldron- and Rhysand was right. It won’t move. It won’t be winnowed away, it pulls her in and speaks.

The story of the Cauldron is the story of a woman.

Power, power, power- endless potential, utilized to create. A thousand children, a million voices. But then her children grew- into their own power, their own politics and ways. They forgot her voice, that forget she’d made them- and they trapped her. Broke her. Imprisoned her.

Forgot she was not a cauldron- she was their Mother.

But the Mother was also once the Maiden, the Mother always becomes the Crone.

The Crones watches, as the dark night comes, and all life eventually ends.

She’d been imprisoned all over again.

Nesta Archeron, drowning in power, communicates by sheer force of screaming, raging will.

I was imprisoned, I stolen, I was remade against my will-

I was broken, and all I asked was that my family be safe- all I wanted- I am the child of every Court you made, I am the daughter of your power and i WILL NOT- I will not allow your sons to kill what is ours-

The Cauldron, seething, stills, if only for a moment.

Nesta thinks she’s won. Nesta realizes, too late, that she can smell blood. Lucien, stabbed and scrabbling, Nesta being dragged away from the Cauldron- the King had waited for her.

And how he crooned with joy- Nesta Archeron, the destroyer. Nesta Archeron, Prythian’s vengeance. Nesta Archeron you will be mine, you, you, you, finally, a worthy woman-

It’s a desperate, stupid ploy. Nesta can’t escape, Nesta can’t save Lucien, knows it from the blood dripping off his lips as he mouthes, a goodbye: love you, Archeron.

Nesta jumps into the Cauldron.

What comes out is not what went in- young as a fawn, old as the seas- Nesta doesn’t have to steal eternity. She’s already eternal, she’s already powerful in her rage-

But the Cauldron, who’d slept so long. Broken in peices, cold, welcomes her fire like the fierce magic of her first children, and gives her a gift.

Nesta’s no maiden or mother, but the Cauldron is happy to let the Crone out.

Death comes out of those waters, and mists the King of Hybern.

Scoops up her beloved companion, the fire that lights the way, and leaves the castle of the king unraveling behind her.

Nesta brings the Cauldron home.

The bloody bundle of Lucien is pulled from her arms on the floor of Rhysand’s townhouse, the Cauldron quiet behind them. It’s to Cassian who is frankly patting her down, searching for injuries, that Nesta says:

She wasn’t the only sister, and then passes out.

#this is so fun!#I am frankly overwhelmed by all the lovely things yall have said??#Nesta SHOULD be a protagnist

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deanmarywinchester · 3 years

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3, 4, 20

hi noa, hope your firefighters are winning!!!

ok these answers are gonna be about my wip that I’ve been calling “wife dean fic” but that’s titled “men like me,” which is an alternate s13 in which dean says yes to au michael during the widow arc

4: Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)

I just really like this bit from dean and cas’s reunion. “did it look cool like in the movies” ass

But out of the corner of his eye, Dean sees Michael’s true form lunge, and Jack yelps, and the world dissolves into nothingness.

An eyeblink later, the three of them are back in the bunker, and Jack’s saying “Oh, I guess I can fly with passengers now! Cool,” and Dean’s saying, automatic, “I told you, flying sounds stupid. Call it teleporting. Like Star Trek,” and then it all becomes too much for him, the fight and Michael and the inexpert flying and the way he froze all over when Cas appeared, and he’s throwing up on the war room floor.

20: what’s some meta (themes, symbolism, characterization) you want to ramble to people about?

one of the things im trying my best to get right is having jack learn “do as I say, not as I do” from Sam. sam considers jack worth standing up for in ways where he won’t stand up for himself, and protects jack in ways where he’s willing to throw his own life away. and Jack’s learning from Sam’s actions, not his words

3: what is one scene you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be bothered to write all the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it anyway)

THANK you for this question which I will shamelessly use to post a scene that it’s killing me to cut bc I had to cut the context. below the cut, a newly vampired Max Banes talks hunting with dean. it’s from an earlier version where sam’s hunter community is made of OG hunters not au hunters, but I ended up having to use au hunters as a shorthand. SOME version of this scene is going in my next (banes-centric) fic, i hope!

“You’re taking this pretty well.”

Max gives a short laugh, like he’s testing it out to see if he can find the humor in it. Dean isn’t sure if he succeeds. “Yeah, well. Vampires. Kinda hot, honestly, maybe I’ll pull better with a certain type of guy.”

“You sure you want that type of guy? I’ve met the kind of chicks who are into that Twilight crap, and man, they are not worth the effort.”

“Yeah.” Max’s mouth turns down at his reflection in the rearview mirror, and then he bares his fangs consideringly. “Not exactly Edward Cullen, but this is cooler. More useful than his teeth on a hunt until I can get it fixed, I’ll tell you that for nothing.”

“You’re still hunting?”

“Hah. Yeah, I get why that would be surprising. You, I know you have some sort of demon trauma, whatever. Me and Alicia, we weren’t raised to hunt monsters, though. We were raised to hunt witches. And witches are, they’re fuckin’ human, man. I don’t know.”

He pries up his lip to study the way his fangs retract in the mirror, avoiding Dean’s eye. Not that Dean is too interested in interrupting, anyway. He’s no good when people get philosophical about whatever got them this far in the life, so he tends to clam up and let them say what they’re going to say. They usually do.

Max isn’t an exception. “You know I was fifteen,” he says, his voice carefully conversational, “the first time I put Mama’s sawn-off against the back of a man’s neck. By that time, he’d killed eight people. Low-level hex bags, pretty amateur stuff, but the victims had no way of stopping him. I did. So I stopped him.

“I got home and I told Alicia what I did, and she just started crying. Like, instant waterworks, I’ve never seen her like that before or since. And I just knew she was thinking, I’m a witch. What if someone does that to me? What if it’s you?

“So after that, Alicia and me took a long vacation from our mom. She was pretty pissed, but she understood. And we decided, you know, that we would keep doing what we were trained to do, but not if we could help it. If we can bind witches, we bind them. If we can reason with them, we reason with them. If they’re just some poor idiot who needs to be taught or threatened into not getting into more than is good for them, we do that. But if not--” Max cocks an imaginary shotgun, the gesture practiced and ironic. “I’m not stupid. I know we’re probably going to hell for being judge, jury, and executioner. But we do our best to keep people from getting killed, either by witches or, you know. Me.”

Dean lets the silence stretch out. Tries to picture sudden, unstoppable tears on Alicia’s face, where he’s only ever seen determination or a cocky grin. Thinks about Dad telling him he might have to put Sam down like a mean dog that can’t be trusted. Thinks about Jack--

Max shoots a glance at Dean in the rearview mirror and glances down, looking suddenly self-conscious. He flips his sunglasses back on, too studied a gesture to be as nonchalant as he wants it to come off. “Look at me, giving you my whole sob story when I know you’ve seen worse. You old-school hunters, man, you’re the most emotionless, John Wayne bastards I ever met. You still wash your wounds with whiskey or are you not too cool for store-brand antibiotics?”

Dean feels a pang at that. The guy’s got him wrong, not that he knows how to communicate that. “Nah, cool won’t cure an infection, I learned that the hard way. And. You know.” He glances over at Max, catches him fidgeting with the arm of his sunglasses. Wills him to understand the hand he’s reaching out to Max. “Tough thing for a kid to do. Any kid.”

Max lets out a short breath, surprised. “Yeah, well. Guy had it coming. At least if I have to kill a witch, I know they dug their own grave. Creatures, though, they sound like a lot more trouble than they're worth. Don’t know how you can tell which ones are gonna be a problem.”

“You can’t,” Dean says. “Some hunters put down any they can get their hands on. Some let ‘em go if they seem harmless enough. Sam and I’ve done a little of both.” And both have gone bad on us, Dean thinks but doesn't say. Both have left him waking up feeling like a heavy weight was pressing down on him, a weight of something he did, a worry that he let a killer go.

“Well, I promise not to bite anyone that doesn’t deserve it, and you promise to tell me if you’re going through one of your kill-anything-with-fangs phases, deal?”

“I wouldn’t do that to you, man,” Dean says, low. Something in his voice makes Max look to him, then back out the window again.

#thank you noa!!#spnposting #I need a wife dean fic tag #men like me tag #my posts #grace’s writing #ask #calico-max

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lassieposting · 4 years

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4 Times Lucifer Showed He Cared The Demon Way (And Thought Chloe Reciprocated) +1 Time He Tried Showing It The Human Way

AIT BUCKLE UP YALL BC IMMA GET ON SOME BULLSHIT

prepare for a mess of a headcanon post in which i extrapolate wildly from single lines in the show, read way too much into interactions, and get very emotional

actual post under the cut because this is long as fuck, yo

1. Sharing Territory

Trust is the rarest commodity in Hell. Demons are aggressive, suspicious and territorial by nature, and taught from birth that you’re just as likely to be killed in a fight with someone from your own clan as you are to be cut down in a war with someone else’s. Maze recalls her siblings torturing one another, possibly for fun, and even among family there seems to be a certain level of wariness. Finding someone you can trust to share your space, someone who will keep watch while you rest, someone you don’t have to be so guarded around, is rare and precious and a big expression of real affection.

In 1x02 Lucifer lets himself into Chloe’s home while she’s in the shower, makes himself at home, and starts making her breakfast.

Now, Lucifer knows how door etiquette works. We’ve seen him learn about this, more than once.

In 1x03, he barges into Linda’s office, interrupting another patient’s session, but in 1x08 he knocks on her door and waits for her to call him in.

