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targaryenrealnessdarling · 10 months

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Bound to Apologise

Summary: Aemond upsets his wife and forms a punishment fit for a Prince, feat. subby!Aemond | Word Count: 5.6k | Warnings below the cut~

Links to my Taglists: General Taglist | Aemond Targaryen Taglist

Warnings: subby!Aemond x wife!reader, p in v, oral (m receiving), use of a belt as bondage, orgasm denial, breeding kink I guess, Aemond blueballs Targaryen

When one thinks of Aemond Targaryen, a few descriptors come to mind.

Stoic, stiff, perhaps brazen on occasion and when the opportunity should present itself, he has quite the silver tongue. He is a man who is sure of himself in identity, fiercely proud of his Targaryen ancestry, his skills with the sword and his deep and well-founded knowledge of history and philosophy, a fact he rivals smugly against his older brother at any occasion he is able.

It is not as if Aegon cares much for rivalries of the mind. No, Aegon’s knowledge that is worthy of bragging in his mind is that of the flesh, and he makes sure to flaunt such knowledge in Aemond’s face at any chance.

That is until Aemond took a wife.

It had been almost half a year since Aemond was wed to his sweet wife in the Sept. An arranged affair, of course, and the two had scarcely seen one another beforehand, so even now he remembered the way he held his hands behind his back, wound tight with nerves, wondering what kind of person she was. It felt wrong to be tied so intimately and indefinitely to another person without really truly knowing them.

She had smiled sweetly on that day, kissed him softly once their vows were exchanged, a faint blush at her cheeks while standing before her now husband. The wife of Aemond Targaryen. It felt so final, and she could not help the fluttering in her stomach.

Aemond on the other hand had barely cracked a smile, simply kissed her, as he was duty-bound to do, and said his vows. She was pretty, yes. But he almost felt bad. What did this woman, illuminated so softly by the warm rays of light, have to gain by marriage to someone she surely found repulsive? Aemond hadn’t missed the various hushed conversations his mother had with Otto, the door cracked slightly ajar.

He had a reputation amongst the ladies. Some desired him purely for his title and placing their family name on a high podium, their future children into the bargain. Some were repulsed by his fiery temper, those long, hard looks he gave everyone. And perhaps most notably, they were frightened of the One-Eyed Prince, on this moniker alone. ‘Aemond One-Eye would never find a wife’.

Despite the incident being several years ago, it still raised its ugly head every now and then, in the form of self-consciousness, hushed female whispers and side-glances throughout the Keep. Most Lords and Ladies appreciated his skills from afar, never treading that delicate path in between that would bring them closer to him, which is precisely why it was difficult to even court a woman. Nevermind marriage.

And yet, when his new wife had looked upon him at their wedding feast, she’d given him a sweet smile, looked deeply into his good eye and showed no signs of repulsion. It confused him for a moment. Was she making a mockery of him? By pretending not to be afraid or repelled by him on purpose? Hiding what she truly felt inside. Holding the bile in her throat at the thought of consummation? He blamed her flush on her face on the two cups of wine she had consumed.

He was immensely relieved to have been proven wrong.

Once the chamber doors were closed, she was clearly nervous, as any young maiden would be on her wedding night. With every aching second she removed the pins from her hair, Aemond stood before the fireplace, his heart hammering in his chest with nerves. He didn’t want to have to bare his soul to her. He didn’t know her. And the thought of forcing such a delicate little thing to gaze upon his affliction, watching her face contort into one of disgust, was eating away at his insides, his insecurities feeding on the buzz of the wine.

She looked so pure and gentle in her off-white, thin chemise, leaving extremely little to the imagination. And with her hair down, waved from the braids, she looked positively mythical.

Aemond swallowed and began to unclasp his doublet. She must have seen his true feelings beneath his poorly-hidden expression, because she’d stopped before him, a small hand laid delicately on his arm. A silent confirmation, that she was just as nervous as he was.

“I do not wish to frighten you, my lady”

Her heart could have broken, but instead it merely shuddered with his words.

“Do you believe you frighten me?” she asked.

Aemond’s silence had confirmed it.

“You are my husband. And I, your wife. You may show me as much of yourself as you deem comfortable and I will not judge”

Though brief, her comforting words gave him the confidence to consummate their marriage. At first it was clumsy, the way their lips had pressed against one another, and the clamouring at her body, laid entirely bare for him to feast upon. As with any wedding night, there was some discomfort, both for her and him, but for different reasons.

But he was gentle, which surprised her and elated her in equal measure. And the sting of the loss of the maidenhead gave way to blooming pleasure, alongside something else. Perhaps a closeness that neither of them expected to have after just a few hours of knowing one another. But she hadn’t shied away from him, as he expected her to. On occasion during the act, she held his face so softly he trembled, struggling to fathom that this woman wanted him.

They had left it only an hour before he was inside her again, where he now found sanctuary in her acceptance of him.

In the moons that had passed since then, she had been his haven. His escape. She was so good to him, accepting of his desire to take his time in showing himself to her.

Three moons after their wedding night, he finally pulls off his eyepatch, after a particularly long evening of lovemaking. She was laid next to him, the bed sheets tucked around her chest. Her lips parted when she saw what he’d been hiding underneath his eyepatch all this time, and she felt an undeniable closeness to him that was not there before.

His scar felt raised beneath the gentleness of her fingers, but it was a look of sheer wonder, watching the way the sapphire that replaced his eye adopted the amber glow of the candles.

Aemond felt his heart thunder and his cock get hard, when all she asked was for him to fuck her again.

And he did with a new-found enthusiasm, a warm feeling blossomed in his chest, holding her form beneath him and fucking her relentlessly into the mattress, so hard that the bedframe struggled. He moaned loudly, giving her his seed and praying that it took, so that he could see his precious wife grow round with his child.

It took him an entire moon to figure out that he not only respected her, but had come to love her.

His wife, shy and timid perhaps at first, had become rather a force to be reckoned with. Their intimacy with one another had awakened something not only in her, but in him as well. At first, he delighted in having power and dominance over her, being quite a lot taller and broad, which he was wholly proud to have on display in the comfort of their chambers. He loved every little one of her whines and moans, drawing peak after devastating peak from her until she quivered in his touch.

It had become a nightly routine. Sometimes several times in one night.

Who would have thought that Aemond Targaryen, every now and then, enjoyed having such power taken away sometimes.

It had started innocently enough. After so many moons being married and proving their love to one another every night, his sweet wife had sought for some variety and instead had clambered on top of him and sank on his cock, guiding the pace herself. Her hands steadied on his chest for leverage, her backside smacking against his thighs with every rough thrust of herself onto him.

Alongside the dizzying feeling of watching his cock disappear into her cunt over and over, reaching new places in this new position, he found being held down exhilarating. Dare he say, even pleasurable. It made something wind tight as a bowstring in his gut.

It seemed like she noticed this, as a lazy smirk graced her face.

Ever since then they had experimented with that sensation. The feeling of one partner having full control, being held down, even tied sometimes. It was something reserved solely for them, behind their chamber doors. In the morning, when they break their fast with his family, he is once again the stone-faced, stoic Aemond Targaryen.

Although it does not stop her from shooting knowing grins in his direction on the odd occasion, which makes his cheeks go a very fair pink, the tips of his ears burn and his breeches get inexplicably tighter.

He enjoys this new side to his wife. It was buried deep, but now that he sees it, it never fails to surprise him.

Which brings him to this moment. The moment when he knows he has said or done something to irk her.

Her sister had arrived at the Red Keep alongside her father to visit her for a few days. Unlike his dear wife, her sister was still young and unmarried, and unbearably innocent. As soon as Aegon had laid his eyes on her little sister, his eyes gleamed with mischief, as if he’d seen a shiny new version of his favourite toy, but one that was actually available.

He wasn’t even deterred by the firm look she’d given him.

She and her sister walked arm in arm to the main hall, where they would dine all together that evening. Her sister spoke excitedly, happy to be brought to the Red Keep for the first time and to be reunited with her beloved eldest sibling.

Aemond and Aegon were chatting idly at the table when they’d arrived, her sister went to one side of the table to be sat next to their father. The two brothers, who usually were not so well-acquainted and chatting in such a friendly manner, were so engrossed in their conversation and their cups, that they barely acknowledged her presence.

All the better that Aemond’s back was to her as well.

“She is a lovely looking girl, but it is a shame she is so terribly dim-witted” Aegon chuckled, “A family trait, I presume?”

Aemond, dizzy from the effects of his wine, chuckled.

“Perhaps”

She’d bitten her cheek in frustration. Was he so deep in his cups that he actually found Aegon funny? Not only that, but had humoured him in insulting not only her sister’s intelligence, but his own wife’s as well.

She pulled her chair out beside him loudly, and Aemond went red and jumped in surprise, dread prickled all over his skin. She gave him a mischievous, knowing smile as she sat, “Husband” is all she greeted him with.

Aegon, who found the entire situation hilarious, had left him with that and as Aemond took his seat next to his wife, straight-backed and instantly sober, he bit his lips several times throughout the evening. She didn’t spare him a single word nor glance, unless he spoke to her directly, in which she forced a pleasant enough smile to her face and gave him one word answers. Playing the pliant little wife, while at the same time letting him know that he would not get off so easily.

She thought, once, that she may have taken her retribution a bit too far. But it was fun if nothing else, to watch how frustrated Aemond got.

She did not lay with him that night, nor the night after. Nor the night after that.

When her sister and father departed King’s Landing, he thought this might be the reprieve. But he was wrong.

It had been a full week since he had touched his wife intimately, not because he didn’t want to, he’d tried a fair few times. But every time, she had dismissed him with that playful smirk, the same one she had when she’d clambered atop his lap for the first time. And though her outfits and mannerisms remained the same as always, after being denied the pleasure of his flesh to hers for so long, every sway of her hips, every glint of her eyes and every movement of her hands had his breeches pathetically tight.

She knew what she was doing as well, the little tease.

He was aching. And it became too much. Not only did she deprive him of her sweet, tight cunny. She barely spoke to him. And the silence and barely-contained need to be inside her, was all too much to bear.

She was in their chambers, sat before the fire, a large tome open in her lap and when she’d heard the chamber doors shut, her eyes had met that of an extremely pent up husband.

But instead of greeting him, she bit back a smile and turned back to her book.

That little-

“Wife” he greeted through gritted teeth.

“Husband”

She didn’t fool him with the sweetness of her voice.

“What are you doing?” he asked, half-desperate and half-irritated as he crossed the room to sit opposite her.

“Reading, my love. So that I may grow to have acceptable intelligence”

His nostrils flare in annoyance, and yet he can’t deny the way she acts has a profound effect on him, after a week of not being able to have her, he’s desperate for anything. Even just the brushing of her hand, he is convinced, would make him spill in his breeches.

“You know as well as I that is not what I meant”

She slowly closes the book, righting to stand in front of him, her eyes trickling over his form. She knows him well now. Knows how underneath this cold exterior he offers up to her, is a desperate man underneath, yearning for a taste of her affections. His body sparks up at her hungry eyes over him.

“Then I do not know what you mean, husband” she replies, barely able to stop the spread of her smile, “You shall have to elaborate”

His hands form tight fists. She’s right there, ripe for the taking, his sweet wife. How easy would it be to sling her over his shoulder and take her right there on the bed, still dressed in her finery, with her skirts rucked up over her hips.

“I mean-” he starts, “-you and I have not laid together for the better part of a week”

She cocks her head, “Oh? Is that so?” she answers sweetly, “Forgive me, I hadn’t noticed”

He’s stunned into a sort of shocked silence, mouth slightly open, but without the headspace to form a reply. His wife pretended to busy herself with other things, placing the book back and dusting the covers, something she knew would get him riled up.

“What is this game, wife”

When she turns to him with that faux-innocence smile on her face, unable to hide how amused she is at how outwardly her husband is showing his frustration, Aemond can feel his limbs go numb.

“I do not believe you are in any position to accuse me of anything, husband” she counters, crossing the room in deliberately small steps, “In fact, I do believe I am owed an apology of sorts”

Her brow twitches slightly. She knows. She knows she has him exactly where she wants him.

As much as he tries to ignore the way her attitude makes his breeches get tighter, all of his blood goes straight below his waistline.

“But I can see, in your true Targaryen male nature, that you will not apologise…with words that is” she says, a wider smile gracing her face. An almost mischievous one.

Aemond swallows thickly.

He clears his throat, blinking a few times at what she just said, “Perhaps…you might enlighten me on how I can make amends”

Got you.

“Give me your belt” she instructs.

It’s borderline pathetic, the speed in which he tries to unbuckle it from his doublet and his fingers fumble with the silver, the embarrassment evident in the way it clinks clumsily. He pulls it through the loops and extends the leather towards his wife. She lets his hand hang there for a moment, as if to extend his internal torment, before she takes it, her fingers slipping over the roughened edges.