In 1x07 we see him ring Carmen’s doorbell and wait for him to answer, despite having a far better reason to barge in and wreak havoc (reclaiming his stolen wings).

In 2x01, again, he knocks on the killer’s door and waits for her to answer it.

So, this isn’t a case of “he’s not human, he doesn’t understand”. He only does this with Chloe. And it’s something he does repeatedly, even after he’s learned his lesson about knocking with everyone else - coming into her territory and leaving her, her family and all her things unharmed, showing her that he’s relaxed and comfortable in her space. And he gets the reaction he wants! She’s alarmed the first time she finds him in her kitchen, but as time goes by she gets used to it, accepts it as just one of his weird quirks, and no longer really bats an eyelid. By 3x05 she’s not even surprised to see him; she still ticks him off - “I said to meet me here, not barge in like you own the place.” - but it’s almost like she’s just saying it out of habit at this point. She’s not threatened by him at all.

We don’t know when Lucifer invites her to treat his penthouse the same way, but by the time she shows up drunk and trying to sleep with him in 1x10, he’s told her that “[his] door is always open”, an invitation to do the same. And she does (and has been doing already). Chloe is spectacularly comfortable appropriating Lucifer’s things.

In 1x09 when they’re dueting Heart & Soul she lets herself in unexpectedly and takes a drink from his glass while they’re playing (and here you can see him raise his eyebrows and smile at her, but he doesn’t comment).

In 1x10, she’s clearly intending to stay in his penthouse even after he tells her he was planning on going out, and she helps herself to his alcohol.

In 3x06 she’s comfortable enough with him to raid his closet, take over his home without his knowledge, try to break into his safe and sleep in his bed.

2. Hunting For Your Partner

Humans don't regularly hunt for their own food, but demons do - Maze asks Trixie in S4 at what age human parents teach their children to hunt, presumably because it’s a responsibility she intends to take on for baby Charlie. Now, to survive in a place like Hell, prey animals would need to be in possession of some hardcore natural defences; demons most likely can and do die in hunts. So providing someone with food would be a big deal; it shows how highly you prize that person’s wellbeing, that you’re willing to put yourself at risk and expend valuable effort and energy to keep them fed.

Lucifer tries to make Chloe breakfast in 1x04. This is the first time we really see him do anything domestic, and it’s implied he’s actually pretty handy in the kitchen - possibly because he just likes human food, but also the time and effort he’ll spend making her a proper home-cooked meal is the closest he’s going to get to hunting something the size of a small airplane for her in Hell.

Later, in 2x07, Chloe makes Lucifer and Trixie sandwiches. She goes to give Trixie the first one, because for humans it’s normal to feed your kid first, but Lucifer swipes it off the plate before Trixie can, claiming he’s “far larger and hungrier”, because in Hell the strongest and most vicious eat first (as with many pack predators).

Lucifer later asks Linda what deep meaning the sandwich had - whether it symbolised Chloe’s trust - and seems bewildered that for humans, a sandwich can just be a sandwich. He also brings her homecooked food as an apology after standing her up, all of which seems to imply that Lucifer grew up in a culture where food is valuable and meaningful and an expression of deeper feeling. (This could also be seen to a lesser extent in Maze wanting Lucifer to make her a drink in 2x04, when she’s trying to redefine their relationship as equals rather than lord and vassal.)

3. Fighting Together

Demons do have a concept of loyalty. Maze says “You don’t let your girl go into enemy territory alone”, and it seems to be a principle that’s important enough to her that she’s including it in Trixie’s training - when Maze is going to Canada, Trixie tries to hide in her bag because Maze needs someone to watch her back. Maze and Lucifer are also incredibly loyal to one another in the grand scheme of things - regardless of their issues with one another, they are a united front against outside threats, at least before they both start developing human relationships.

Lucifer is startlingly loyal to Chloe from the get-go, for someone who’s spent billions of years not being able to trust or lean on anyone except Maze.

In 1x02, he stops chasing after Josh as soon as he realises Chloe has been mobbed by paparazzi, choosing instead to go back and defend her - even though this lets Josh, who needs punishing, get away.

Now, in 4x01 Maze says that she (and probably demons in general) fight when they’re “Happy...or horny”, implying that fighting may be as much a bonding activity as a necessity.

With the paparazzi mob, Lucifer goes in all guns blazing, making it personal - “Back off, you mouth-breathing scum!” - because he’s protecting her, trying to deflect their attention from her. But as soon as he notices she’s holding her own, with her fist raised to hit the guy, he gets all excited and encourages her to go ahead: “Let’s punch them all!”

He now sees this as an opportunity to bond with her, show her she can trust him to watch her back, and when she declines to start a fight he’s visibly disappointed.

Chloe then joins the illegal Lux party in 2x09.

Now, she’s spent most of the episode being sensible and rational about the fact that really there’s not a lot she can do, which was understandably upsetting to Lucifer - it’s the first time he’s really seen his detective not be able to fix a situation. He goes to her repeatedly for help throughout the episode - he either hasn’t realised or doesn’t want to accept that the law has her powerless here - and sees it more as “her not being on his side” than “her not actually having any power over this situation”.

Her joining his sit-in reaffirms to him that he matters to her; that she has his back even though she has no personal stake in keeping Lux’s building from being demolished. This is all the more poignant for him because he’s very vulnerable at this point; he’s not just on the verge of losing his home, he’s also dealing with his mom’s manipulation and abuse, his own emerging human emotions, the new distance in his relationship with Maze. He believed he was completely alone in this. Chloe’s public show of support means a lot to him, and he even talks to Linda about how insanely grand a gesture Chloe’s saving Lux is to him - he’s never been given something without strings attached, without having to give something in return.

4. Your Enemies Are My Enemies

Making enemies in Hell can be lethal. Retaliation for a small slight can turn vicious in an eyeblink and generally it's not a good idea to get involved in someone else's grudges if you want to avoid a knife in your back. Adopting someone’s enemies as your own enemies, defending them against said enemies, inserting yourself into their preexisting quarrels as backup, is a big show of loyalty.

Lucifer is always getting in on Chloe’s arguments. Constantly.

From what we’ve seen and heard, Lucifer’s family isn’t big on backup. We’ve only got Lucifer’s word, and he’s very biased, so he’s not the most reliable narrator, but we can see it in the way Mum and Amenadiel behave.

When Lucifer is rowing with his mom in 2x08, Amenadiel doesn’t intervene at all. He’s already said that he’s on his mom’s side at this point, but he doesn’t defend her, either; he avoids the confrontation altogether.

Lucifer says that none of his family defended him when he was thrown out of Heaven, repeatedly, and with increasing bitterness the more he realises that the way his family treated him is a) abnormal and b) abusive.

Early Lucifer seems to have picked up this trait. He doesn’t involve himself in arguments unless he’s getting something out of it; when Maze and Amenadiel are about to throw down in 3x11, he literally sits back to watch with popcorn, despite knowing that this fight could go very badly for Maze.

With Chloe though, he starts jumping in from Actual Day One.

When Dan is gaslighting Chloe in 1x01, he stands up for her immediately: “She is smart. You’re the dimwit.”

Then he punches out Paolucci for calling Chloe a bitch in 1x05. Chloe tells him not to, that she can handle her own problems, and Lucifer not only tells her that she absolutely can but also clarifies to Paolucci before punching him that he’s not sticking up for Chloe. But the message is pretty obvious all the same: if you have a problem with her, I have a problem with you.

Chloe then refuses to call him a liar at Perry Smith’s trial in 2x10.

There is no one - not one single person - in Lucifer’s life who hasn’t betrayed him when it mattered. Even Maze, his oldest friend and closest confidante, goes behind his back in S1 to get them both sent back to Hell against Lucifer’s wishes.

Calling him a liar would benefit Chloe. She has a vested interest in getting her father’s killer convicted. She’s been offered the guy’s own lawyer’s help in getting a guilty verdict, if she humiliates Lucifer.

Anyone else in his life would absolutely take those terms.

But she not only refuses to turn on him, she tells an entire room full of people that he never lies, that he’s the best partner she has ever had, and that a) she knows she can rely on him and b) she wants him to know he can rely on her.

There’s an added layer of meaning in that the person she’s taking on is Charlotte. Chloe doesn’t know that she’s Lucifer’s mom, or what she’s really capable of, but Charlotte herself (without Goddess attached) has a reputation for being ruthless, surrounded by shady people, and an absolute shark in the courtroom. Having Charlotte defending him vastly increases Perry’s chances of getting away with murdering Chloe’s dad. It goes against Chloe’s own interests to defend Lucifer.

But she does anyway.

+1. Spawn Care

This one is...pretty much pure headcanon, but two things are clear from canon:

1. If Maze’s family is typical for demons, their family bonds are neither close nor particularly affectionate, but

2. They do/are meant to have some input in raising their children - Maze talks about teaching young to hunt as a parental/family responsibility.

Lucifer becomes a major adult in Trixie’s life by default thanks to his relationship with Chloe, but despite his intense dislike of children in general, he actually tries really hard to be good at it.

Lucifer doesn’t have a model of good parental behaviour to draw on. Chloe is the first competent, loving parent he’s spent any large amount of time with. What he has is an eternity’s worth of child abuse, gaslighting, manipulation and scapegoating by his own family. But if you look at how he treats Trixie, he puts a lot of effort into not just tolerating Trixie for Chloe’s sake, but being a good influence - or, what he considers a good influence - and a third parent-type figure for her.

In 1x01, he intervenes immediately when he notices Trixie’s distressed by Dan and Chloe arguing in front of her. It comes across as a throwaway comment, but it seamlessly breaks up their hostility by redirecting Dan’s attention and deflecting the shot he takes at Lucifer.