“Take off your clothes, leave your breeches on” her voice is clipped and deadly serious, “then get on the bed”

She watched from the foot of the bed as he did, twisting the belt in her hands as she regarded him. Saw the way his breath had hitched as she instructed him to do something and the way his pupils swallowed the violet of his eye. He was desperate. And the longer she went without saying or doing anything, the more the excitement and anticipation was starting to build in his core.

“My dear husband” she says, still fully clothed but clambering onto the bed beside him, “You have wronged me in a manner most unbefitting”

Her voice was low, the same way it would be when they were alone together, coupling.

Gently she pulls both his wrists together, tying them first before raising them to the bed frame, sliding the leather through the buckle and pulling his skin flush to it. She pulls on it a few times, to make sure it is secure. Smiling down at him when she confirms he is not able to move.

His chest moves hurriedly, a warm, fluttering expectancy erupts in his gut.

“And all you have been able to think about is our coupling, or rather lack of” she smirks, pulling a large pin from her hair so it falls around her shoulders. Looking up at his dear wife from this angle, in this position, will never cease to be thrilling.

Her small fingers slide under his eyepatch, depositing it on the bedside, so that she may see all of him.

He would never ever reveal beyond their chambers how he enjoys to see her, eyes half-shut looking down at him, exerting her own version of dominance over him. And he was eternally grateful that she never told a soul either. It would embarrass him beyond measure. He could only stand to be embarrassed in front of her.

Even though she was very much in charge, she did so in her own feminine way. Used her body differently, her words even.

He doesn’t think he will ever tire of it.

“Would you like to fuck me, husband” she asks low, nudging his knees apart so that she can kneel between them. It doesn’t fail to set his blood alight, the way she says such vulgar things…and make it sound so right.

As her fingers begin to undo his breeches, his hips move and so do his hands against the bed frame. It sets that grin on her face again.

“Yes, I do…I have missed you”

Her fingers start to peel his breeches from his hips, exposing the pale skin underneath, and he almost sighs in relief to feel her soft hands on his bare skin.

She cocks her head, looking at him, “What makes you think I will let you fuck me?”

A sort of dread…disappointment pools in his stomach, but alongside that, arousal. He cannot tell if she is serious or merely teasing him, and it is the in-between of not knowing that makes his head feel as if there is cotton stuffed into it instead of thoughts.

“Fucking is a reward” she starts, “and you have not been good”

Once his breeches are off, or at least down to his toned thighs, enough where she can see his manhood, aching and swollen against his taut abdomen, hardened from his years of training with the sword. The tip is flushed, the same colour as his lips, with a milky arousal leaking from it. She is sure that with one touch, he could simply come undone, and it makes her smirk wickedly.

“I will forgive you…on one condition”

Gods, how badly he wants her to just touch him already. With his cock now exposed to them both, her hands so close, it’s borderline unbearable to be teased like this.

“Anything, please…”

A flush blossoms on her cheeks. She always did like it when he begged.

“You must not peak, until I say”

Aemond almost goes bright red. This is territory that has not been tread before. And yet, he can’t deny the excitement it sends through him, the way the air is instantly knocked out of his lungs, and how his hands tug slightly against the belt.

He outright moans as her small hand encircles his cock, giving a few languid pumps, squeezing when she gets to the tip, brushing her thumb over the sensitive slit. Now that she has given her order, her demand, all he can seem to think about is his peak, and how hard he is concentrating to not do it too soon.

“You seem more sensitive than usual, husband” she coos, her other hand placed on his thigh, only barely squeezing, “have you missed me that much?”

“Yes…” he responds through slightly gritted teeth, unable to take the breathiness out of his tone.

“Hm” she hums, dipping her head to his waistline, making him suck in a quiet breath, “Let us see if you can be good then”

She flatters her tongue against the underside of his length, dragging up achingly slow to the slit, her hand still applying pressure as she makes her way up. When she gets to the slit, her eyes meet her husband's.

There's that damn smile again.

Aemond shudders a breath, looking into her eyes while she has his cock on her tongue is only spurring him on, so he shuts his eyes, tipping his head back against the pillows. His hands tug at the belt. Wanting morning more than to just run his fingers through her hair.

"Look at me" she orders.

When he does, his jaw slackens, cheeks warm as her hot mouth envelops him entirely. Pushing down to take more of him, her hand strokes whatever else she cannot fit. Aemond watches her take him with every slow bob of her head, pushing his cock against her hot throat, warm, wet and inviting.

If he is good, he may get something else.

From this angle, her breasts are dangerously close to spilling from her dress, and he watches them move as she continues to suck him, her tongue curled up to press against the prominent vein on the underside. After a week of not having him, she relishes the taste of him. How he smells faintly of sweat and leather, and how badly she wants more of it.

She plunges her mouth down further, til her lips are against the base and Aemond moans out loudly. His tip lodges the back of her throat, and while well endowed, she has learned to take him as deep as she can, until she softly gags, tightening her throat around him.

She is testing him. Seeing how far she can push him as she pleasures him with a renewed vigour, humming around him, sending little jolts of pleasure up his spine.

It was his biggest weakness, taking him into her mouth. And to be so clearly pleased to do it as well. Merely watching the way his length disappears between her plush lips is nothing short of heavenly.

He bets her cunny is wet from this alone.

It very nearly makes him peak, those sparks are there most certainly. Especially the way her throat contracts around him.

But he holds back the reins. For now.

She pulls off him with a soft, wet pop, making a show of licking her lips to taste his precum.

"You are blushing, my love" she says, and he knows even without looking she is smirking again.

"Please…" he murmurs, "...do not tease me any longer"

She cocks her head again, pretending to not know what he means.

"Is my mouth inadequate?"

He shakes his head quickly, feeling his hair begin to stick to his nape with the effort of holding back his peak.

"No-no…I just need you"

"Need what" she grins, moving to straddle him.

Aemond's eye widens here. Her dress is fanned out, and underneath he feels her bare form pressed against his aching cock.

The vixen had not had small clothes on this entire time.

And after using her mouth to pleasure him, she was soaked.

It was most like her. She always did everything with purpose. Always one step ahead.

She smiles when she sees it click in his mind and she moves her hips, dragging her slick over his length, making his eye flutter.

"Say it"

He swallows, tugging against the belt. He half thinks of requesting to touch her. But he knows she would not allow it.

"I need to be inside you"

She raises her eyebrows.

"Please" he finishes.

She pulls the front of her dress up, to give him a good view of her wet cunny, spreading her slick over him and he almost moans at just that. It's a sight to behold. The feeling…even more indescribable.

"My poor, silly husband" she coos, taking his length in her hand, using her palm to coat the entirety with her arousal, "...you came here to say something. Now is the time"

She raises her hips, his tip not even touching her, but the anticipation of it is too much. Aemond, almost subconsciously, bucks his hips up. Only to be met with her pushing him back down.

"Stay still" she says firmly, "or you will not fuck me at all"

His chest moves quickly, clenching his fists, his whole body feeling unbearably hot.

She waits, with that glint in her eye. She really would do it. She would clamber off him and not fuck him, just for the satisfaction that she knew he wanted her, and that it had been denied.

"I…apologise…" he mutters quietly.

She doesn't move.

"For?"

He grunts, frustrated. Too busy thinking of him sliding through her folds, nestled in her cunny.

"For saying such things about you…"

She tuts, with an amused grin, "We shall test your loyalty, husband. Remember…you need my permission"

Whatever Aemond was going to say is stuck in his throat as she sinks on him, enveloping him entirely in her slick heat. She does it slowly, so that he might feel every inch of her, every ridge inside. And when her backside sits on his thighs, moving her hips side to side, his tip nudges her sweet spot, the curve of his long, delicious length finding it effortlessly.

He has to briefly close his eye, not look at her, so that he doesn't get too overwhelmed. After a week of not having her, she feels so perfectly tight, so much so it feels as if her cunt is milking him already. He cannot get too tied up in the feeling, lest he lose her forgiveness.

The sound he lets out when she begins to move is almost pained, one that feels like it takes all his strength from his muscles.

He looks up at her, her hair cascading over her shoulders with every shallow thrust inside, with that tell-tale pink to her cheeks from the effort of it. He can feel her arousal weeping out of her, coating his length and smacking against the base, that alongside his barely-contained moans.

Her hands trail up his bare torso and he can feel gooseflesh erupt in the path she leaves. Her soft palms trace the expanse of his chest, and she doesn’t miss the way his stomach muscles tense up as she hastens her pace while she touches him. It’s only when her fingers apply a feather-like touch against his nipples that she finally gets a breathy moan from him.

It only adds more fuel to her fire.

Every touch, as small as they are, with how pent up Aemond had been, is hurtling him towards that edge. He can feel every inch of her perfect insides, squeezing him as she nears even herself. His stomach does flips, a familiar flutter getting stronger inside.

“Please…wife…” she barely manages to say.

She smiles, her chest moving quickly with the effort of their lovemaking. Her thighs ache in the most wonderful way, her cunt stretching around his girth, the tip kissing her end, filling her so deliciously.

“Please what”

“I want to touch you…please” he begs, his fists still tight and pressed against the bed frame.

He takes a much needed breath when she slows down, merely circling her hips against his pelvis instead.

“Are you close, my love?” she asks sweetly, leaning up to grasp the belt in one hand.

Aemond nods, not trusting his own voice, lest it betray the inner turmoil inside. But she sees it. She doesn’t miss a thing.

She cocks her head, half of her wants to reprimand him for not using his words to reply to her. But the other half feels how his cock throbs inside her, aching for completion, to paint her walls with his spend.

“Very well” she smirks, undoing his bondage, “but you may only touch me here”

She guides his now free hands to her clothed hips, keeping hers on top to make it clear how serious she is. Even now, merely touching her, through clothes it doesn't matter, it’s like some kind of torture.

He grabs her hips tightly and backs himself up against the pillow in a half-sitting position, causing his length to press up inside her, he doesn’t miss the small gasp she emits. She’s close as well, he can tell.

He fucks up into her with renewed passion, and her head tilts back, her lips parted only slightly to allow her quiet but wanton moans to slip out. Her sounds are like a reward. But he knows he is still denied the greatest one of all. One that seems more and more difficult to hold back the tighter she clenches around him, her fingers digging into the flesh of his wrists. There was something exciting about her being fully clothes while he fucked her. It almost felt forbidden. But exciting all the same.

He can feel her slowly losing her resolve as he pounds harshly into her, as if he is letting out all his frustrations.

“-Fuck…Aemond…” she breathes, “-Don’t stop-”

His breath comes in hurried pants, wanting her to feel good but at the same time holding himself back. He can feel the pressure inside, fit to burst at any moment.

“My perfect wife…”

“-Aemond, I’m close-”

She pulls up the front of her dress, her small slender fingers diving between her legs to apply pressure to her pearl, and she inadvertently tightens around him at the combined pleasure.

He is not sure if he can last much longer. Forgiveness be damned, he wants to see his spend leak from her.

“My love, I-”

She looks down at him, a lazy, fucked-out smile on her face, her hair sticking slightly to her forehead.

“-Yes, husband…fuck your heir into me…”

His eye widens at the vulgarity, but his throat tightens at the challenge and he slams so deep inside her with a shocking collection of desperate thrusts. She continues to circle her slick over her bud until the buzz floods into her limbs with a choked cry, her body trembling in the bruising hold he has of her hips.

He fucks her all the way through it, now that he has been given the permission he so desired, he craves it like hunger. It feels like it takes everything out of him, the wind surely knocked from his lungs, as he finally stills inside her, feeling the warm, familiar flood of his spend deep against her womb, completely emptying himself until he aches.

Aemond never lets up on his grip, holding her tightly to ensure she has all of it, and he gives a few additional shallow thrusts that make her cry out, hoping his seed will take and she will grow round with child for him. The thought alone makes him want to keep her in their chambers all day if he has to.

Their eyes meet, the only sound is both of their breathing. Her own eyes flicker from his seeing one, to the sapphire, and a soft, contented smile, not the same mischievous one as earlier, makes its way to her face. It encourages him to do the same.

“I could stay in your perfect cunt forever…” he breathes, his chest moving steadily.

She hums a laugh. It is certainly something he would say.

“Am I forgiven?” he asks, eyebrows moved only slightly, like he is expecting a witty response.

His wife pretends to think, her fingers touched to her lips. And with his softening cock still nestled inside her, she leans forward to lay a tender kiss on her husband, her delicate, soft lips pressed so gently to his, in a manner that contradicts the sensuality of what they had just done.

When she breaks, her forehead pressed against his and her hand cupping his face, she wrinkles her nose playfully.

“I shall think about it”

When one thinks of Aemond Targaryen, a few descriptors come to mind.

Stoic, stiff, perhaps brazen on occasion. With not a soft bone in his body.