In the same episode, he also takes enough of a liking to Trixie (or Chloe) that he takes it upon himself to scare the bejeezus out of her bully, even though the kid is like 12 and has not done anything as heinous as the shit that normally makes him show suspects his eyes/face.

In 2x02, he spends a large part of the episode arguing on Trixie’s behalf that Chloe should get her the doll, to the point of telling Chloe she’s being a bad parent. Which would be a really petty and honestly irrelevant hill to die on, except that Lucifer’s own upbringing was horrific and he honestly believes she’s somehow damaging Trixie emotionally here. He doesn’t want her to end up with the kind of issues he has. He’s genuinely trying to advocate for her. And when Chloe doesn’t listen to him, he buys the damn doll himself and tells Chloe she can say it’s from her, because he’s very invested in a) Trixie’s wellbeing and b) Chloe’s being a good mother.

In the 2x07 sandwich scene, he actually seems disappointed that Trixie doesn’t challenge him over stealing her sandwich - he even asks Chloe is she always like this, like her generosity is a fault. My personal headcanon is that demon spawn would’ve done exactly that - he’s not exactly family, but he’s close enough that he’s a safe bet to practice one’s intimidation skills on, because he’d never really harm Trixie. He’s trying to teach her something, something he knows she won’t learn from her human parents. Maze contributes to raising Trixie by teaching her to fight (and babysitting) and Lucifer is doing the same, trying to pass on what he considers a useful life skill - something that has probably helped keep him alive in Hell for billions of years. When Trixie leaps off her stool and runs at him, his flinch/hands raised/ “GAH!” reaction looks overdramatic even for him; maybe if she hadn’t given him five and raced off, he might have handed over the sandwich and considered it lesson learned.

And in 2x15, he offers her driving lessons in exchange for her playing along with his trip to the school, which says a lot about how much he really likes her: he intends to teach her himself, and in his own car. The Corvette. His baby. Lucifer does all sorts of shady shit through his favours; finding someone to safely teach an eight year old to drive should be easy!

(Also, honorable mention for him hulking the fuck out when Tiernan’s gunmen threaten Trixie and Eve in his penthouse. Was there any need to shatter his own wall? Probably not. Did he do it anyway? Absolutely. Because children are hideous little creatures but that one is his hideous little creature.)

In conclusion: Lucifer is not remotely subtle about his feelings, Maze feels highkey sick watching them interact Ever, and Chloe’s thing with Pierce throws him so off guard partly because they’ve been in the Hell equivalent of A Relationship for like three years.

#lucifer on netflix #lucifer on fox #deckerstar #stepdevil #lucifer morningstar #chloe decker #this is SO LONG and kinda rambly but i have A LOT of feelings and this fandom is rly nice so #FLINGS THIS INTO THE VOID #also i have Many Thoughts on demon culture and how their society & interpersonal relationships work #anyway lmao #grown ass man? no he babey #lucifer in hell #lucifer headcanons

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blog-sliverofjade · 4 years

Text

Hearth Fires 10: The Meaning of Pack

Pairing: Remi Denier x OFC

Summary: Lorel Maddox just wants to live as a human, run her bakery in peace, and forget. Unfortunately, the alpha of the local leopard pack has very different ideas.

Remi Denier doesn’t know what to make of the female Changeling who wants nothing to do with him or the RainFire pack. He does know that he has a driving need to protect her. Even if it’s from herself.

While they’re embroiled in a battle of wills, there’s a war brewing on the horizon. The outside threat could not only destroy everything they hold dear, but tear apart the fragile new bonds of the Trinity Accord, plunging the world into bloodshed to rival the Territorial Wars of centuries past.

Word count: 3318

Content warning: Contains racial assault on an interracial (human and changeling) gay couple. Singh doesn't mention homophobia iirc in the series, so I left that possible element out because I felt that I couldn't include both adequately. I wrote Stian as submissive because I'd like to see more of them- and a dominant would've pounded the humans into paste- not because he's gay.

Hearth Fires Masterlist

Beta read by the transcendent pandabearer

“Lo’el!” A cheerful cry pulled her from daydreams of apples crisp, tart, and bright green baked into galettes and strudels. She turned from the pie display she was re-stocking in time to catch a tiny whirlwind in her arms.

“Hi, Jojo.” The girl’s deep brown skin was flushed with excitement. Her black hair was pulled back on either side of her head, French braids running along the top, and terminated in two high bobbly buns that looked somewhat like ears. Operating on deep-seated instincts, she hitched the girl on her hip. The warm weight of her little body tucked against her own felt right in a way she’d never experienced before and she allowed herself to take comfort in the sensation. “What’re you doing down here?” she asked.

The small downtown park was bustling with shoppers looking for fall produce, pumpkins, or in the case of the highly organized, holiday gifts. It seemed like the whole town came out to enjoy one of the last open-air markets of the season before moving to a smaller indoor version for the winter.

“Pun’kins!” She flung her arms in the air like gourds were the best thing ever and Lorel quickly put a hand on her back to help steady the girl, but she needn’t have worried. Jojo was a cat and had the requisite balance.

“Are you here to get pumpkins or were you hoping I’d giving you something that looks like a pumpkin?” As she talked, she turned to check on her newest employee, Irena, who was already competently handling the steady stream of customers. Her predecessor, a cousin of the blonde Madison, had quit after the Incident, as Lorel was calling it, in solidarity with her relative. Crows weren’t considered birds of prey and therefore exempt from the rules regarding predators sharing territory.

Jojo’s eyes slid to the sugar cookies cut in the distinctive shape and decorated accordingly. Long, angelic lashes batted beatifically up at her and she had to fight a smile even as her heart melted in the face of such cuteness.

“Careful, if you feed them they’ll never go away.” Angel, the unbelievably handsome man from RainFire, strolled up in Jojo’s wake. A boy not much older than Jojo orbited him, looking like a miniature version of the man in matching jeans and a red flannel shirt. He even had tiny coordinating work boots. The combination of gorgeous man and darling munchkin was too much for one poor bystander. Lorel winced in sympathy when the other woman walked into a pole.

Taking the teasing warning as permission, she gave cookies to all three of them, received unprompted thank yous, and she happily participated in the routine exchange, knowing that consistency was important for cubs. It took her a second to correct her mental wording to the more appropriate “kids.” Hanging out with changelings was giving her bad habits.

“No cookie for you?” An adorable frown from Jojo. Lorel’s poor heart couldn’t take it, she cast about for some excuse that wouldn’t plant the seeds of body image issues in a young psyche.

“I don’t want to spoil my lunch.” That appeared to mollify Jojo, finally taking a bite of the treat, and she jumped out of her arms. Lorel’s heart stopped for a moment. The organ stuttered back to life when the girl landed easily and lightly on her trademark purple boots. She and her friend wandered to investigate the blown glass suncatchers at the booth a few feet over; Angel turned to keep them in sight, his stance relaxed, but she had no doubt that he’d turn lethal in an eyeblink at the sign of any danger.

“Did you come down for the market?” asked Lorel when she could properly breathe again.

“The pack has a booth.” Angel nodded his head towards what she assumed was its general location. “Jojo had to come say hi to you, probably because she’s figured she can scam you out of cookies.” He shot her a smile that would have made any other woman swoon, but Lorel liked her men a little rougher, less pretty and more rugged.

“I’ll have to be careful in case she tells all her friends and they decide to gang up on me for the mother lode,” she laughed. The ocelot, which was sedate to the point of laziness for once, laughed at the idea of being swarmed by cubs nearly as big as it was, and they’d probably love it, too. “What do ya’ll sell?”

“Pumpkins, mushrooms, leafy green stuff, things people have made. You focus on local vendors?” She followed his gaze to the sign on the table that proclaimed as much. “If you’re looking for a supplier, we have berries, too: blue, black, elder, currants... I’m sure we could cut you a deal.”

Damn cats were worming their way into her life.

The boy wandered back and tugged on Angel’s pant leg, who crouched to hear what he had to say. A man across the way stared at what must have been an exquisite derriere because he spilled the sample of apple cider he was pouring for a potential customer.

“Can we go play in the water?” The boy twisted his body back and forth the way that kids do when they need to lay the cute on thick to get what they want.

“I suppose it’s the quickest way to clean you cookie monsters up. Or I could just toss you in the river.” Using his thumb, he wiped an orange crumb off the boy’s chin, who giggled at the teasing

“Can Lo’el come, too?” asked Jojo.

“Oh honey, I have to stay here and help Irena,” she began, gesturing at the crow who was refilling a sample plate

Twin pairs of innocent eyes stared up at her in appeal. Seriously, they should be considered deadly weapons and she was looking down a double barrel. Looking to Angel for help did no good, he just tucked his hands under his armpits and shook his head with a grin. It looked like she was on her own.

“And who are these cuties?” Having come over at the sound of her name, Irena eyed the trio of cats, stopping on Angel and then coming back for seconds. Apparently, she preferred her men pretty.

“Irena, meet troublemakers one, two, and three. Known aliases are Jojo, Angel, and peeshwank,” Lorel pointed at each of them in turn. She didn’t know the boy’s name, but she’d overheard Remi call him that the other night. Sometimes having acute hearing was actually useful.

“I’m Darin! Only Remi calls me peeshwank,” he giggled and revealed a missing front tooth.

“They’re trying to get me to play hooky.” Hands on her hips, she mock scowled. None of them appeared the least bit fazed. If anything, the kids turned the charm factor up a notch, something she wouldn’t have thought possible.