Who would have thought, that sometimes, he enjoyed letting that persona slip, just for a moment.

But only ever with her.

dividers by @firefly-graphics

General Taglist: @risefallrise @valeskafics @theoneeyedprince @thelittleswanao3 @hb8301

Aemond Taglist: @m00n5t0n3 @boofy1998 @merakiaes @hanihoney88 @let-love-bleeds-red @bellaisasleep @watercolorskyy @heavenley1927 @ryswritingrecord @partypoison00 @gaeela-6 @saeselkie @padfooteyes @introverbatim @queenofshinigamis @thatkingofgirl @ryswritingrecord @dahlias-and-marigolds @triscy

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daydreaming-nerd · 2 months

Text

Young Love and Old Money (Cassian x Female! Reader) Part 4

Young Love and Old Money Masterlist

AN: I wrote this hungover so you can just call me The Little Engine That Could

Summary: She was the most beautiful woman in Prythian, sister to the High Lord of Night, and now she is the soon-to-be wife of Eris Vanserra. Despite her many titles and her aura of unattainability, Cassian can't help but fall deeply in love with the princess of the Night Court. But will it be enough to stop her impending wedding to a man who is sure to destroy her from the inside out?

Warnings: Sexisim, trauma from under the mountain, alcohol, SA, blood

Word Count: 3,121

If Eris could see me right now he would surely detest my un-princess like behavior and call off our courtship promptly. In fact I might put ‘standing on a pile of books to reach the top of a bookshelf’ in my Eris repellent arsenal.

Normally I would ask The House of Wind for assistance but I suppose that today it wanted to use me as entertainment. The large stack below me wobbled causing my stomach to flip as my fingertips brushed the edge of the leatherbound book I was just dying to read. I almost had it in my hand when my book stack teetered again causing me to gasp.

“Woah there princess!” boomed a voice from the hall. “Get down, you're going to hurt yourself.”

I turned my head to find Cassian clad in casual clothes, most likely about to turn in for the night. Seeing him in fighting leathers was deadly, but seeing him so domestic? It made my cheeks heat. My makeshift step stool wobbled again and I would’ve toppled over if it wasn’t for the general's hands grasping my hips and placing me on the ground.

“Thanks,” I smile as my feet firmly hit the plush carpet. I can’t help but feel a little foolish.

“Which one did you want?” Cassian asked, scanning the shelf I was close to climbing.

“Uh the red one, with the rose on the spine,” I reply pointing to it.

He reached his arm up and plucked the book from the shelf with ease. Gods now I really did feel foolish.

“Here you go,” he smiles, handing me the book. I take it from his grasp and for a moment his hand brushes mine sending shivers down my spine. In the 5 seconds I feel his skin I try to soak up all the warmth that it holds. Try to remember the sensation so I can replay it over and over again in my head when I go to bed.

“Thank you,” I smile trying to avoid those hazel eyes.

“See now you’ve taught me to fetch too,” he jokes.

I roll my eyes, “You’re never going to let me live that dog comment down are you?” I laugh.

Cassian flashes me a smile that threatens to make my knees buckle before perusing the bookshelf himself. I take it as my queue to relax on the couch next to the roaring fire. Ever since that drunken night when I ran into him coming back from Rita’s I couldn’t shake the words he had said to me… I’d do anything for you y/n. I tried to forget the feeling of his hands on my hips, the warmth seeping through the silk of my nightgown. But no matter how hard I tried, the scene continued to replay in my head over and over again.

Even now it was hard to read with him in the room. I tried to keep my eyes on the book I was reading, but even just watching him scan all the shelves was erotic. I watched as his fingers grazed over a few titles until he finally plucked one from its spot. He began to walk towards the door and before I could even think my words betray me.

“Wait!” I call out and he stops in his tracks. I mentally curse myself. Now what’s your plan dipshit?

“Do you need another book?” Cassian asks and I realize I’ve let him sit in silence for longer than I ought to.

“Could you stay and read here? I know reading is typically an independent activity but…” My voice trails off and I try to decide whether or not to voice my next words. “I find it hard being alone as of late.”

It was true. Whenever I had a moment alone my mind would wander to that interaction in the hallway… don’t marry him…and then it would wander to thoughts of Eris, that damned dream I kept having.

“Of course I’ll stay,” he says, turning from the door.

As long as you’ll let me, I’ll do anything for you princess…

Cassian walks over to where I sit on the couch, picks up my outstretched legs and places them on his lap so that he can sit down. His forearms rest on my shins as he flips open his book and I nearly gawk at how natural the movement is for him.

“You don’t have to sit next to me, you know?” I laugh. “You can sit in one of the chairs over there if you want to.” I say nodding to a set of armchairs in the corner.

“Yeah but this is the only seat close to the fire,” he replies. “Besides, those chairs aren’t very wing friendly.”

My eyes look back to the chairs and realize that he’s right so I shrug my shoulders and turn my eyes to my book. It was hard to concentrate on reading with the feeling of my legs in his lap but as my eyes scan the page I can’t help but get lost in the story…

“So you have me alone, in your bedroom.” Sofie says. “Now what happens?”

Alexander stalks towards her, looking her up and down. “Now I kiss you, and touch you, and make you mine in every way I possibly can.”

I feel my blood heat up and I avidly try not to let my toes curl knowing they are currently in Cassian’s lap. The scene progresses and I try not to look like I’m reading something so filthy in the presence of my general, which is near impossible.

Cassian clears his throat and I yank my gaze up expecting to find him looking at me like a scorned parent. Instead I find him quietly reading his own book. His own very large, very heavy book.

“That book is huge,” I point out and his gaze snaps to me. “What is it about?”

“It’s about war strategies,” he replies cooly. “I’ve read it before, but I like to brush up on it every now and then.”

“That’s what you read in your spare time? War strategies?” I scoff.

“Knowledge is power princess,” he smiles flipping through the pages of the abnormally large book. “I’m your general, don’t you want me reading this kind of thing?”

“I want you to read what makes you happy, especially when it’s for pleasure.” I laugh, shaking my head.

“Well then you’ll be glad to know that reading war books makes me happy,” he muses at me.

I shake my head and return to my own book, getting caught up in the heat of the scene once more.

“What are you reading princess?” Cassian chides knowingly.

“Oh nothing,” I say, pulling the book closer to my chest in a way that definitely could’ve been more subtle.

“Really because it looked like you were riveted a few moments ago,” he smirks, leaning over to try and see the title.

“Well it’s a good book!” I squeak, pulling the book back further so he can’t see it.

“Why are you hiding?” Cassian laughs. “Afraid I’ll judge your literary tastes?”

“Yes actually I am,” I laugh pulling the book away from his hand as he tries to pluck it from my fingers.

“Oh c’mon princess I showed you mine now show me yours,” he teases. One of his hands clamps down on my ankle so I can’t shift away anymore while the other snatches the book from my hands.

“Cassian!” I protest as he moves the novel to his other hand that’s hanging off the arm of the couch.

“As he kissed her feverishly his hands ran down her bare breasts, leaving goosebumps over the skin they touched.” Cassian read from the book. “This isn’t very lady like reading material princess!” he teases me.

In a panic I climb over his lap to try and get the book back but he pulls it even further away.

“Alexander's fingers traveled lower to her awaiting-” Cassian laughed before I finally grabbed the book from his hands.

“I’ll take that!” I said snapping the book closed.

It wasn’t until the book was safely in my possession once more that I realized the compromising position I was in… I was on his lap. I was sitting on my general's lap. I quickly scooted over to the side to sit next to him once more trying to hide the blush in my cheeks.

“Who knew you had a secret romantic side?” Cassian teases with a sly smirk.

“Yeah yeah, you found me out! Now go back to reading your book about stabbing people!” I brush him off with a laugh.

We spend the rest of the evening reading our respective books, this time without any interruptions. At first it’s nearly impossible to read while he’s right next to me, especially given the content of said book. But after a while I fall into a comfortable silence with the general, stealing glances at him whenever I can. At some point in the night, though I can’t pinpoint when, my eyes grow heavy and I fall asleep, one of the most peaceful rests I’d had in a while.

Cassian:

I’d be lying if I didn’t say the content of the princess’ book didn’t both shock and intrigue me. So much so that I couldn’t help but glance her way every once in a while just to see her little hands gripping the pages like her life depended on it.

Even though she was just sitting there reading, she was so undeniably gorgeous. No wonder her beauty had been built up to the point where she was practically a character from mythology. I almost cursed myself for admiring her too much, clearly just becoming another wide eyed male desperately seeking the princess’ attention. I recalled how Helion practically begged Rhysand for her hand, not to mention the other lords. Gods I really was just one of many when, and even more depressing, the least worthy of her affections.

At one point I glanced over to find her fast asleep with her book resting on her chest. I thought about leaving to go to my room or carrying her to bed. But she was so peaceful. More peaceful in this moment than I had seen in the past few weeks. I would kill anyone who dared pull her from that peace, and that meant myself as well. So I set down my book and let myself sink further into the couch.

I had never slept in the library before, but there’s a first time for everything.

Cassian:

“You’re even slower today than you were yesterday brother,” Azriel barked, swinging his sword towards me. I blocked with my own, the sound of metal on metal reverberating throughout the air. “Let me guess, another bad night of sleep?”

“I slept fine!” I grumble going in for the attack, he blocks me with ease.

“Are you sure? When I saw you asleep on the couch with the princess this morning you didn’t look too comfortable.” he smirked. The words caught me so off guard I missed my block and his sword sliced the back of my shoulder.

“Ahh,” I hissed at the cut.

“Sorry I thought you were gonna block that,” Azriel laughs.

“I’m fine,” I say, shrugging off the small cut. “Let’s go again.”

“Actually let’s call it, Rhys needs me on the border to check on things with Hybern,” Az replies, putting his sword over with the others.

I do the same and go to take off the wraps around my hands. I can’t help but notice the scars and calluses all over them from years of battle and war. Clearly hands unfit to be anywhere near the princess.

“How does the autumn court fare?” Azriel asks, pulling me from my thoughts.

“Still full of the most pompous asses in Prythian,” I roll my eyes.

“Good to see things haven’t changed,” Az laughs. “Does y/n seem to be warming up to Eris?”

My head immediately goes to that dark hallway. How she screamed for him to get off her. I’ll never unsee the fear in her eyes.

“No, she can’t stand him. But he seems to be warming up to her just fine,” I say trying not to sound as bristled as I am.

“Uh oh,” Azriel said, catching my tone.

“He was going to rape her the other day, I had to intervine.” I huff tossing away what’s left of my wraps a little harsher than I normally would.

“Are you serious? Why haven’t you told Rhys?” Azriel asks, his tone changing.

“She won’t let me, she's determined to see this thing through, for us, for her people.” I explain trying to stay calm.

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see this coming,” Azriel says. “When she became this almost mythical being I knew that she would be a conquest. Especially for males like Eris. If he chooses to marry her it won’t be because he loves her. He just wants to say that he owns The Jewel.”

“You think I don’t know that?” I scoff at my brother.

“She deserves someone who loves her for her. Someone who sees her as more than The Jewel. Someone who has a big heart. Someone who makes her laugh. Someone that teaches her how to play drinking games,” Azriel went on and I knew exactly what he was getting at.

“Nice try Az, but it’s never going to happen,” I huff walking towards the door

“You wouldn’t know, you haven’t asked her!” he shouts at me.

I shake my head at my brother's persistence as I make my way inside the House of Wind. For what it’s worth, I should be flattered that he think’s the princess could ever love someone like me. But I don’t feel flattered, I feel like a joke. The kind that might be passed around by other men at taverns for years to come.

“Have you ever heard the story of the bastard general and the beautiful princess?”

“The poor fool fell in love with her and she turned him down flat!”

Gods I could hear the crowds of drunken fools laughing at the tale right now.

The kitchen in the House of Wind always seemed like the most alive part of the house and the part of the house I had always ventured to least. Meals always seemed to appear whenever they were required, leaving no reason to darken the kitchen's doorstep. However, while the cut on the back of my shoulder didn’t hurt, the last thing I needed was an infection. Which is how I found myself rummaging through doors and cabinets for the first aid kit.

“You’re bleeding.” said that beautiful voice cutting through the air like a siren's song. I swore then and there I’d follow it to whatever end.

I turned to find the princess, standing in the doorway clutching that red leather book from last night. I don’t miss her eyes glancing over my half naked body and it takes everything in me not to bear a self satisfied smirk.

“It’s just a scratch from sparring with Az,” I reply, trying to look over my shoulder to see the state of the cut.

“Here, let me help you,” she said, turning to the drawer nearest to her and pulling out the first aid kit.

“Don’t worry I can do it,” I assure her, the idea of her dirtying her hands by touching me makes me cringe.

“It’s on your back you won’t be able to reach it,” she answers, laying out the things from the kit.

“Princess you really don’t have-”

“Shh, think of it as me repaying you for fetching that book for me last night,” she says with a playful glint in her eye.

I smile remembering everything from me teasing her about the dog comment to the sight of her reading that dirty book. I turn around so she can see the small cut.

“Do you think you could sit down? It’ll be easier for me to reach.” she asked me.

“Yes sorry,” I replied sitting down.

My skin practically buzzes from anticipation, knowing I’ll feel the gentleness of her hands at any moment. I suddenly feel like an adolescent male again, excited at the idea of having a female hug me. The second the warm washcloth is pulled away from the cut it’s replaced by her hands smoothing a healing balm over it. I flinch at the chill of her fingers on my bare skin.

“Sorry my hands are cold,” she apologizes. I almost laugh, her hands are nothing but perfect. All of her is.

“No it’s okay,” I say back trying to keep my voice even. I feel her smooth a bandage over the cut and the second she removes her hands from my skin I contemplate begging her to touch me once more.

“All patched up!” she cheers, already beginning to pick up the supplies.

“Thank gods I thought they were going to have to amputate,” I laugh standing up and flexing my shoulder back and forth to get used to the feeling of the wrapping.

“We can’t have that. How would you dance at the Vanserra’s ball tomorrow night?” she jokes putting the kit back in the drawer.

“Ah yes, I forgot that’s tomorrow,” I say. In truth I had been counting down the days leading up to the dreaded event.

“You are coming right?” she asks and I can sense a bit of worry behind her words.

“Of course, I wouldn’t miss it,” I assure her.

“Good, it’ll be nice to have a familiar face there,” she smiles. “Who knows, maybe they’ll bring out that wine they had at dinner.”

“They better, there’s no way I can stand being in a room full of pompous assholes that long sober!” I laugh.

“Tell me about it, I’ll have to dance with Eris all night,” she says, rolling her eyes. The image of her in his arms is enough to make my blood boil.

“Who knows princess, maybe you’ll be surprised at your surplus of dance partners,” I smirk knowingly.

“I’m sure Eris will beat them all off with a stick,” she huffs leaning against the table, picking at her nails.

“Then he should talk to Rhys first and get a few pointers,” I laughed leaning against the table next to her.

"Or better yet, maybe I'll bring a stick to fend them off myself," she quips, a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

With a shared laugh, we lingered in the moment, finding solace in each other's company before the looming specter of tomorrow's ball cast its shadow over us once more.

Part 5

Taglist: @crystalferret202 , @nickishadow139 , @graceshifts , @writeroutoftime , @heyyitsnat21, @stinkinstuffie , @lilah-asteria , @12358 , @fxckmiup

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flowerandblood · 10 months

Text

The Impossible Choice (16)

[ Aemond • Targaryen x Baratheon! • female ]

[ warnings: sex content, oral sex, angst, smut, violence ]

[description: Aemond comes to Storm's End to choose his future consort. However, Lord Borros Baratheon presents him with only four of his five daughters. Being attached to his youngest child, he does not want to marry her. The prince, however, thwarts his and her plans with his decision. This is slow burn, with a lot of dark angst and sexual tension. (Anon Request)]

* English is not my first language. Please, do not repost. Enjoy! *

Previous and next chapters: Masterlist

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When he returned to the supper to join his family he tried with all his might to hide what was going on in his breeches. He didn't know why, but her words had aroused him tremendously and if he could, he would just take her to his chamber and fuck her all night.

I don't hate you.

You're not a monster.

You're not like your brother.

He sat back in his seat and tried to focus on what was happening on around him, but each time he drifted completely away with his thoughts, no longer even looking at his uncle or nephew.

He felt some kind of savage satisfaction at the thought that he didn't disgust or repel her.

That she didn't think that he and his brother were alike.

Those few words were enough to make his momentary anger at her and his uncle evaporate from him completely; he thought that he had no intention of spoiling his mood that evening anymore, wanting to concentrate only on thinking about what he should do with her at night, how to take her to reward her for her devotion.

He didn't even notice that the servants had started to lay out trays of main courses in front of them until he heard a quiet chuckle in front of him. He glanced in that direction and saw, frustrated that for some reason a barely restrained, mischievous smirk was painted on Luke's face.

It made him enraged and he wondered for a moment what that was all about but then he saw what was placed in front of him.

A roast pig.

The Pink Dread.

He felt something inside him snap, some last thread that held his cool mind together burst. He slammed his fist on the table, grinning, raising his cup high.

"Final tribute."

He said, glancing at Luke with a look from which his smile faded from his face, replaced by a proud concern.

"To the health of my nephews."

He murmured soundly, looking around the room, wanting to see the reaction of the others as well.

"Jace,

Luke,

and Joffrey. Each of them handsome, wise…" He paused, his lips pressed into a thin line. He hesitated to say it, but then nodded, concluding that he didn't give a fuck. "… Strong."

"Aemond." His mother said warningly, looking around the table in horror.

"Come. Let us drain our cups for this three Strong boys." He said with delight, seeing the horror of everyone gathered, the chaos he had caused.

He no longer cared what would happen, he had never felt such wild satisfaction before in his life.

"I dare you to say that again." Hissed Jace, lifting his chin proudly, trying to hide his fear and humiliation. He felt like sneering at this pathetic sight and turned, walking slowly towards him.

"Why? 'Twas only a compliment. Do you not think yourself Strong?" He asked lightly and didn't even flinch when Jace hit him in the face with all his might, thinking with amusement that his wife would have had a stronger punch than he did.

He pushed Jace away with such ease that the boy toppled to the ground. This sight amused him so much that he chuckled loudly, looking around, wanting to see Aegon react to this, seeing with satisfaction that his older brother was pressing Luke's face to the table top.

After a moment they were separated by the guards, his mother came up to him agitated, grabbing his arm.

"Why would you say such a thing before these people?" She asked with a regret and pain that infuriated him.

He wondered how she could so quickly forget what they had done to him.

"I was merely expressing how proud I am of my family, Mother." He said, feigning light-heartedness, impatiently pulling his hand from her grasp, heading towards his enraged nephews again.

"Mm, though it seems my nephews aren't quite proud of theirs!" He called out softly, feeling that he was on the verge of insanity, the fire flowing in his blood.

He stopped, as his uncle stood before him. Daemon looked at him piteously, folding his hands in front of him, sighing expectantly. They looked at each other intensely.

He knew that he could not confront him.

Yet.

He decided that it have to wait.

He grunted low, sidestepping him, walking slowly out of the room into the corridor, moving straight ahead to his chamber.

He felt like he was trembling all over, thinking that he could kill someone right now.

That he would like to kill someone.

To strangle someone with his own hands.

When he stepped into his quarters, his wife was waiting for him obediently, all bare, just as he commanded. He pressed his lips together, feeling frustration and rage, all the lust he had inside him flowed out, giving place to the physical brutality that he craved.

He quickly undid his leather tunic, dropping it to the floor.

"Lie down on your stomach." He said coolly, walking over to her, grabbing her brutally by the hips, he heard her tremble all over, her breathing frightened.

She knew that something was wrong.

She knew that he was enraged.

He knelt behind her, untying his breeches and took his length in his hand, beginning to squeeze himself with quick, sharp strokes. He tried to focus on the sight of her, on her naked body, but he felt nothing.

Her dance with his uncle.

His hands touching hers.

Luke's mischievous smile.

The Pink Dread.

After a moment, a loud, frustrated growl came out of him.

He couldn't believe that he couldn't make himself hard.

He couldn't take his wife, do what is natural for a man, for a husband.

He collapsed next to her on the bedclothes and turned away, ordering her to sleep, knowing that otherwise he would hurt her.

He would take it out on her.

He squeezed his eye shut, furious, when he felt her embrace him.

He didn't want her sympathy, her feminine, weak sense that she needed to comfort him.

"− let me relieve you, husband −"

He felt his heart thump harder at her words and hesitated, no longer knowing himself what he wanted.

He feared that even her efforts wouldn't do anything.

That it would enrage him even more.

She didn't let him think about it though, a pleasant shiver went through him as he felt her soft, moist lips on his neck.

"− turn over on your back − I’ll take care of you −"

He swallowed loudly, thinking that he needed this.

He needed his wife to take care of him.

To show him that he was all that mattered to her.

He turned as she requested, looking at her discouraged, letting her lie down between his thighs, settling into a more comfortable, semi-sitting position.

He saw her untie his breeches in a sure, gentle motion, revealing the pitiful sight that was his soft manhood. He felt ashamed at the sight and wanted to order her to stop, but when she took him in her soft hand and licked him with a tip of her pink tongue a powerful, pleasurable shiver went through him.

He thought about saying to her that it was pointless, that he'd had enough, but he just looked at her face and shuddered every time she kissed and caressed his swollen manhood with her moist, puffy lips.

She was behaving differently from usual, she wasn't in a hurry, she hadn't even taken him in her mouth yet.

He felt his manhood throbbing under her fingers harder and harder, his body calming down thanks to her gentle caresses. He leaned his head against the back of the bed and let her do what she wanted to him.

He moaned softly, gripping her hair with his hand as she began to tease him, sliding the tip of his member into her mouth only to release it with a loud, sticky plop.

He thought there had been some amazing change in her, and while she still remained innocent and gentle, there was a greater experience speaking through her that gave her confidence in her actions.

He no longer had to direct her on what to do, being able to concentrate only on enjoying the pleasure of her touch.

I don't hate you.

You're not a monster.

You're not like your brother.

He felt his cock twitch at that memory, increasingly swollen and sore, thinking surprised that what she was doing was working, a loud, low, delighted moan broke from his throat as she finally slid his manhood into deep between her fleshy mouth.

Unable to stop himself, he clenched his hand tighter in her hair, forcing her to fit all of him, rocking his hips inside her, panting hard, he could hear her breathing loudly through her nose.

"− oh, fuck − made to suck my cock, didn’t you? − so fucking perfect for me −" He breathed out, clasping his other hand in her hair, fucking her gorgeous mouth with the sticky, perverted click of her saliva, watching as his manhood slid away and back up between her lips, hitting again and again the back of her throat.

So devoted.

So good.

So sweet.

His little wife.

"− so good for me − ah − my sweetest −" He mumbled with delight, shocked by his own tender, soft tone, a complete contrast to what he had felt just a moment ago.

He thought, feeling his fulfilment approaching that with her he was the best version of himself.

With her he believed that he could still be a decent man.

With her he wasn't sinking into his increasingly progressive madness.

The thought made him moan loudly for some reason, clenching his fingers in her hair, his hips slamming greedily his fat, hard cock into her mouth. He parted his lips, feeling like he was about to spill himself down her throat.

"− o-oh fuck − gods, yes, swallow it, swallow it all −" He uttered, tilting his head back with his lips parted wide, panting loudly with relief, his hot seed filling her palate.

He watched with delight as she bravely swallowed his spend, breathing loudly through her nose, tears of exertion running down her flushy face.

When she finally released him from between her plump lips, there was not a trace of his seed.

He pulled her to him by her hair, pressing her against his hard abdomen, embracing her with a loud sigh of contentment.

She showed him understanding when he was most helpless.

She gave him wonderful fulfilment even though she was terrified of his behaviour.

He stroked her hair, trying to think only about the warmth of her body, feeling her shifting higher, laying her head on his chest only to fall asleep with him in this position.

When he was woken before dawn by a commotion outside the door of their chamber and the raised voices of the guards, he knew immediately that something had happened. His wife mumbled quietly when he rose, gripping his arm, he sighed looking at her, his hand stroking her hair.

"Go back to sleep." He hummed, getting out of bed, fastening his breeches. He put on his leather tunic and left his chamber, closing the door behind him.

He saw, surprised and concerned, that the guards were taking their servants somewhere, all around him besides he saw not a living soul, his heart pounding like a mad.

He went to his mother's and Aegon's chambers, but did not find them there.

He wondered what was happening.

He finally stepped into Helaena's quarters and saw his mother sitting beside his sister, tears of grief and pain in her eyes, her face pale and terrified. Then he understood.

His father was dead.

For a moment all he could hear was the beating of his own heart.

He didn't know how he felt about it.

Everyone assumed that he had very little time left, but he didn't think it would so quickly.

He thought that he would never say anything to him again.

His mother stood up and walked to him, putting her hands on his shoulders, stroking him with reassuring movements.

"Your father the king told me before he died that he wished for Aegon to be a king." She said quietly, looking at him with her warm, brown eyes, full of motherly love.

He did not believe her.

"My father despised my older brother. Like all of us." He said impatiently, recognising that she must have overheard.

He didn't want to see his whore half-sister on the throne, but his brother wasn't suited for it either.

He was created for drinking and lying between the whores' tits.

"Aemond. We must crown him as soon as possible." She whispered and he looked at her in disbelief.

She meant it.

She wanted to make Aegon king.

A drunkard.

A fool.