“Go play with the cublets, I’ll be fine here. Like you said, the breakfast crowd’s already come through so I won’t have to beat off the ravening hordes,” the traitor smiled reassuringly and made shooing motions with both hands, then leaned in close to whisper, “As long as you get me his phone number.” The slender brunette pulled away with a wink.

Lorel sighed in feigned resignation and held out her hands like she was about to be handcuffed. Two soft, little hands took each of hers and dragged her into the throng of shoppers, Angel close on her heels.

“Don’t worry, I won’t give her anything without your say so,” she said to him over her shoulder. Bumping into someone, she had to return her attention to where she was going.

“Thank you,” came the quiet response.

Where the kids’ smaller size allowed them to dodge easily, she was pulled into obstacles, but she didn’t let go for fear of losing them. The thought that they might get lost or hurt had her tightening her grip and bracing herself against the jostling.

While she was just over five feet tall, she was far from slender and never would be, to her grandmother’s chagrin. She was acutely conscious of her ample hips knocking into people and she did her best to make herself as small as possible. Each bump, no matter how brief, had her ocelot snarling in irritation and it took all of her concentration to remain in control. The crowd pressed in around her until all she could see was Darin and Jojo in front of her. Her palms grew clammy, but the kids didn’t seem to mind. A dull roar filled her ears, allowing only the loudest sounds through, and those were sharp and intense. Throat tightening, she fought for each breath.

The ocelot pressed hard against its cage, sandwiching her between it and the pressure of the crowd. How she managed to arrive at the splash pad, even though it was only fifty meters away, without going clawed, she had no idea. More than anything, she was glad that her tiny guides didn’t have so much as a scratch on them. Angel probably would have torn her to pieces for harming them. And she’d let him.

The kids stripped down to swimsuits underneath their clothing. Darin was so eager he forgot to unbutton his flannel shirt and ended up stuck with it around his nose.

“Help!” he pleaded, turning to Lorel, his arms above his head and his face obscured by red-plaid.

Moving automatically despite the strange sensation of not feeling fully present in her body, she crouched and carefully helped free the boy. Once released, he beamed and wrapped his soft arms around her neck. She froze with one hand tentatively curving around his back. A wet kiss against her cheek and he was off to run through the water spraying from colourful flowers sculpted from metal. Some of his packmates were already there and greeted him with shrieks of welcome, their happiness no longer piercing to her senses.

A large, warm hand settled on her shoulder. It felt strange and soothing all at once and she couldn’t bring herself to shrug it off. Angel helped her to her feet and opened his arms wide in an offer of a hug.

The leopards were so relaxed and comfortable with one another, sharing platonic hugs and kisses, casually holding hands. It hurt to look at them like they were a blazing fire and she was stuck out in the cold darkness, looking in. And now one was extending that comfort to her.

Although she wasn’t raised to accept casual physical contact, even platonically, from men, she stepped into his arms. It was like a long, cool drink of water after working for hours in the hot sun without a break. The sudden absence of a deep-seated pain she’d learned to deal with long ago made her nearly sag in relief.

This had nothing to do sex. She didn’t feel any attraction either to or from him, yet she needed the chaste affection and she soaked it up as long as he would allow her.

“We aren’t meant to be alone. Sure, some of us are more solitary than others, but we’re not meant to be cut off from our kind entirely. I can’t think of a worse life for a changeling.” He rubbed large circles on her back and she fought back a purr.

“Maybe it’s a nature vs. nurture thing. If you’re raised in a pack, of course you wouldn’t do well on your own.” Even she didn’t believe her own words.

“And how do you know you won’t be better off in a pack?”

A knot of packmates moved out of Remi’s way as he burst into the emergency room. The triage nurse took one look, recognized him, and hit the button that unlocked the security door that led into the depths of the department. The door shut behind him with a metallic click as he strode down the sterile, off-white hallway to where Theo stood guard outside of a cubicle.

A lean blonde man lay on a narrow bed, his normally bronzed skin was ashen and spattered with carmine. Catching sight of Remi in the doorway, he gave a crooked smile around a split in his lip and raised his hand in greeting.

“What the fuck happened?” Remi growled at the sentinel. The bad-tempered demand earned him a sharp look of reproach from Finn as he worked on the injured male in the treatment room; the wounded non-dominant didn’t need any more stress, least of all from his fucking alpha.

It seemed like his vocal chords were stuck in a semi-shift for the past two weeks and everything came out a snarl. That was part of the reason why he’d been running along the eastern border, channelling excess energy and inspecting the new security precautions, instead of sleeping.

Taking a deep, calming breath, he forced his voice into a more normal register. “What happened?” There, that sounded a little less like he was about to go on a murderous rampage.

“Stian and Leandro were leaving Acapella when they got jumped.” The lounge was popular with most segments of the population, even the psy who were exploring life outside of the emotionless discipline of Silence. While the telepathic race couldn’t drink since alcohol wreaked havoc on their abilities, Acapella was known for their extensive mocktail menu. The trendy venue was hardly known for drunken brawls. As far as Remi knew, the most violent incident that had occurred there was a spat two years before between a couple of drag queens over stealing someone’s routine.

“There were four or five human guys.” All RainFire members were trained in at least basic hand-to-hand combat. Five human men shouldn’t have been able to take a leopard, even a non-dominant. And Leandro, while human and untrained, was bigger than Stian.

“First one jumped out of the alley and hit him in the face with a baseball bat, breaking his nose. The wind was blowing the wrong way for him to catch a scent.” Claws pricked at Remi’s fingertips, the urge to hunt boiling to the surface.

“This was planned.” That time he didn’t bother to keep the cat out of his voice. “A group of drunks looking for a fight don’t use tactics designed to circumvent our sense of smell.”

“And they weren’t playing baseball at one in the morning, either,” agreed Theo. The man who was gentle with their most vulnerable and loved to play with the cubs was gone; only the lethal predator remained. A passing nurse started to admire him until they caught the dangerous aura he emanated, then quickly scuttled past even though his eyes hadn’t even flashed cat. The hindbrain of every creature knew how to recognize a predator no matter what skin they wore. “They took him down while he was stunned. One kicked him, possibly with steel-toes, while the other used the bat, and the rest went after Leandro.”

“Leandro, he ok?” The human male wasn’t one of his, but he was important to Stian. Finn did something that eased the grimace on Stian’s wan face and Remi’s urge to kill something eased down a tick.

“A little beat up, but he’s ok.” Theo blew out a breath and scrubbed an eyebrow with a thumbnail, then his quiet bass dropped to barely a whisper too quiet for Stian to hear. “You know his family wasn’t thrilled he was dating a changeling? This was too much on top of that, apparently.”

Remi turned the air blue. “Any witnesses?”

“No descriptions, either,” Theo shook his head. “Dark, non-descriptive clothing and hoodies obscured their faces on CCTV footage.”

More cursing.

“Thanks.” He clapped the sentinel on the shoulder. “We’ll talk later, this shit ain’t your fault. Go, be with the others before they storm the place for an update.”

“It’s not your fault either.” He fixed Remi with a firm look and then strode down the hallway, pressed the button that released the door for those exiting, and went to give an update to the waiting packmates.

Maybe not, but he could’ve at least fucking been there when Enforcement was getting his statement instead of brooding in the woods in the middle of the night like a fucking wolf. Next thing he knew, he’d be howling at the goddamn moon.

Cell reception could be spotty in the mountains, texts were the best method of communication once he was within range. Theo’s message had come in when he was on his way back, which meant Remi made it to the hospital soon after Stian’s statement had been taken. The distance, the adrenaline, and the fact that there wasn’t a bloodbond between the two of them combined meant Remi hadn’t felt the assault. Although he definitely felt it when Finn pulled energy from him to heal the worst of Stian’s wounds.

An alpha was supposed to be there for everyone in his pack.

Comforting others didn’t come easily to him; it was difficult to give something he didn’t have much experience receiving. With the cubs it was easy since they were easy to love and care for, the same way he’d been loved and petted when his mother was still alive. Steeling himself, Remi rapped on the door frame of the cubicle as he entered.

“How ya feeling?” he placed a hand on Stian’s shoulder, grounding him with the touch of pack, of his alpha, while Finn continued stitching up a cut on the other man’s side.

“Like hell.” A faint smile that didn’t disturb the deep purpling bruises that mottled his face.

“You look like it.” Yeah, it was definite: when it came to compassion, he definitely was the worst. “But you’ll be back to your pretty surfer boy looks in no time.”

Snorting, Stian scratched at his close-trimmed beard where a patch of dried blood stained the blonde hair rust red. Pale, almost colourless, eyes dropped to the blanket tucked around him.

“I’m sorry about Leandro.”

“Yeah, well, other fish in the sea,” he shrugged, then winced when his body protested the movement. “I can’t really blame him, the garbage they were spewing…” He shook his head. “Those assholes called him an ‘animal fucker’ and ‘race traitor’ like it’s 1982 and not 2082! But I can blame him for breaking up with me in a text message.”

Remi placed his other hand over the male’s, which was fisted in the blanket; small nicks, scrapes, and more bruises from defending himself marked his lightly tanned skin.

“I can’t even tell you what they looked or smelled like. I’m s-sorry.” Big fat tears that he’d been holding back spilled over to roll down his face and soak into his beard. The salt in his split lip had to hurt like a sonuvabitch, yet he didn’t wince. “T-they were wearing d-dark hoodies.”