A rapist.

"What do my brother say about it?" He asked, feigning indifference, trying to hide his dismay, frustration and anxiety at what was happening around them.

He thought this was all one big misunderstanding.

His mother tightened her lips at his question, remaining silent. He looked at her expectantly, and when he realised what had happened he chuckled low, shaking his head, walking impatiently around the room.

"When was the last time he was seen?" He asked coolly, wondering where he might have gone.

He thought of the brothel he'd been taken to when he was only 13.

His mother shook her head, putting her hand on her chest in an attempt to calm herself.

"I have no idea." She said helplessly, holding back the tears that were once again gathering at the corners of her eyes, her body trembling with stress.

"I summoned Ser Criston, I want him to find him." She said and he murmured under his breath, sitting down by the fireplace, thoughtful.

If Aegon was to become king that changed everything.

If he died, his children would be too young to rule in his name.

He would become prince regent, and his sweet wife would be his queen.

He pressed his lips together at that pleasant thought.

Indeed, after a moment Ser Cole joined them wearing full armour, bowing low before them.

"My queen. In accordance with your orders, the servants have been confined to the dungeons. Prince Aemond's wife and Princess Rhaenys have been locked in their chambers."

He gave him a quick, furious look, standing up at once, walking over to his mother.

"What is the meaning of this, mother? My wife will now be a prisoner?" He hissed, enraged with the fact that anyone had the impudence to make decisions that involved her.

She belonged only to him.

His mother looked at him pleadingly, placing her hand on his shoulder.

"We must be sure that no one leaves the keep until we crown Aegon. We need to do it before word reaches Rhaenyra. It is the only solution." She said softly, wanting him to understand, but he pulled away from her.

"I will join you in the search for my brother, Cole. Don't go anywhere without my knowledge." He said lowly, walking out of the chamber.

He headed back to his quarters and ordered the servants to open the door, his wife rose from her bed, terrified, dressed only in her nightgown and a thin, translucent robe worn over her shoulders tied at her waist.

The guard closed the door behind him as he came up to her, grabbing her by her neck and kissing her forehead, seeing how shaken she was.

"What's happening? Lyanna's nowhere to be found, they've locked me in and won't let me leave." She mumbled terrified, he took her cheeks in his large hands so that she looked at him with a quiet sigh.

"My father is dead."

She froze in mid-breath, her eyes grew wide with disbelief.

He could see that she was analysing in her head what would happen now.

Their six-month marital idyll had just ended.

"My mother is going to crown Aegon king. She said that was my father's last wish." He said dispassionately.

He saw the look in her eyes.

She didn't believe it any more than he did, but nothing could be done.

He stepped closer to her, pressing his forehead against hers, feeling the adrenaline flowing through his veins.

"Will you stand by me? Will you be faithful and devoted to me?" He asked quietly, as if whispering about something forbidden, as if a stranger might hear them.

She looked at him in disbelief not understanding what he meant, unable to comprehend what he craved and what he was capable of doing to achieve it.

She nodded, touching his scarred cheek with her palm, stroking it with her soft fingers. He felt desire at the gesture, at the thought that she would be by his side.

That he would make her his queen.

He kissed her greedily, making her lose her breath, their moist lips sucking and rubbing against each other in a sticky, hot dance. He pulled away from her, running his hand over her cheek, as if he wanted to remember her expression and this moment well.

"Don't speak to anyone about the king's death or coronation. Do not confide in anyone. Trust only me."

_____

Aemond Taglist:

(bold means I couldn't tag you)

@its-actually-minicika @notnormalthings-blog @nikstrange @zenka69 @bellaisasleep @k-y-r-a-1 @g-cf2020 @melsunshine @opheliaas-stuff @chainsawsangel @iiamthehybrid @tinykryptonitewerewolf @namoreno @malfoytargaryen @qyburnsghost @aemondsdelight @persephonerinyes @fan-goddess @sweethoneyblossom1 @watercolorskyy @astral-blossoms @randomdragonfires @amirawritespoorly @apollonshootafar @padfooteyes @darylandbethfanforever9 @fudge13 @snh96 @diosademuerte @rwdkarla @echos-muses @ipostwhtifeel @letmeloveyouuuu @yentroucnagol @valeskafics

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searchingforserendipity25 · 3 months

Text

Trials By Fire (After).

Maglor afire post-Bragollach, for @maedhrosmaglorweek. Also on AO3.

Part 2 of this installment, with no need to read it first.

It does not seem possible that Maglor may survive the year.

So Maedhros wrote to the king - his new king, Fingon, along with his vows of fealty and the full promise to avenge Fingolfin, written and sealed in his own blood.

Maglor nearly followed his half-uncle. His flesh burned with a terrible fever. The whites of his eyes were fully red with smoke; he kept weeping, not with grief, but the poisonous grit that had become the fertile plains of the East.

He had refused to wash the last of the ash that had been his land; and barely permitted the healers to attend to him. He nearly went back to the Gap - would have gone without warning, if Maedhros had allowed it.

"Let go, release me," Maglor demanded.

Maedhros stood before him, between the landing and the gate. He had risen with a cold clarity of premonition, the sudden certainty - One whom you love is to die.

His voice broke and broke, until blood shone on his teeth. The power in it was a monstruous thing, filling the tall, tall stone halls of Himring.

He had been out of the healer's room and nearly down the staircases, enough beastly might in the ugly scrap of his throat to make ruthless warriors turn into peons, opening doors and gates for his passed.

Maedhros wielded in his hand his sheathed sword, the one he slept with like a lover beside him.

Release me, Maglor ordered with the fury of his mind, all his spirit warring against Maedhros; outraged, and betrayed truly to be held hostage.

Maedhros expelled his followers from the room - an effort of will, his dominion fighting against his brother's, and their own awareness flickering at the corner of his mind with animal terror.

And then he raised his blade from its sheath, without hesitation.

Maglor's best weapon had even been his voice - he had meant to make his way back to the Gap unaccompanied, none of his riders were about him.

He had ridden into safety for them, the lives bound to die with him if he had stood fast; he fled, now, as a thief in the night, dying of his wounds, alone, so that they might outlast him.

Maglor in his clear mind would not do such a thing. Maglor, Maglor as himself, took loyalty too solemnly; he would have given them the choice to follow him to the last, if he had been thinking clearly, and not wild with anguish. That was when Maedhros knew for certain what he must do.

Maedhros had his warriors close all the doors and all the windows, and leave them to their reckoning.

Maglor's face looked at him, repelled more than afraid at finding himself trapped. The worst of it was the bubbling foam at the corners of his mouth as he laughed, incredulous. Maedhros, he called. Nelyo, so you too are my enemy?

How could you allow this - how could you permit it! The East was yours to keep - look at what your keeping has made of us, O Lord of Himring!

Maedhros ignored his insults, his threats, his bragging and begging. He loved him too well not to press him back, back, back, down staircases and corridors.

Maedhros had to lift him up - bearing against his teeth and clawing fingers, pressing him down on the cold springs at the secret base of Himring's thermal baths. Maglor only went limp at last when Maedhros dunked and dipped and half-drowned him back to sense, when at last the terrible blood-fever in his receded.

It took many days, for that. A fortnight and more; and the harm of that time never lifted from him, and left its deep marks.

And years of silence. The healers did what they could, sang the open sore that was his mouth whole; it broke apart, again, again.

He coughed blood at night, stained scraps of cloth scarlet - Maedhros remembered the sail-cloths of Alqualondë, red on white, whenever he saw him wiping his mouth.

White scars engraved his cheek, from the broken length of his spread as it broke in many parts a gnashing dragon's teeth; and he did not speak for years.

Maedhros knew too well this despair, and loved him too much. He kept his closed away, at first. A high tower, the highest, with not even an arrow-slit to escape from.

Maglor's voice, closed like a fist in his throat; Maglor's face terrible and worse than terrible, the flaring of him as he paced the battlements, when he was permitted to walk, under Maedhros's own guard.

He sought always to see if someone was riding towards Himring, or away from it. Few of his riders had survived the great conflagration; few survived their flight. They went off into the wilds to ride against bands of orcs, or the rumours of Balrods or wyrms, as King Fingolfin had.

They meant to die, as King Fingolfin had.

Maedhros took to sharing his brother's cot, arms holding close his trembling limbs, lest he rise again in the dark before dawn and make for the stables, the scorched plains, the long homeward path back to what remained of the Gap.

Maglor wished it. Maglor wanted it with such a burning desire it left Maedhros breathless, painted the mirage of leaping dragon-fire behind his lids.

He went quiet and cold, that winter, once the fire left his veins - too cold, coals turning to cinders. He shook with chills, until he was wan and exhausted, and then longer still, and made no sound, gave up on the making of sounds.

He looked at Maedhros with a face empty, one eye blind - but it was the loss of his voice that defeated him. That, and Maedhros's unrelenting determination to make him live.

Let me go, release me, he had howled, until he could not any longer. His voice overlaid itself over memories of Angband, when Maedhros slept. The chains of Thangorodrim, and Maglor riding barely in front of a wave of fire, Maglor behind the thick steel-and-stone of Himring's highest tower, sweating through his fever and his fury.

The look on his face, when Maedhros raised him up from the water. At times he woke with the bones of his arms reverberating with the force of pressing him down, certain as he woke that he had done it - drowned him dead. He had to turn and check, make certain he was not in bed with a corpse bloated blue and black.

It did not seem possible that Maglor may survive the year. Maedhros was a mad fool set on accomplishing the impossible - in this one instance, at least, he earned a bitter victory.

Fingon, he suspected, envied it terribly - his dearest person, saved from the aftermath of Morgoth's flames. Maglor, Maedhros knew for certain, did not forgive him. He had not wished to live.

("Let me go," he had screamed, with the last of his beautiful voice wrecked to disharmony. "Do you not know it was always meant to end in this? Let me at the flames, Nelyo, it is my land, mine, no good shall follow if I do not die in it. I know this, if you bear me in your heart with any love at all you must release me -"

He kept fighting for the words, even when he could not speak, choking on them. Maedhros dreamed of that, too).

"Not this year yet," he cautioned, when at last he judged his brother well enough to be able to leave the tower, and give him the freedom to pay his due respect to the king. "Call your standards, your vassals and all the forces at their disposal, and all shall answer in full faith. But wait only one year more; the time is not yet come."

Maglor's voice should be fully his own again, by then. The healers agreed; and Maedhros knew it.

He dueled in the grounds, and fought anyone who dared to try him. His body, forged anew from a terrible crucible, healed its shattered ribs, its splintered femur, the cracks in his skull, the fine, fine fractures in his long fingers. He trained as the healers dictated, drank the bitter tinctures, ate well, worked a sweat of pain for hours as he strengthened his body again, and readied himself for the harp again with plucking loose strings.

Even Maedhros lost against him when they crossed blades, not once, but time and time again. It was a sight of beauty and dread, watching the two lords of the fortress spar.

Down on the training grounds, hands and knees in the dirt, looking up at his brother standing taller than him, for once - taller, fiercer, the whites of his eyes alight - Maedhros was very aware of the picture they painted, and the road he meant to take to keep that fire kindled.

For Maedhros had been brought to life himself with his brother's insistence, by the shores of Mithrim, knew to be patient. Ruthless, and patient, for the times when their blades crossed, and Maglor's face shone with a new passion, a flare of mirth.

It made no difference that Maglor grew dire, afterwards, and evaded all company, and would not look at him. Maedhros might lose the duel, but those brief smiles were his prize, and those he stole more and more often.

Maglor was nearly whole. Kept court once more with his own warriors, and kept some from their fateful rides, and blessed the ones who took their leave in honour.

Slowly, with his customary discipline, he learned his voice-box anew; carefully, inevitably. The face he turned always eastwards looked at Maedhros without resentment, now.

When he won, Maglor held out his hand to help him rise. Maedhros started to wait, to hope almost.

And when at last, at last, Maglor pressed close in his arms, weeping trails of salt against his neck, that was when Maedhros knew it was time to go to war; for together had never been as strong, or more certain to succeed.

#maglor #maedhros #maedhrosmaglorweek #silm fic #my fics #tolkien fanfiction #sons of feanor #feanorians

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tinyglassearl · 1 year

Text

Au where everyone thought Mycroft and Albert were banging when they were actually not. Poor Albert would constantly get slut-shamed when he’s still a full blown virgin.

Everyday would basically be:

Albert, who was up all night searching through old files for a MI6 mission: God, my knees are killing me.

Moran: Yeah I bet your throat is too. Slut.

Albert: ?

...........................

Albert: This is the last time I am EVER riding a horse.

Moneypenny: That’s not a very nice name to call the Director.

Albert: ???

.......................

Albert, who’s covered in mosquito bites after a field mission: No tea for me. I’m not very thirsty.

Jack: Sure you aren’t. I sincerely hope he used protection.