“Hey, look at me.” Keeping his tone gentle, Remi moved his hand from Stian’s shoulder to the side of his neck. Those icy blue eyes filled with anguish turned to him. “They used tactics to avoid identification, they were prepared. You survived, that’s all you had to do.”

“I c-couldn’t protect him.”

“That bastard didn’t deserve it anyway.” A laugh that was part sob. “At least, tell me they messed up his face, too. Lark’s coming to keep you company. I told Angel to stay home, having him around right now would be adding insult to injury.” More shaky laughter in nervous relief.

“Whatever you need, you ask for it, ya hear me?” Remi clasped Stian in a careful hug and wondered how he was going to hunt down the fuckers who’d done this. He fucking hated feeling helpless, especially when one of his people were hurt, but he could do nothing less because otherwise that meant he couldn’t protect his own.

And an alpha who couldn’t protect was no alpha at all.

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tanadrin · 4 years

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Reordberend

(part 25 of 30; first; previous; next)

The rest of the journey passed with little conversation, but now the silence was more comfortable. Katherine mulled over the conundrum of how to get the elders to listen to her. She watched Leofe, as they walked, and tried to imagine what it must have been like to have been born in the Valleys, to have grown up here amid the ice and stones. It was difficult, to say the least.

They spent the night at the mouth of the valleys, and in the morning they switched to snowshoes, to gently descend the long glacial tongue to the surface of the ice shelf below; from there, it was a straight shot across McMurdo Sound to Mount Erebus, which loomed now in the darkness only as an absence of stars. The open ice was the most treacherous part of the journey: cracks could open up here, as the ice shelf was squeezed through the narrow passage of the Sound, big enough to swallow you whole, and they had to go carefully. They spent two nights camping on the open ice, crammed into one tiny tent, huddled together for warmth. On the morning of the third day, though, they found their path forward blocked by an enormous crevasse, which forced them to go south, to try to circle around it. Eventually, they realized, it ran all the way to the coast of the island; the quickest thing to do was to head straight for McMurdo Station, and go overland up the mountain.

At first, Katherine was kind of excited to see the ruins. Once upon a time, McMurdo Station had been a major scientific and transport hub for a huge part of Antarctica, a waystation on the way to the South Pole. But it had been abandoned a long time ago, and it was one of the few old scientific sites that hadn’t been reclaimed by the Antarctic Authority. On closer inspection, though, Katherine could safely say it was the creepiest place on the continent. It didn’t help that the aurorae australis were glowing a sickly green hue as they approached. Skeletal buildings, ravaged as much by the People’s salvage as by the weather, stood out the slopes, and old radar domes cracked and open to the sky. They spent the night in a mostly-intact building on the edge of the base, and Katherine could have sworn she heard what sounded like animals scurrying around in the ruins.

The actual mountain ascent was not so difficult, although it took another two days. The People had cut a path on the western side of the mountain, so they approached from that side. The ground was icy, but the weather was good. “We would have to wait for it to clear if it was not,” Leofe said. “You cannot climb the mountain in fog.”

On the second day of climbing, by midafternoon--right when Katherine’s legs were threatening to give up for good--Leofe held out her hand to stop Katherine. “We’re here,” she said. The last hundred meters or so were up wide stone steps, which ended at a great tunnel mouth, bored straight into the mountainside. “We go carefully from here,” Leofe said. “If the wind is bad, dangerous fumes can rise from the crater.”

“This is where you build your temple?”

“If the wind is favorable--well, you’ll see.”

The tunnel ran straight for fifty meters; it opened out onto a wide porch that had been cut back into the side of the crater, with a protective stone overhang. Rough pillars supported it, and pairs of steps off to either side led up to narrow paths around the inside of the crater rim.

“Jesus Christ,” Katherine said. “How was this place built?”

The view was clear, for the moment; clumps of steam or vapor clung to the stony slope here and there, gases leaking from vents that led to Mount Erebus’s fiery interior. Far, far below, and almost at the other side of the crater, there was a sullen red glow visible from within a cloud of smoke.

“Is that--”

“Molten stone, yes. The fire rises to the surface here; it is often restless.”

“Is this safe?” Katherine asked.

Leofe rolled her eyes. “It’s a volcano.”

Katherine walked to the edge of the stone balcony. Here and there--possibly at regular intervals, although it was hard to tell because of the clouds--great pillars with tops shaped like animal or human heads gazed out over the scene. There were steps that led further down into the crater, although Katherine couldn’t see how far. It was an austere and threatening landscape; Katherine could also appreciate its beauty. A bright aurora glowed in the sky overhead, illuminating the whole thing in pale light. Katherine could see why they called it the Fane of Awe.

How long had it taken to build this place? Even with handheld laser cutters, the stone pillars had had to be hauled up here, had to be raised in the smoking crater, when the fires were low and the wind was strong enough to dissipate the volcanic fumes. The climb up the mountain had been exhausting enough unencumbered. Katherine couldn’t imagine hauling enormous blocks of shaped stone up the slope as well. How would you even begin to do that? Or maybe they had quarried it close by, but that was still heavy work. It would have been many, many years of labor. Seasonal, probably. Done in summer. The tunnel itself and the porch of stone would have taken even longer to cut through, but the evidence of her experience so far was that the People were patient, and were not afraid of difficult labor.

She found Leofe back near the entrance, kneeling down and taking some small objects out of her pack.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I have some… things I must do.”

“Sure. The rites. Wulf said. I’ll, uh, come back later.” Katherine thought about exploring the crater, but she didn’t know much about volcanoes, and she didn’t like the look of the clouds coming up from the ground. Instead, she went back out, and decided to go for a walk up near the crater rim. The ground here was steep, although not terribly treacherous. She tested each step carefully, bracing herself with her staff in case her footing failed. After another thirty minutes or so, she was at the crater edge.

The lava lake was still visible, far below, although partly shrouded in clouds. McMurdo Sound was a pale swathe of ice, ten or fifteen kilometers off. The mountains along the coast were just barely visible. The wind here was fierce, bitterly cold, colder than anything she’d felt in her life. But God in Heaven, it was a beautiful view. In some ways, perhaps, she had shared the experiences of the People, clutching as a child after something sacred in a world in which the sacrosanct seemed to hold little meaning. But in other ways, their perspective was completely different. Katherine’s experience of church was the plain, low meeting house, whose only adornment might be a picture of Jesus on the wall. Simple wooden benches, a hard concrete floor, a plain white exterior. Some of the meeting houses in Sand Mountain didn’t even have running water. God--awe, if you like--was an internal experience in those places. A thing you contemplated, which rose up within your mind and your heart, which grew out of your faith and your desire to feel it. Here, though, the sacred was an immutable and implacable fact of the world. It would be here, whether you cared to experience it or not. And if you did, it would shout itself forth from every hill and every stone and every patch of ice, and it would overwhelm you. Even the great cathedrals of old Europe could not match this. They were in comparison the feeble attempts of human hands to imitate what nature had been doing for millions of years. Or billions. To imitate a thing which shot through every atom of the universe, every star and every planet, the fractal majesty of existence that you only really appreciated when you stood in a place where survival was almost, almost--but not quite--impossible.

Katherine had read once, in her high school science textbook, that there was a rock they had once found in Australia that was four and a half billion years old. It was so old that it had formed when the surface of the Earth was half-molten, when the air was still toxic, when the oceans had just begun to form. There was a picture. And something about that picture suddenly made everything the book was talking about feel real, in a way that dry numbers like “four and a half billion” never could on their own. A sense of the enormous weight of time had staggered her, and she had stared at the photograph, trying to understand. For millions of years afterward, the Earth had no continents, only craggy islands of rock that had not yet accreted into the ancient cratons. Even once life emerged, for three and a half billion years--for three quarters of the span of life of the entire planet--it had been single-celled organisms confined to the seas. If you had been an observer on the ancient Earth, fixed in place at the dawn of time and forced to observe the slow march of geologic time across the surface, then for the overwhelming majority of the world’s history, for a span of time longer than the human mind was capable of understanding on any level, the world had been empty. Barren. Bereft of voices. Bereft of names. Silent provinces, whole nameless countries, continents, cataclysms had come and gone, with no one to see them, no one to name them, no one to record their passage. And only late--in the last five hundred million years or so--had a riot of life burst forth. And only in the last eyeblink, since the retreat of the glaciers, had humans swept across the world to give all these things names and meaning and histories, but of all these places, Antarctica had been empty the longest. And even then, for a long time, we had come and gone as phantoms, she thought; not until the People came did they begin to let their names and their stories sink into the Earth. Not until the People came did anyone call Antarctica home.

She stood there as long as she could stand it--ten minutes, maybe, no more--before making her way back down the slope to the entrance of the fane.

By the time she returned, Leofe was apparently done with her business. She had set up their tent in a sheltered alcove in the passageway, and Katherine was terribly grateful they would at least be out of the wind tonight. They built a small fire on the stone floor, and warmed their hands for a little while, before making dinner, and settling down to bed.

Katherine lay awake that night, listening to the wind howl against the tunnel entrance. It felt wrong, somehow, to try to sleep at the summit of an active volcano. The kind of act of hubris the Greek gods would punish you for.

“Leofe?” she said quietly. “Leofe. Are you asleep?”

“Grnk.”

Katherine rolled over, doing her best not to jostle her bunkmate. She lay there a little longer.

“Hey Leofe. Do you want to come with me in the spring? We can leave together. If you want.”

The wind howled louder.

“Leofe?”

“Hbble.”

Katherine closed her eyes, and did her best to sleep. Her dreams that night were jumbled, and the next morning all that she could remember was that they were filled with fire.

#tanadrin's fiction

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andithiel · 5 years

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Potter stinks

My latest prompt for Drarryland @gameofdrarry. Rated M to be safe (due to language and suggestive themes), ns*w under cut. Thanks a million to my wonderful friend @kristinabrd for betaing this.

Drarry | Mature | 984 words | AO3 link

Harry's been twitchy ever since he was disguised as Draco with Polyjuice potion. He couldn't have discovered Draco's tattoo, could he?

~*~*~*~

Normally this is Draco’s favourite part of a case. Granted, it’s tedious work, filling out reports, but the satisfaction of a closed case and captured criminals lingers in his mind and puts a soft glow on everything, including the Ministry approved standard parchment. Plus he gets to use his fancy custom made peacock quill.

Today, however, is another thing entirely. Or really, the whole week has passed in this fashion he thinks with a frown as Harry for the umpteenth time opens his mouth and draws a deep breath only to let it out without saying anything, ducking his head and scratching his nose. Draco feels like hexing Harry into the next week as he continues shifting in his seat, tapping his Muggle pen on his desk.

”What?” Draco finally snaps.

Harry looks up at him, eyes wide. ”What?”

“Did you get “Antsy Pants” from one of the Granger-Weasley children?”

Harry frowns. “No.”

“Then why do you keep acting as if your chair is made of bowtruckles?”

Harry quickly ducks his head again. “No reason,” he mumbles, and Draco’s sure he can see a faint blush tinting his cheeks.

Draco gives him a sharp look but lets it go, returning to his paperwork. That is, until Harry leans back in his chair, making it squeak.

Again.

Draco is up and in front of Harry in an eyeblink.

“Tell me,” he snarls, towering over Harry, who glances up at him with a constipated look.

“No,” he says, eyes flitting around the room.

“Tell me what happened,” Draco says in his most intimidating voice. “You’ve been twitchy ever since…,” he trails off. Ever since Harry was disguised as Draco with Polyjuice potion, Draco slowly realises. He narrows his eyes at Harry. “Tell. Me.”

Harry looks like he’s fighting an internal battle, his cheeks go redder than Draco has ever seen them.

“Why do you have a tattoo that says ‘Potter stinks’?!” he finally blurts.

Draco flinches, reclining at Harry’s words.

“I mean, why would that be so important to you that you would put that permanently on your body?” Harry says, actually sounding a bit hurt.

Draco pinches the bridge of his nose. Fuck. The one thing he doesn’t want Harry to know about him. The number one thing that has kept him from trying to move things further with Harry. Because Merlin knows he wants to. He really, really wants to.

“I got it when I was drunk in Ibiza. Pansy, Blaise and I were really out of it one night and they talked me into getting it. I… It was just before you and I got partnered, before we became... friends. They told me it would be fun, that it would be our secret, our ‘fuck off’ to everyone looking down on us for being... foolish during the war.” He sighs. ”Obviously I never meant for you to see it.”

Harry shifts in his seat again and Draco hears his own words replaying in his head. “Wait.”

Harry makes an impressive imitation of a turtle trying to draw its head back in its shell. Draco places his hands on either side of Harry, making his chair tilt up a bit.

“How did you see that tattoo, Harry?” Draco says in his silkiest voice. “It’s not located at a place on my body one would see if one follows protocol and simply takes the potion and changes into the proper clothing.

Harry doesn’t answer, but Draco practically sees his thoughts running wild inside his head.

“Harry?” Draco says softly, menacingly. He leans in closer, voice barely a whisper as he says “I could always use Legilimency, of course.”

Harry shivers, but seems more aroused than afraid, and Draco tries hard to ignore what that does to him.

“What would I see then, hmm Harry?” Draco murmurs in Harry’s ear. “Would I see myself standing in front of the mirror, sliding my hands over my chest?” He lets one hand trail along the buttons on Harry’s robes. “Would I see me cupping my cock, already half hard from watching my body?” He stops his hand to hover over Harry’s crotch, delighting in the sharp intake of breath. “And would I see my other hand wander backwards, to the cleft of my arse? Did you turn around so you could get a nice long look at my firm arse, and that’s when you saw it?” He smirks. ”Twelve little letters,” he says in a sing-song voice, ”black ink against pale skin written across the small of my back. Potter. Stinks. Is that what happened?”

Harry’s only answer is a faint whimper, his breathing heavy now.

“Tell me,” Draco whispers, resisting the urge to flick out his tongue at Harry’s ear. “Is that. What happened?”

“Yes.” Harry’s voice is raspy when he finally speaks.

Draco leans back and perches on the edge of Harry’s desk, arms crossed. “And...?”

Harry’s eyes are dark, the bulge in his trousers obvious despite the thick, practical material. He licks his lips. “And now all I can think about is how I want to look at it again as I bend you over your desk, all over your neatly organized papers, and shove my cock inside that firm arse,” he growls.

Through sheer willpower Draco manages not to moan.

“Well. You’ve been a very naughty boy for looking at me without my permission, so I can’t reward you with that just yet,” he says with a swish of his wand to close and ward their office door. “But I think I know a way for you to start making it up to me,” he continues, yanking Harry up by the front of his robes. “Strip.”

Harry hesitates a fraction of a second before nodding, his eyes on Draco’s mouth. “Yes,” he whispers.

“Yes, what?” Draco says, pulling Harry closer.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good boy,” Draco purrs, settling in Harry’s vacated chair. ”Start the show.”

#drarry #drarry squad #gameofdrarry #drarryland #auror partners #polyjuice potion #implied dom draco #tattoo #draco malfoy #harry potter #my fic #my drabble #andithielwrites

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ducksbellorum · 4 years

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the flower and the flame (listen/download)

a gale hawthorne/peeta mellark mix - the hunger games fandom - arranged by ducksbellorum

Kiss With A Fist Florence + the Machine Blood sticks, sweat drips Break the lock if it don’t fit A kick in the teeth is good for some A kiss with a fist is better than none There’s always been tension between Peeta and Gale. No one really knows why: maybe jealousy, maybe a weird sort of affection, maybe they sense they’re both fond of the same girl. Even they aren’t sure, but their fights are a fact of life, a universal constant that’s always been. Their mutual grievance manifests in everything from the all-out tussles when they were small to sniping comments now that they’re grown. Gale doesn’t like Peeta. Peeta doesn’t like Gale. It’s akin to pulling the pigtails of the girl you like, but neither realize it.

Live It Out Metric Look at you, I know I’m already dead No concrete adversity Only traps of our own actions How we wanted it to be When Peeta leaves for the Hunger Games, it’s like a death sentence. It doesn’t hit him at first, but one night on the train he realizes that he’s pretty much already dead. So is Katniss too, if he’s really honest. His life wasn’t supposed to go like this, he wants to scream. But strangely, instead of himself or the girl in the next room, the person Peeta’s thinking about most is Gale. Gale, living the rest of his life in the coal mines, doing normal District 12 things. Like Peeta was meant to do. He wonders if Gale will remember him.

Intro xx Instrumental Gale doesn’t like Peeta. Peeta doesn’t like Gale. The Games didn’t change that. Except maybe they did. Maybe one day Gale finds his way over to Peeta’s house in Victor’s Village and doesn’t leave. Maybe they start talking, about the government, about the weather, about Katniss. Mostly about Katniss, the one thing they really have in common. Maybe it becomes a ritual: six days a week shalt Gale labor, and on the seventh day Gale visits Katniss and on the seventh night he sits with Peeta. And eventually they might realize that they really don’t mind each other’s company anymore.

Never Fall in Love Emilie Simon I am a flower And I hurt your hands Don’t say you love Don’t say you care Gale and Peeta have always been vastly different people. Gale is a fighter, a flare, a rebel to the bone. Peeta had always been a lover and a talker, more of a flower than any sort of fire. The Games changed that as well. Now instead of an innocent dandelion, Peeta’s changed into a rose with long and deadly thorns. This makes he and Gale more alike than either wants to admit. They won’t even admit that they’re friends yet. They can’t be friends, it’s not possible. And they certainly can’t be anything more. Not the flower and the flame.

Hands Open Snow Patrol It’s hard to argue when you won’t stop making sense But my tongue still misbehaves and it keeps digging my own grave Even their political views are different. Gale’s always wanted to go, to fight, to shoot up all the things and take back their freedom from the Capitol. Peeta’s quieter, diplomatic, more in favor of a peaceful approach. They argue about it a lot, but each has to acknowledge that the other makes a lot of sense. A year ago, before the Games, they wouldn’t have even listened to each other. But now there was respect and mutual admiration and maybe maybe some sort of affection. Neither is sure what it is. But they both know they want more of it.

The Walk Imogen Heap No it’s not meant to be like this. Not what I planned at all. I don’t want to feel like this. So that makes it all your fault The kiss comes out of nowhere, somewhere between ‘come inside’ and 'do you want tea’. It’s quick, over in an eyeblink, and it takes a minute for their brains to catch up with their lips. But then it does and…

Gale: “I have to go.”

Peeta, a hand on his arm: “Wait.”

They stare at each other for a long minute. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Gale says finally. “I don’t even like you.”

“I love Katniss. You love Katniss. We fight over Katniss. We don’t…”

“I guess we do.”

Another cavernous silence.

“Yeah, I guess we do.”

Sort Of Ingrid Michaelson And if I was stronger then I would tell you no And if I was stronger then I would leave this show And if I was stronger then I would up and go But here I am, and here we go again It goes slow from there. It’s like feeling their way through foreign territory, not knowing what to feel or how much to feel or if they felt anything at all. They continue to see Katniss independently of each other and after visiting her there’s always a short discussion along the lines of: “We can’t anymore. It’s Katniss. It’s always been Katniss. Stay away from me and stay away from her.” But it never lasts. Peeta says once, “If I were smarter or stronger, I’d tell you no and mean it.”