Albert, remembering Mycroft forgot the bug repellant: Um. We forgot?

Jack:

Jack: Dear God.

.......................

Albert, covered in bruises because he tried and failed miserably at a surprise attack on Mycroft: Ow. OW! That bastard... he didn’t have to be so rough on me.

Louis:

Louis: I am going to kill him.

......................

Bonus! 3 years later at the reunion dinner.

Albert:.... to be fair, it wasn’t too lonely. Mycroft kept me busy through his lovely letters. :D

William: That sounds wonderful, brother!

William, internally: *Lord Almighty, they had sex in prison*

....................

And later when Mycroft and Albert finally got together, everyone would be like “We KNOW”, “Like it wasn’t obvious”

confusing the hell out of Mycal as they only just banged 2 hrs ago.

#albert james moriarty #mycal #alcroft #Mycroft Holmes #sebastian moran #william james moriarty #louis james moriarty #jack renfield #eve moneypenny #yuumori #yuukoku no moriarty #moriarty the patriot

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kyuteflesh · 4 months

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kyle “gaz” garrick / f!reader

﹒⪩⪨﹒ ﹒⪩⪨﹒ ﹒⪩⪨﹒

anotha one (much love to everyone who supported my last post 🫶🫶 ur the best). not the greatest i could’ve done, less serious this time, experimenting, barely proofread, just writing to cope. enjoy :p

more plot than porn tbh, +18

141 was finally home after what felt like an eternity.

you were close with all of the members but one: kyle garrick, otherwise known as gaz.

every time you all had plans together, garrick would be the first to tap out within an hour. tonight was the night you would figure out why.

“i have a question.” you announced, downing your second shot of tequila

“ohhh! getting serious now, are we lass?” soap exclaimed, nudging ghost who in return gave him a pinch on the arm. you could only purse your lips at him.

“go on. we’re all ears.” price replied. soap and ghost crowded next to him.

“how come whenever we go out, kyle never comes? am i that much of a dick repellent??” you huffed.

soap coughed up his drink. “far from it. honestly, he just has a wee bit of a problem.”

you weren’t sure whether you should’ve been offended or not by what he said. “and what in the hell does that mean?!”

“we all agree that you’re the bonniest l—“ johnny started, only for price to quickly cut him off in attempts to deflect the attention away from them.

“garrick fancies you very much!!” there was no way in hell he was gonna let a drunken soap spoil what they talk about when you’re not around.

…………..

“in what way???” you were flabbergasted to say the least.

“way to go, captain.” ghost grumbled, facepalming in the process.

“he told us that you were so attractive it was intimidating to him. he doesn’t wanna mess anything up, so he refrains from overstaying his welcome.” price chuckled between air-quotations.

johnny was having a blast, cackling and slapping his knee. “LORD HAVE MERCY! THAT IS THE HEADLINER OF THE CENTURY.”

several drinks later, you found yourself staying in a hotel room with the group. nothing going on besides friendly banter.

simon’s phone buzzed and everyone turned to him. “who is it? some girl from the bar?” soap grinned sheepishly. “would you shut the hell up for once? it’s garrick, said he’s about to be here.”

“about time that man shows up!” price and mactavish silently cheered together.

… so many thoughts in your brain right now. how were you going to act after finding out hes been crushing on you for how many years now??? you weren’t sure if you could deal with the anxiety of presenting yourself in this state.

that’s when you heard a knock on the door.

“well would you look at that..”

“that’s our cue, gotta go!”

“sorry l/n…”

and with that, simon opened the door for gaz, and the rest of them swiftly escaped. literally no time to process anything.

you looked up at kyle. “are they coming back?”

he shook his head and took a deep sigh.

“no, they aren’t.. i rented this room for us.”

flabbergasted x2. and he could tell.

“i know i’m practically a stranger to you, i apologize. however, i’m determined to change that.”

he’s not a stranger to you. you know tons about him due to soaps big mouth, and the times where he would barely speak– because other little fun facts got tacked on from there by the group messing with him.

honestly, that’s what draws you to him.

you weren’t gonna say that. you haven’t said anything.

he sat down next to you, taking yet another deep sigh.

“i don’t want you to think i dislike you, and i’m sorry if i made it seem that way. i really like you y/n, and i just never knew how to go about dealing with these feelings. i thought they would go away if i distanced myself but t—“ you pressed your lips to his. kyle’s eyes widened, but he promptly snapped out of it.

he wasn’t about to fumble a second time. he’s been waiting for this moment forever.

it didn’t take long for it to turn into a heated make out sesh.

he put his hand on the back of your head, gently weighing you down to the bed. he was on top of you, kissing down your neck.

gaz parted away from you for air. “is this ok?” he asked, toying with the bottom of your shirt. he didn’t want to make you uncomfortable in any way.

“of course it’s ok. you can do whatever you want with me.” you giggled.

he slipped a hand up your shirt, caressing every inch possible. “these already feel so nice. i wanna see them bare.”

your face turned a light shade of pink, “you first.”

gaz took his shirt off without any further hesitation. he wasn’t the bulkiest of the group, but he still had a nice, toned figure.

that was enough to really get you going. you followed along, straight to the point too considering you removed your bra prior to his arrival.

“bloody hell.” he leaned his head into your chest.

“what’s wrong?”

“nothing at all. you’re absolutely breathtaking.”

(SO INTO BODY WORSHIP CHANGE MY MIIINNDDDDDDDDDDDDAGHHH) gaz wasted no time sucking and kissing on your tits. his hands were wandering for a good minute before he started to travel towards the burning heat between your legs.

after finally getting your skirt and panties off, gaz took a moment to admire his prize. “such a pretty fuckin pussy.”

he started to gently massage your clit, gathering your slick to help. “all of this for me? i’m truly honored.”

“hush up already and do somethinggg.” you begged.

“aw, needy all of a sudden? where’v you been keeping it all this time?” he began to stick two fingers inside of you. “whatever you say, luv.”

he was eating you out while making sure your hole got attention too. curling his fingers, going at a generous pace. “you taste so good. need your mouth on my dick at the same time.”

kyle laid down, and you got on top of him nearing his cock. he started to lap at your cunt again, returning to his previous tempo as his digits pumped in and out.

you squeaked, starting to work his dick with your hand. you took the tip into your mouth, licking the mess of precum that was left because of for you.

as much as you’d rather have his dick inside your pussy, something about the both of you being pleasured orally was insanely hot. enough to help your climax build.

“more, please.”

“more what?”

“add more fingers. i need it, please kyle.”

practically fisting you, he had four fingers inside you now (rookie numbers tbh). you on the other hand, were gagging on his dick. you could feel it twitch with every gurgled moan you let out.

“i’m gonna cum” he choked out. this man is one hell of a trooper. a munch if you would.

“i wanna cum on your tits. just need you to finish first.” he flipped you over, back on top of you. two fingers this time, but it was enough.

“right there. don’t stop-!” you were struggling with words. squeezing his free hand. so focused on the intense feeling you didn’t care about who could’ve been hearing you.

you finally let yourself go. face glazed with sweat and spit. kyles was 10 times worse. hot tho.

kyle was eager to cum. after giving your pussy a final kiss, he started to work on his own release.

hovering over you, he continued to jerk himself off. you pushed your boobs together, anticipating the sticky coating. he groaned in response, getting shakier by the second. without any word, he finished all over your chest.

“have you gotten over your little crush yet?”

“for fucks sake. definitely not.”

#cod mw2 smut #cod mwii smut #cod modern warfare #cod mwii #cod mw2 #kyle gaz garrick #kyle gaz garrick x reader #kyle gaz garrick smut #kyle gaz garrick x you #gaz smut #gaz x reader #cod smut #kyle garrick smut

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agentrouka-blog · 6 months

Note

i always love your responses because i think you do such a good job explaining things (even though some of it is just common sense)... so i was wondering if you could read this meta? i've come across this sort of idea about sansa before in their circles, but this is the first time that i've seen them try to argue that she is somehow inherently unloveable *rolls eyes*

-Something I find really interesting is that for all Sansa craves admiration and “love” from others, she’s not especially good at making friends or inspiring supporters. When people do decide to support or “befriend” her in the story, it is always with ulterior motives—almost all of which serve themselves. This includes characters like the Hound, whose connection to Sansa is built off his own ideology concerning knighthood and gender in their social system.

Her inability to create that support system is partially due to her environments: King’s Landing and the Vale, neither of which are necessarily forgiving places. However, despite her hostage status and shamed House, Sansa is still a valuable person to befriend, even if only for ladies. She’s pretty, performs her ladyhood well, has a famous bloodline, and is tied to the very wealthy ruling family. What’s more, she’s obviously mistreated (for a portion of her time in the capital) and without much actual power. If anything, she should garner sympathy friendships, but with everything else in mind, she should attract at least some love, some support that isn’t totally disingenuous or self-serving, however minuscule. And yet even that eludes her for some reason.

The way similar characters—her siblings particularly—so easily find friends and supporters throughout the books really draws Sansa’s lack of them to the forefront. Jon, for example, finds friends in both the Night’s Watch and amongst the wildlings. Bran forms close friendships with Jojen and Meera. Arya literally makes friends in nearly every place she goes, be they high- or lowborn. Daenerys finds companions in her ladies and Missandei and gathers loyal supporters in people like Ser Barristan. Even Catelyn as Lady Stoneheart earns the support of the Brotherhood. Granted, many of these supporters operate in their devotion to specific Houses, but they’re not doing it to serve their own wants and desires, which is a stark contrast to those “supporters” who surround Sansa at various times.

All in all, I’m intrigued at the way Sansa’s desire for love—genuine or affected—evades her while many of her contemporaries, misfits and traditional characters alike, garner it quite easily. Aside from her environments, what is it about her specifically that seems to repel genuine relationships? And what does this persistent inability to gather loyal friends, companions, and supporters indicate about her future role, if there is one?-

if you can probably tell its written by an arya stan

I laughed. 😂 Anything to cling to the idea of queen Arya - or rather not!queen Sansa.

As if being a hostage of the royal family in the royal palace in the royal capital, surrounded by enemies and spies is not the entire reason Sansa is isolated. Do they even consider how much more risk is involved in even casually approaching her, than there is for anyone having a chat with "Arry" or "Nan" or "Cat"? There is nothing "partially" about it. She is a well-guarded hostage and no one safe and well-intentioned enters the perimeter of her prison, end of.

Once Sansa is in the Vale, she is still more difficult to approach by anyone than a "simple" lowborn girl, as the bastard daughter of Littlefinger (soon Lord Protector) - who takes pains to control who she interacts with and how. And still she begins to form tentative bonds to the people around her - mindful to keep her emotional distance to a degree after what happened with Margaery and Dontos.

Which highlights another crucial aspect. Arya's bonds? Generally represent her attachment to others, not the other way around. She declares Hot Pie and Gendry her pack and feels betrayed that they have their own lives and plans, she never asked them if they feel the same way and I doubt it - and yet her bond to Gendry (also on the run, no threat to her!) - is the single most genuine mutual attachment she forms after she becomes a fugitive. Do they think Yoren helped her because she's uniquely worthy and not because she is Ned's daughter? Do they think Jaqen has no ulterior motive? Or Harwin and Beric? They are kind because they can afford to be but their motives are their own ends. Do they think Lady Smallwood would have somehow withheld this same kindness from Sansa? The captain of the Titan's Daughter knows she is connected to the Faceless Men, ffs. And what possible risk is attached to the women of the Happy Port being kind to a beggar girl?

To her vast credit, Arya forms quick and genuine attachments to other people. More so than Sansa, whose situation also doesn't allow for it. But these attachments don't represent a support system and they aren't deep bonds.

This distorted representation of their ability to connect to people certainly doesn't allow for some kind of speculation how Sansa would act and be perceived in a safe environment and or in a role of political leadership.

#sansa stark #anti arya stans #anti sansa antis

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impossiblescissorspeachpaper · 9 months

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Happy Elain Week!

So it’s been a little difficult for me to write much else outside of my THOAW universe and subsequently I don’t have much for @elainarcheronweek prepared. My brain has been a bit mushy and it pains me to not contribute in the way I usually would but I’ll try to put out a few things throughout the week.

For Day 1: Seer, I have this humble little drabble. Thank you to @ultadverb for the prompt idea. Have the best week y’all! I can’t wait to dig into all the goodies 😊🩷

***

Since the time she was a young child, Elain could always remember having the most vivid dreams.

Dreams of dark caverns, of great winged beasts swooping down upon her, of bone white hands grasping her sleeves and tugging at her skirts. They frightened her, as a little girl. She would sneak into her parents’ room; tears streaming down her full cheeks to seek her mother for comfort.

It’s just a silly dream, Elain! There is no need to cry! It is simply your imagination. Go back to bed.