“Do you want to?” Gale asks.

Peeta never hesitates. “No.”

Ashamed Muse There’s always something that makes you guilty There’s still something that you’re dying to tell me Make sure no one finds out Tell me all about it Gale’s sure, and Peeta tells him, that in the Capitol and the other districts men can love men just as well as they love women. But Gale’s a country boy with country values. He’s not nearly as sanguine about the whole relationship with Peeta thing as Peeta is. He doesn’t know whether it’s right or wrong in the end, or how to justify his feelings with his fundamental upbringing. Sometimes he feels ashamed of Peeta, of what they’re doing, and then he feels guilty about feeling guilty. Nothing is simple and nothing is easy. But Peeta understands. Somehow Peeta always understands.

Warning Sign Coldplay I’ve gotta tell you what a state I’m in I’ve gotta tell you in my loudest tones That I started looking for a warning sign When the truth is, I miss you They’ve always known that anything they have together can’t last. The Capitol will eventually come in and screw everything over. Sure enough, when the Quarter Quell rolls around, they do. Katniss and Peeta are back to being lovers, back to fighting in the Games, and likely not coming back alive. It puts a strain on all of them, but especially the boys. Their tempers run short and they say things to each other that they never mean. Gale says he misses Peeta. Peeta says he’s still here, but they both know it’s not as true as it used to be.

Under the Sheets Ellie Goulding Where did the people go? My hands are empty You’re not the answer I should know Like all the boys before, like all the boys before Peeta’s a prisoner in the Capitol and all he sees on television is the girl on fire and the rebellion ruining the Capitol’s peace. They’ve put something in his veins and Katniss is all mixed up with terrible thoughts that don’t belong with her or do they. He’s not sure. But Katniss isn’t a good thought. He tries to focus on Gale then, on all the things Gale had told him about revolution and about love and the way Gale made him feel safe. But the idea of Gale gets twisted too and soon Gale isn’t a good thought either.

Love Lockdown Kanye West I’m not lovin’ you the way I wanted to Where I wanna go, I don’t need you I’ve been down this road, too many times before I’m not lovin’ you the way I wanted to Loving Peeta is ridiculous because Peeta is a traitor and Peeta is against everything Gale stands for. Plus there’s Katniss to consider. Gale doesn’t need Peeta, not emotionally or physically or anything. Certainly having any affection for Peeta is bad for his reputation, being as Gale’s the badass rebel soldier and Peeta’s a drugged-up, traitorous timebomb. That’s what he has to tell everyone else, and even himself.

Yet no matter how often he does this, Gale can’t help worrying about the boy and wanting him back. Yeah, so maybe it makes no sense. But that’s just the way it is.

Edge of Desire John Mayer Don’t say a word, just come over and lie here with me 'Cause I’m just about to set fire to everything I see I want you so bad, I’ll go back on the things I believe There I just said it, I’m scared you’ll forget about me Peeta can see Gale through the observation window of his hospital room. He can see the other boy staring in at him, never speaking, never moving, even when Peeta waves hello. Peeta still can’t remember everything right. He can’t remember why he hates Katniss so much, and he can’t remember anything about Gale. He just has a feeling that Gale was safe, that he could trust Gale. Peeta thought if only Gale would tell him what was right, he’d know. Gale never comes. Gale’s afraid to come, but Peeta can’t know that. All Peeta knows is that something is wrong.

2 Atoms in a Molecule Noah and the Whale Held together, holding each other With no one else in mind Like two atoms in a molecule Inseparably combined After everything is said and done and the rebellion is become the government, they talk again. There’s a lot of yelling and lot of accusation. Gale trying to justify the things Peeta has done and Peeta trying to reconcile his actions and Gale’s actions and both of them trying not to say I missed you. But after all the screaming, Peeta says softly, “I dreamed of you.” Gale tells him that it can’t be the way that it was. They both understand. But as they stand there looking at each other, they understand that maybe they could rebuild something better.

Fragment Trespassers William The only thing cautious now’s My hand not to break you I cannot promise any of the things I want to But I could not want this any fragment more than I do They build it up again. It’s slower this time, and less sure, but they do it. Before, Peeta had made promises and Gale had made plans and they’d dreamed together. But they were old now and the time for dreaming was long past. Peeta had Katniss and the children and Gale had his work in the new government. They didn’t see very much of each other. But they met as often as they could, just to talk, like old times. And yet, not like the old times at all. They could never love like that again. But they could remember.

Bonus: Dare You To Move Switchfoot Maybe redemption has stories to tell Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell Where can you run to escape from yourself? Where you gonna go? Gale and Peeta have a tradition when they’re together. They do shots and confess sins. It’s more comfortable than confessing to a priest and forgiveness is guaranteed. Plus you can drown your sorrows in Haymitch’s very best rotgut. Sometimes it gets silly, pranks and jokes and little things. But more often their sessions are serious. Gale remembering the bomb he’d designed consuming Katniss’ sister and Peeta reliving the death of everyone he’d killed in the Arena. They drink in silence. They can’t forgive themselves. But they can forgive each other, and maybe one day together they can start to heal.

#the hunger games #thg #peeta/gale #fanmix #fanfic

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dfcfanfics · 5 years

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What did you learn from writing Tyger?

Quite a few things, actually.

1) The Marinette Project wasn’t a fluke.

I started my fanfic career out with some one-shots, then a multichapter work (Reservations...) that was reasonably well-received. I then started out on The Marinette Project anticipating a similar reaction, only to watch the response from my readers take off big time, blowing away all of my expectations. (Seriously, folks, thank you.) Could I catch lightning in a bottle twice?

So I started writing Tyger, Tyger, and to my pleasant surprise, the reactions were just as positive and enthusiastic for that. That went a long way towards making me want to keep knocking these stories out for you all.

(Subsequent longfics haven’t hit those same heights... but one of those was somewhat my own fault, and I suspect the second may be due to fandom fatigue as much as any shortcomings therein.)

2) Excellent practice in handling original characters and inventing lore.

I had come up with villains-of-the-week in my other stories, as Hawkmoth needs _someone_ to be his sinister proxy each time... but for the most part, I had stayed away from OCs, as the general feedback I’d seen others receive was that they were somewhat frowned upon by many readers.

So I was a little apprehensive about this story, as it had several new elements to it. Feliss, my Tiger Kwami, was obviously a pure OC and central to the story. To make her work, I needed to make her feel as if she’d been there all along, making her fit into the Miracuverse instead of being a radically different concept. In musing on the nature of tigers, I decided she’d be best as a sly, manipulative sort; capable of great ferocity when roused, but just as dangerous when acting subtly. The contrast with Tikki came from Tikki tending to put “the job” and its related secrecy first; Feliss, on the other hand, saw that Marinette was already an excellent Ladybug and concentrated on building a better romantic Marinette.

Creating the friction between Tikki and Feliss was a lot of fun. Obviously, Tikki feels somewhat possessive over Marinette in general; inventing a longstanding rivalry between the two Kwamis upped those stakes. (Having the genesis of their enmity be a thousand years old added to the “she’s been there all along” feeling.) Tikki is a very valuable resource for Marinette’s personal growth, but one thing that she should _not_ be is always right on every subject. She has her own perspectives and biases, so I wanted Feliss to be a philosophical challenge to her; someone who _did_ have Marinette’s best interests at heart, but whose methods and principles were diametrically opposed to Tikki’s. Likewise, inventing history between her and the other main Kwamis (Plagg’s wariness of her, Wayzz’s outright terror) helped flesh her out.

At the time of writing this story, the Zodiac kwamis had never been shown on screen. (This was pre-Sandboy, in the Great Season 2 Hiatus.) This gave me some room for additional authorial license; _why_ are they all still in the box? How might they differ from the higher tiers? The “lower tiers influence personality more” concept was lots of fun to play with; it gave Marinette a lot of internal doubt as to her own amount of control, gave Zodiacs a reason to be a bit dangerous to use, and if anyone else felt inspired, gave other authors a concept to play with for them.

So I was _absolutely thrilled_ that the response to Feliss was universally positive. I think I got that one just right.

The other OC was my villain, Abby/Psiphon. She started out as a generic villain-of-the-week, but grew substantially as I considered her personality traits. What if... one of Hawkmoth’s Akumas just wasn’t cut out for the job? They’re not robots. They retain some personality. So I paired a new kind of hero -- a potentially vicious one in Tigresse, dangerous enough to give even Hawkmoth pause -- with a new kind of villain, one smart enough to see sharp claws coming and NOPE right the heck out of there. By the time her pillow fort came to me, I knew that Abby would be due for a lot more exploration, and she grew into a potential spinoff character. (Will I ever get around to writing that? Time will tell.)

3) Teenage hormones aren’t always containable.

I prefer a PG-rated Miracuverse. I don’t write aged-up smut; I don’t judge those who do, but I don’t feel much of a need to write it myself. I certainly don’t write 14-year-old smut. But I do acknowledge that both Marinette and Adrien have a lot of pent-up feelings, emotional drives and hormonal things going on, coupled with their complicated history together...

...so we had my first sloppy Marichat makeout moment. And that took some thought before writing it out.

Part one was the consent issue; was Marinette fully in control of her own actions? My emphatic answer is yes, though tempered with some confusion in her head over recent events. She was somewhat manipulated by Feliss, but definitely not controlled by her when it happened. The dubcon issues pinged just enough for me to add my first and last trigger warning, and to make sure that there wasn’t much ambiguity to it, i.e. Chat insisting that Marinette transform back and searching her eyes for Feliss’s gold signature before kissing her, and exploring their inner monologues and having them talk things out afterwards, working out why it happened. And _then_ go in for round two!

Part two was that this _wasn’t_ immediate couplehood. But it wasn’t just casual, either, by a long shot. Sometimes, teenagers do impulsive things. Sometimes, exploring a physical outlet for emotions (without going too far) just feels right at the time. Sometimes, it’s a way to express feelings without them being all-or-nothing. Sometimes, there are many levels in between True Love and Just Friends. And there’s nothing wrong with any of that! (Which was one of many lessons Feliss wanted Marinette to learn, and that Adrien learned as well.)

Part three was Chat’s transformation back to Adrien... and that worked out about as steamy as I can ever imagine writing these two. I love playing around with concepts of identity with Marinette and Adrien, and having Chat’s secret be one eyeblink away, having Adrien’s emotion just pouring out all the while was too delicious not to implement.

And part four was “what happens next?” Marinette was receptive to Feliss’s post-makeout briefing; she accepted that what happened was perfectly natural. But she also retained the sense to realize just how complicated things just became, and to seek help from Master Fu to try to rebalance things. That, I felt, was important.

4) The utter joy of receiving fanart.

The Marinette Project was popular... but it never got anything in the way of fanart from anybody. (I had two people ask about comic-izing it, but as of yet nothing has ever emerged from that.) So I was absolutely knocked off my feet when two wonderful people sent me artwork based on Tyger! @yunyin drew an adorable Tigresse out of the kindness of her heart, and then @brittsarts asked permission to start a comic version of the story that has done nothing but blow me away.

I absolutely love my readers’ feedback (even when it’s concrit), because it means that I created something and other people are paying attention to it. But when what I create inspires someone else to create as well? That’s the absolute jackpot, right there.

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jupitermelichios · 6 years

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Daughter of the Demon: on writing the Al Ghuls

I can’t make any promises about when the next chapter of Gotham Ghoul will go up, but I can make the promise that when it does, it will include the first appearance of Talia Al Ghul into the narrative proper.

She’s been there in the meta-narrative since the beginning, as she always is in stories featuring a younger Damian, but it’s been in hints and allusions. This will be her first chance to speak for herself.

And that got me thinking, about Talia as a character, about her history, and about the way I write her, and I thought I would share those thoughts with you here.

Talia, probably more than any other major DC character (certainly more than any other Major Bat-roster character), is defined by her relationships. Specifically her relationships with men. She is Raas’s daughter, Bruce’s 'one that got away’, Damian’s mother, Jason’s ‘it’s complicated’. She isn’t her own anything.

In her earliest appearances, she’s as close to a strong female character as you were going to get, given the time it was written and her race (more on that below). But’s she’s still a stereotype. She’s a non-white woman, physically strong but emotionally vulnerable, who falls in love with a white man who can’t return her feelings (nominally because of her morality, meta-narratively because she’s not white) and betrays her culture for him, only to be abandoned later on. It’s not a new story - it’s one Hollywood loves. Most often it gets assigned to women from East Asia, but Arab and Indian women got it a lot as well. Talia is certainly one of the better examples of this, she has a lot more freedom than most women trapped in this trope, but ultimately she is still a trope.

After that, she was mostly just... gone. She popped up from time to time, but she’d already played out her assigned role in the hero’s life, so even though Raas stuck around, she was very much shunted into the background.

Then Grant Morrison came along and turned her into a villain by creating Damian. We find out she had a child with Bruce a decade ago and chose not to tell him. She raised Damian to be an assassin, taught him how to kill, and then basically dumps him on Bruce’s doorstep with a note around his neck saying “please look after this child”. And there are a hundred possible reasons for this, but they’re never given. She is made a villain by silence.

She managed to remain morally grey for a few years, but it didn’t take long for the demonisation of Talia to begin in earnest. (Probably didn’t help that this was the mid-2000s - not a good time to be Arab in American media). The recent introduction of Damian into DC’s animated movie universe included the reveal that Talia just straight up didn’t love her only son. Seriously, that’s the big end of movie plot twist - Talia is evil and doesn’t love her son. In more recent comics, Talia actually clones Damian because Damian isn’t the obedient killing machine she had wanted. This clone goes on to kill the original Damian. (It’s okay, he got better).

In between tragic love-interest and evil step-mother stereotypes, she has one other notable appearance. As the mother-figure and lover of a teenage Jason Todd. When Jason is brought back from the dead, it’s Talia who finds him, takes him back to a League of Assasins base and uses a Lazarus pit to heal him. She defies her father to protect him, cares for and comforts him, spends what is probably a fortune in money and favours getting him the training he wants, buys out a major corporation for him, makes no attempt to stop him from killing Batman, and begins a sexual relationship with him. He’s 15 when he dies, and 19 or 20 when he leaves. It’s not clear how old he is when the sexual relationship begins, but given his mental and emotional state, and the age difference between them and her position of power, the answer is too damn young.

When you add all that together, the picture it paints is not a positive one, and there’s a risk of her more recent appearances colouring her earlier storylines. It’s happened a lot, writers both professional and fan, assuming that Talia’s interest in Bruce is mercenary, that she never loved him, that he would never have had unprotected sex with a villain so she must have tricked him in some way in order to get pregnant. (That last one is at least supported by the confused timeline in which it is both 10 years and approximately 12 years between contraception and Damian’s first appearance, leading some to suggest later artificial insemination using Bruce’s sperm collected the night they slept together).

That’s one way to reconcile the various tropes that makeup Talia, but it’s one I hate. I hate that she went from eccentric but loving mother to emotionless monster in only a couple of years. I hate that her story is always one of tragedy or villainy.

For me, the key to writing a Talia who is sympathetic without being unrecognisable is her age. It’s never been established (as far as I’m aware) just how old Talia is. We know Raas is ancient. We know Damian is ten. Given that she appeared to be an adult in her first appearances, that puts her age at 30+. Beyond that, we have no idea, except that a lot of her behaviours make more sense when looked at from the perspective of great age. She kept Damian from his father for ten years, but ten years is an eyeblink if you have access to Lazarus Pits. She began a relationship with someone who was a child by the standards of his own culture, but to her, all mortals are little more than children, and he was a warrior who had seen battle - to her that it probably a far better measure of age than mere years.

Talia, as I write her, is a loving mother with very little idea of what motherhood entails beyond her memories of her own upbringing. She is at least 200 and considers all humans younger than their mid-40s to be little more than children. She kept Damian away partly because to her, ten years is nothing, and partly because she had no real guide for how Bruce as a mortal American human would treat a young child beyond the way he had treated Dick, Jason and Tim, and so waited until Damian was a skilled warrior before allowing them to meet. She is largely amoral, unlike her father, and her primary motivator is, above all else, love. Her life is defined by her relationships to other people by choice, because relationships provide anchor points in time. Technology might change, but from her point of view humanity has remained more or less the same. The reference points, the moments that mark out the years as different from one another, are her relationships. With Bruce, with Jason, with the lovers who came before both men and women (because my Talia is bi), and with her son. Her only son. The only biological child she has allowed herself to have in her long life. Keeping these people safe and well is her only moral code, but she isn’t a monster. She has no reason to be a monster. It offers no advantages (except occasionally when it is useful for protecting her loved-ones).

Her feelings for Bruce were genuine, she would have married him given the chance, but she was also willing to let him walk away, to leave her, because mortal lovers are always fleeting, it is something she has accepted about life before even Alfred was born.

Also she and Scandal Savage have hooked up in the past.

So yeah, this was a bit rambly, and my Talia may not be your Talia, but I wanted to have there here as I begin introducing her into Gotham Ghoul. This is Talia al Ghul as I see her.

Sidenote: I said earlier I was going to talk a little bit about Talia’s race. So. The way Raas collected bits of other cultures he likes and claims them for his own, his utter conviction that he knows what’s best for people better than they do themselves, the fact that we have no idea what his name is, the fact that most of his furthest flashbacks are set in Japan and China have lead me to headcanon Raas as not being Arab. Actually, I headcanon him as being white, and no one has the guts to call him out on it, although in at least one continuity his father is from China. Either way, I don’t think Raas is Arab. He chooses the Arabian peninsula as one of his bases for the same reason traders did - it’s a gateway between Asia, Africa and Europe. His disciples are primarily locals, and it’s them that give him the Arab title, which he likes enough to adopt. (In favour of this is the fact that none of his children have Arab names - Nyssa has an Arabic meaning, but it seems unlikely he’d call his daughter ‘Woman’. Talia is Greek, Nyssa may well be as well, and Dusan is Slavic). Talia’s mother is a local - Melisande is a French name, but it was also the name of a queen of Jerusalem in the 10th century, and I think it’s likely that that is what the writers were referring to when they named her. Alternatively, it may be an assumed name. Either way, Talia is ethnically half Arab, but the Arabian peninsula is her home in a way it isn’t ever really shown to be for Raas. The Cradle (located in the UAE) is her primary base of operations, and I write her with the assumption that Arabic is her mother-tongue. Damian is therefore ethnically a quarter Arab, although culturally it’s much more significant since he spent most of his childhood in the UAE talking to and working with Arabs, and it was the language his mother spoke to him most. He was raised to be totally multi-lingual, but Arabic will always be the language he has the greatest attachment too.

#meta #gotham ghoul #talia al ghul #talia meta #ra's meta

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