Often, her father wouldn’t even rouse at her interruptions or mothers berating, but when he did, he would carry her back to the room she shared with Nesta and tuck her into her bed. He wouldn’t wait for her to fall asleep again.

The dreams carried on sporadically for most her life. Some time around the beginning of her teenage years, she learnt to not seek comfort from others anymore. It was often fruitless anyway, at least when she turned to her parents. Her sisters were more sympathetic. And when her mother died and their fortune squandered, everyone seemed too lost to their own despair to care about anyone else but themselves. She willed herself to cast the dreams from memory, push them aside and instead plaster on the pleasant smile she wore to appease those around her.

So, when she had been roused from sleep the night Feyre had returned once again from above the wall, her sister turned into Fae herself and the High Lord of Night along with his most trusted warriors in tow, she hadn’t thought much of it. The dream had come to her like they always did. Flashes of strange scenes she had never witnessed in her waking hours.

But she lay awake for hours afterwards, wondering what the swirling black waters meant, so deep and dark they appeared to repel light itself. Obsidian in both appearance and menace. She had heard the sobs and pleas of her sisters echoing off stone walls. Cruel laughter. A male grunt of pain. Beautiful, scared fingers twitching toward her.

And then the scene had gone dark, utterly silent. There was nothing but her subconscious thought for what felt like a small eternity…

But then, after the endless dark came light. Sunshine. As she had never seen it before. It was warm and buttery, peeking through the shadows of the darkness that had seemed to swallow her.

But the light was familiar and warm, gentle. Unassuming. It felt, comforting. Unlike anything she had felt before. She liked it. It felt peaceful yet exciting, as if some playful little creature was beckoning her closer, to look harder, to see beyond the shadows.

Others may have been weary, afraid. But she didn’t balk.

For whatever reason, she knew it would be ok. That whatever she found beyond that shadow would be worth it.

********

tag list:

@fawnandshadows

@ultadverb

@nightcourtseer

@wingedblooms

@tswaney17

@jasmineandshadows

@azrielslight

@shadowflorecita

@curiositywoman

@tealeaves-and-rosepetals

@theanonymousopossum

@elrielbaby

@reverie-tales

@jmoonjones

@nikethestatue

@biimbocore

@duskwhisperer

@emely01

@lyncheffield

@dottielovegood

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@glasscupsss

@dreamsandwings

@liliput2203

@justreallybored

@chaoticesthete

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@elriellover

@serendipity-by-chance

@britishwings

#elain archeron #elain archeron week #t writes #day one: seer #drabble #acotar fanfiction

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theredofoctober · 10 months

Text

Midnight Mass DARK AU Fic— GOD HAS MANY HANDS

Cross posted from AO3

Pairing: Dark!Father Paul Hill x OC

Synopsis: A nun moves to Crockett Island for mysterious reasons. Father Paul succumbs to new and wicked whims

TW/CW: non con, religious trauma, blood

Father Paul is a darker, somewhat OOC version of himself, though as close to Hamish's portrayal as I could make him in those parameters

Read beneath the cut

The nun had been avoiding Father Paul Hill since she'd first arrived from the mainland, sequestered, a cloister of one, in a cottage at the furthest edge of Crockett Island.

How she loved that house, in its cultivated solitude. Sometimes, when the nun played hymns on the piano over the draughts that jimmied the windows at night, she imagined herself the sole living person in existence, a single pulse—a single breath—in the dark.

But it wasn't enough; her thoughts were always with her, constant tenants that had followed her for thirty miles across open water, and would follow her under the earth, in time. As a good Catholic, the nun was meant to believe in the washing away of one's sins by God's will, that to repent was to be reborn.

Yet she had repented, and it only felt like running away.

The nun left her new home very little, only to collect her scant groceries from the single store, or as deliveries from the mainland, at the port. Still she hadn't entered the church, although it—the Lord's voice—called to her often, its song undulating through her in a constant wave. Yet the thought of the many eyes and whispering mouths attending each sermon repelled her with a strength she'd felt only at the precipice of night terrors— no, she couldn't go there. Not yet.

And no matter: the nun had her own fashions of private worship, leftovers from the convent of St. Aurelia. She could worship in her home, for now, and remain devout.

Father Paul, the priest on the island, did not seem to agree. Several times the nun had bumped into him whilst running errands, a surprisingly youthful figure in blue jeans and tousled hair, ignorant, it seemed, of his own dark good looks. He'd struck her as both quaintly awkward and charismatic, an artful combination that had likely won over the congregation as much as outward appearances.

The man seemed to spring up from grassy hillocks and rugged shoreline like a Shakespearian ghost, ever-ready with a warm greeting and, inevitably, a gentle enquiry as to when the nun would be attending mass. Did he know that she was coming, or was it mere chance that brought them together, again and again? God's will, Father Paul would likely declare, but the nun was less certain of that.

She'd noticed a particular darkness in the priest's eyes, a furtive stirring of old, untended pain, and new.

The priest had suffered in his life; that, or he was hiding something. The nun had no interest in exposing herself to such volatility, intriguing a man though life's ills had forged. She'd vowed to engage nothing and no-one that might disrupt her peace, and thus she'd nodded her way through every interaction, eyes lowered, thrumming desperately for some gap in the conversation to take her leave.

After that came the phonecalls. Most, after the first, went unanswered; the nun got into the habit of disconnecting the line when she began her day's work—the editing of religious texts for publication—and considered having the telephone uninstalled altogether when she was disturbed in the evening, as well.

It was a blessing that the nun rarely dreamed, for she was sure that the priest would find his way there, too, as he had her daily ruminations.

Thought after thought came in their torrents, all of Father Paul, all of him. He coiled inside her as if with many fingers, many hands opening every hole she had, making them his possessions. The image was sin and sickness, boiling at the perimeters of her mind, irrepressible. But the nun would repress it, she told herself, she would not fold under the fancied urgings of a man that didn't know her.

And he did not know her, no matter what he'd heard from the mouths of gossips, nor from enquiries with the tight-lipped secretaries of St. Aurelia, who would give not an inch, holding grimly to self-preserving discretion.

A few days after the priest's calls ceased there came a knock at the door, an imperious rap that seemed to invite itself in. Bev Keene, the unofficial church administrator, stood about the house for half an hour, wrinkling her nose at the living room decor, and smiling blandly over a cup of tea.

"I don't believe we've seen your face at Mass yet, Sister. Honestly, the whole flock has been expecting you. You don't want to disappoint them, do you? They're all so eager to welcome you to the congregation. Following God's own lessons, after all. 'The Lord watches over the sojourners; he upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin'— Psalm 146:9'. Words to think on."

There was a clammy sense of shame in the air around Beverly, a bitterness she herself seemed indifferent to. One couldn't stand beside her and not feel unclean, riddled with the squirming discomfort of a child pulled up before their teacher. The nun made quiet attempts to usher the woman from the house, which Bev coolly evaded.

"You do know Father Paul has been trying to flag you down? You'd do well to visit the man. His hands are very full at the moment and he's still so keen to make time for you!"

Too much time, the nun thought, but she felt so harassed that it occured to her that if she acquiesced just once this campaign of polite coercion might come to an end.

So it was that she left her house, one night, and made the long walk to the church, turning around on herself several times as her resolve wavered, then ultimately trudging on.

The air was pale with silence, unstirred but for the crunch of the nun's sensible shoes on unturned stones, her feathered breathing. How easily the walking put her out of breath; perhaps it was the incessant choir of nerves she felt, not the journey, that so tired her.

The wind tugged, insistent, at the nun's veil, and she heard, on that breeze, a strange, sharp cry from far off. A scream, or the shriek of an owl— neither were so savage as this noise, as it seemed to her, a yell of killing triumph.

The nun drew a cross against the dark. Likely it had been nothing, but she'd always feared the unpredictability of nature, the omen of it. There was a certain paganism to the Catholic faith that nurtured superstition, and with the nun's anxieties already at their static heights, her walk took on the feeling of folk horror.

At last the church rose into view, as modest a structure as expected for such a small community. Still the nun stopped in the middle of the grass, taken, again, by a great surge of disquiet. Lights were on in the church, which was not unusual; there were late services that dragged on, and the priest or Bev Keene would sometimes linger afterwards to clean, or rearrange the pews.

But the yellow windows were of such an arid, malevolent hue, like sulphur in a bell jar, that by the time the nun reached the church doors she was trembling, her shadow a cave drawing on the wall.

Slowly, she opened the doors, sighing at the familiar scents of dust and incense. Home was in the smell of this building, more so even than in her own precious space; the nun stepped into the church, between the rows, and closed her eyes a moment, taking comfort where she could before dread quenched the feeling again.

"Ah, Sister! I wasn't sure you'd come by."

The nun sprung to her left, hands seizing the top of nearest bench. Father Paul Hill was coming down the aisle towards her, his lined face breaking into a smile that would have disarmed the Devil himself with its warmth.

"I'd hoped, Sister— prayed, I, ah, I even prayed on it, just a little. I hope you don't mind; I know that can seem a little off-putting, unanticipated goodwill after hardship, but there it is. Does that sound conceited? Maybe it does, unintentionally, of course, but the road to Hell, you know—"

The sudden flow of low, mildly stammering chatter arrested the nun, it being so benign that she could do nothing but stand limply in its swell. There was no flitting away through the doors again now, not when those soft, dark eyes were clipped to her face, now the priest's hand was reaching out to envelop her own. Cold, so cold, that hand, and yet somehow feverish at once.

Was he sick, this Father Paul, or was he, too, felled by trepidation?

"Would you like some tea?" asked the priest. "Or coffee, although it is getting late. There's a kettle and some clean cups somewhere in the backroom, I believe. I always make one, for meetings like this. Something about a hot beverage calms the soul."

Helpless, the nun let herself be ushered to a pew at the front of the church, bound in a swaddle of talk. She knew that there would be purpose beneath the niceties, and sure enough when Father Paul at last sat beside her, drinks in hand, the nun felt as if the jaws of some unseen trap had closed barbed teeth around her.

"I get the feeling you're not one hundred percent comfortable in God's house yet," said the priest. "I understand that. I do. All people of strong faith, we're tested daily, for the bettering of our souls. 'Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him'— James 1:2. All the more reason to seek support, to seek support and guidance, from those who offer it with open arms."

It was nothing the nun hadn't heard before. She sipped her tea with a quiet agony as still the priest yammered on, his voice hypnotic in its depth and repetition.

"I know you must feel rejected, just now. Cast down, like Lucifer himself was, by his father, and likely hurt by the fall in more ways than one; just imagine, consumed though he was by wickedness, the Devil felt, as we all have, as we all do, the spurns and judgement of a loved one."

The priest reached out and touched the nun's arm lightly, making her splash tea over the rim of her cup in surprise.

"The convent of St. Aurelia. It was the only family you had, the community there, wasn't it? I understand your parents died when you were young, a tragic accident. My condolences. Though they know peace now it's never easy, a loss, losing, sometimes, the only people you cared to know. Gone, in a second, and suddenly you find yourself breaking bread with strangers. It's a strength, getting through it alone. I commend you for that."

The sheer compassion in the man's voice made the nun's eyes mist, but she merely blinked until Father Paul came sharply into view again. The nun stared down at his jeans, at a loose white thread she itched to pull free. Her eyes remained there as the priest talked, urging her towards the inescapable question.

"But then, there was another upheaval," he said. "You were asked to leave the convent, abruptly— suddenly, so unexpected. You'd lived there for so long, nearly ten years. It must feel like a betrayal— this, this departure, Eve out of Eden—"

A cool hand touched the nun's jaw, tipped her chin so that she was forced to gaze into the tunnelling black of Father Paul's stare. There was something ruthless in those eyes, the zeal of a man turned to madness by his own preaching. Yet soft, still, as salted butter, and the nun floated in that molten darkness.

"Tell me, Sister. Why were you asked to leave the convent of St. Aurelia?"

The nun broke free of the look, the encroaching hand, and the priest blinked, seeming, for a moment, embarrassed.

"This isn't confession, I know. I know that, but, uh, this opportunity, us meeting like this. It feels like time for truths—fears—to be addressed."

Attempting to rise, the nun shook her head, but it only took a meek gesture of Father Paul's hand for her to sink down again, her limbs hewn of iron weights. He looked at her with a sorrowed fascination, his tea going cold, barely touched.

Still he spoke in that low, lulling tone, still seemed so very amenable.

"I've watched you run away from me like a frightened lamb," said the priest. "Well, from everyone, but me, most of all. At first, I'll admit, I was a little hurt. Wondered what I'd done to scare you away when we'd barely spoken two words to each other. But I reflected on it, the puzzle of whatever was keeping a young woman like yourself—a woman of faith, with so much to give—in such isolation."

Father Paul set his cup down on the floor and folded his hands over his knees. Every motion, every gesture was compelling, as if conducting some strain of terrible music. The words were dangerous, he was, somehow. The nun wanted to stand up, make some clumsy excuse to leave, but she knew that she'd be drawn back, a helpless wave called in by the moon.

She didn't know why. All men were an obscurity to her, this one more than most.

"I thought about dropping in, at the cottage," said Father Paul. "But I didn't want to overwhelm you. Bev Keene did that on my behalf, I fear— sorry about that. Well-intentioned, but heavy-handed. I think she frightened you, her intensity—"

It was yours, the nun itched to say, your intensity, you wouldn't leave me alone—

But she couldn't open her mouth, could only listen as the priest burbled on.

"—Anyway, now you're here, I understand. God has allowed me that. Yes, God, I believe that, I really do. Your guilt, your shame is paralysing you, Sister. Shame that you were sent away from St. Aurelia's, so strong you came all the way to Crockett Island to hide from it. But you don't have to hide it, Sister, not with me."

Sunken into a cringing-self revulsion, the nun shifted back across the pew, putting space between herself and the priest. He inched towards her, his smile the pitying grimace of a doctor with a vicious syringe.

"You'll lose nothing by talking, if anything, you'll gain something. If you remember Psalm 32:5: 'I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.” And you forgave the guilt of my sin.' Your silence, your turmoil. You could be rid of it today, uh, tonight, this very hour, if you wanted to be. It's in your hands, Sister. That freedom. To feel clean again."

Father Paul was close enough that the nun could taste his breath on her face, make out every crease and furrow in his skin. She sensed, under his relaxed confidence, a tension, as before a cat springs. She saw it in the way his head turned too sharply, in the incline of his body over hers.

The priest's eyes were gelid, sinkholes in a slate pit. Coldly, the nun understood that she was being given no choice, that she must speak, feed whatever hunger for contrition stirred in the man's heart, or else sate some other appetite. Or another, still—

Father Paul's hand closed over the nun's thigh, and this time it didn’t tremble away from her. There was something sure, animal, in his touch, the way his fingers latched over warm flesh through the habit, seeking her skin like a caiman crawls to water.

"Please, Father," the nun began, her voice a tremulous whisper.

She stammered over those two words until they guttered to ash.

"What was it, Sister?" asked the priest, his tone rough with a broken kindness. "What did you do at St. Aurelia's that you're so ashamed of?"

His hand slipped the nun's skirt up her thigh with a tender ceremony, and she cried out, a juddering crow-caw of anguish. Father Paul's head tilted slightly, and for a moment there was a luminescence to that stare, the milky white of things seen only in caverns, deep underground.

"I wish things could be different," said the Priest, mournfully. "The telling of secrets. The unburdening of the soul. It's never easy. I wish that it could be. But the nature of growth, Sister, it's painful. Growing pains, they hurt, they always do."

The skirt was up, over the nun's knee, and she wanted achingly to run, to strike the man that touched her with such mercy, but instead she let him push her back onto the pew. The nun gazed up at him, seized by a dread of the inevitable, of the thing she'd known would come when a scent had been caught of her great sin.

"Father," she whimpered, and again could say no more; her mouth was as dry as wafer, her voice drier still.

This time, the priest made no answer. His fingers brushed the bare skin of the nun's thigh, the place behind her knee where a pulse beat with the miserable violence of the Deus irae. The black-silver eyes were fixed there, almost lidless in their lack of blinking, and the nun realised that the priest had bent down, bent in the mode of praying over the exposed limb, his sharp nose almost touching her skin.

Gone, suddenly, was the quizzical arch of those dark brows, all bumbling affability extinguished. Fronds of black hair sprung down onto the priest's forehead, and as he lifted the nun's leg high to press his face to her pulsepoint she saw a creature unhinged, not a man at all, or not entirely.

Pain broke like a cheap mirror across the nun's thigh, and she tried to scream, tried, and failed. The sound was thieved from her lungs as though by the hand of a ghost, as was her strength as she tried to kick, and did no more than dislodge, from her foot, the plain little shoe.

It hit the floor with a resounding thud, like a closed book, but the nun did not hear it, her focus narrowed on the keen, ruby artery of suffering the priest plucked out of her thigh.

His other hand was at her hip, not tight enough to hurt, but enough to hold her to him as he drank from the wound he'd bitten open as though she were a flask in a desert. Blood ran down her leg in sumptuous plenty, soaking her underwear, redding the white.

The nun's body was so stiff with pain and terror that her back and neck ached with the tautness of it. She clutched the side of the pew and muttered faintly to an ear she was abruptly certain did not exist.

"Spirit of our God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Most Holy Trinity, Immaculate Virgin Mary..."

"Yes," said Father Paul, his lips still touching the cut behind the pale knee. "If you won't confess, then pray, pray. There's absolution for us all, in one way or another."

His face was a slick of carmine, dripping its excess onto the nun's calf. As his stare met hers she saw, slowly, the intelligence come back to that primal hollow, something of humanity, although not much of it.

"We all sin, Sister, all of us, even I. God will forgive us, as he'll forgive us again, and again. This isn't the first time someone has touched you; now, at least, we'll be cleansed together, as one."

Was this how he justified his monstrous want, a forgivable sin? Or else the stepping stone to a greater good, the regeneration of a soul? He was lying to himself, as the nun had, in taking flight from her past; no wonder there were holes in her wings.

The priest crawled up her trembling body, shushed her, murmured nothings of consolation as his bloodied hands pushed the useless feather of her underwear aside, as he laid his face alongside hers, anointing her with cloying scarlet.

"I won't judge you, Sister," he said, "if you find pleasure in this. It's normal, in fact, quite normal, the exhilaration of meeting the Lord with the truth bared—"

"Please, God, help me," said the nun, and the priest's irises shifted with that bestial madness, the sheen of lust and religion and killing made one in those terrible eyes.

He kissed her mouth as his fingers breeched her tightness, chaste, at first, then with the passion of a hunter in the night, the covenant of the unholy. His thumb danced her clitoris with the skill of knowing, and the nun had enough presence of mind to be surprised by that before her thoughts were dashed to cinders.

"They tried to cleanse you of this need, in St Aurelia's, didn't they, Sister?" asked Father Paul. "Tried, and failed with the futility of man to erase the very need of man to trespass. I saw it in your eyes: you're young, and on fire with it. I'll burn, with you, a while."

The nun lay under him like a saint carved into marble, as though his touch didn't move her at all. Presently the fingers left, and as fabric rustled another hardness, another piercing thing struck deep, the nail in Christ's palm, the suffering of Job—

"God," she screamed out, and there was so much love in Father Paul's eyes as he moved upon her that she could see scarcely believe that he was within, his cock the spear in the side of Christ, tearing the red scraps of her faith asunder.

It seemed to last the length of three great days, each thrust a thundering violence. Yet still the priest muttered his prayers and maddened sweetness, still kissed her brow with an angel's pure lips as she suffered beneath him. He wanted to bite her again, she felt it; he was starved of that which he had taken.

But it was as if he didn't dare, as if this carnality was the closest he could allow himself to taking such communion again.

"God, forgive us our sins," breathed the priest, against the nun's ruined veil, its wimple crushed and smeared with garnet death. "That we might begin again tomorrow anew. Amen."

He stilled, arcing away from the nun, his groans deep and low. She wished to feel nothing, only the agonies of unhappiness, but even in this God had no mercy; as the hated organ pulsed within there was an answering ripple through her own flesh, the spasms of a joy thrust upon her.

They lay together, a moment, clinging, the devout before some terrible miracle. Then, slowly, the priest gathered himself upright, looked at the blood on his hands and upon the woman. Abashed, he helped her sit; she didn't stop him, allowed him to smooth down her habit, give back the fallen shoe.

"I— I apologise, Sister," said Father Paul, in tones of genuine regret. "I seem to have forgotten myself. God moves me in strange ways, as of late, and I don't dare question His might and wisdom. I'd advise you against that, too. Questioning, I mean. He placed you here for a reason, I feel that completely."

Dully, the nun let him speak, the impossibility of answering a colossus between them.

"It's a pity you feel this way," the priest murmured. "I'd hoped to salvage your trust in God's plan, but I see that will take time. That's okay. We've got plenty of that, on Crockett Island."

He helped the nun to her feet, both of them unsteady in the waning crisis of frenzy. There was a lunacy in the moment, how a kind of performance fell into place between them, a play of being decent and ordinary people.

"Come to the rec center, if there's anything else you need to work through," said the priest. "I'm thinking of offering counselling there, in the evenings. Might, ah, could do you some good."

The nun beheld him with an abstract, distant terror, thinking—a sin, another sin—that she would rather carve out her own throat than be alone with this man once more. But rather than say so she only nodded, a coward's sort of kneeling.

"Yes, Father," she whispered, and stumbled out of the church, down to the beach.

She wanted to keep walking, into the ocean, under the cleansing black of the waves. But again the nun failed her resolve, and tottered on, a broken seabird trailing the shoreline, until the lonely cottage emerged in the distance.

#ao3 writer #dark fic #dark!fic #dead dove do not eat #father paul hill #father paul hill x oc #midnight mass #midnight mass fic #tw!noncon #religious trauma

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fateandloveentwined · 10 months

Text

long darkness — cháng yīn 长喑 translation

cháng yīn 长喑 // long darkness

a fan-made song on Xiao Jingyan. I have always been a Mei Changsu over XJY person, but this song from his pov really worked for me and let me see the weightedness of XJY's crown, so I wanted to share it with more.

song link in comment below. (bilibili . com / video / av10441457/)

长剑出鞘冷锋芒十三载意难忘

缓歌曼舞九重宫朔风黄沙麾旗扬

手足血脉埋青冢挚友良弓唯锈藏

岂能折腰屈膝没忠良

the long sword unsheathes from the scabbard, its cool blade revealed. thirteen years, and hard it is to forget.

leisured, soothing melodies with graceful dances at the ninefold palace; north wind and yellow sand with the billowing ensign in the desert. *[1]

brothers-in-arms and brothers in blood in tombs buried, graves long covered in grass; dear friends and cherished bow stored away, now left only to rust —

how is one to bend and kneel, and bury the names of the honourable and the good?

挑灯不眠千军帐逐千里护家邦

玉壶冰心铁骨铮扬眉冷看覆风浪

当时少年且横枪凝尽碧血守四方

守国土河山定国安邦

light a lamp through the unrested nights at the commander’s tent; repel foes a thousand miles, and shield the kingdom.

nobility and aspirations stayed true to, bones of steel resounding. head high, brows lifted, he coolly looks to the tempestuous, overturning storms. *[2]

the youth of the past still danced their spears: blood of the honourable, thoroughly consecrated, defends the four corners of their homeland,

guarding rivers and hills to secure peace of the kingdom’s earth.

(念白：我不要求你能理解，什么是军人铁血，什么是战场狼烟，但有些人，不能伤害，有些事，不能利用。如果连那些血战沙场的将士都不懂得尊重，我萧景琰绝不与你为伍，清楚了吗？)

V/O — I do not expect you to understand a soldier’s honour or the smoke signals on the battlefield. But there are some people you cannot hurt, some things you cannot manipulate. If you cannot even respect the soldiers dying at the battlefront, I, Xiao Jingyan, will never work with you. Do you understand?

铁马金戈谈笑并辔封疆几回魂梦

凤阙深深夜雨潇潇数闻铃

鸿儒谈笑对面不知相逢唯知君臣纲

音容早已远谁知苍凉

armoured horses and metal spears, riding in parallel in friendly chatters at the borderlands — how many times has the soul dreamt thus?

depths of the palace, whistling of the nightly rain, a few stray rings of the bells. *[3]

an erudite scholar, now sat opposite in small smiles converse, yet know not to reunite. what leaves is the etiquette of lords and lieges. *[4]

voice and countenance long since distanced — who is to know the desolation and vicissitudes concealed?

谈笑自若朝堂对气轩昂霁月风光

风云激荡历艰辛终执牙璋

漫漫更鼓朱笔落夜未央提笔写兴亡

四顾怅惘余音且绕梁

composed in dialogue and pleasantries, assured and imposing at court. he is noble and virtuous as the bright moon and warm breeze.

wading through the unpredictable winds and turmoils, zhang sceptre of jade at last in hand.

drums signifying the night hours sound, red comments from the emperor’s brush move through the boundless night yet to end. a lift of the brush, and prosperities and declines are writ. *[5]

pensive and lost he looks to four sides. remnants of past sounds remain, resonating through the beams of the palace.

(verse 2)

潜龙在渊敛锋芒风雷动引龙翔

风云际会参参商瞰天下世道无常

掌中龙渊凛如霜立丹陛守盛世长

祭酒未凉叹谁人共觞

like a submerged dragon in the abyss, he enshrouds his splendour. wind and thunder call his wings to flight. *[6]

in the winds and clouds, he engages in the tumult of the Shen and Shang constellations. from above he looks down at the fickleness of the world.

in his hands, the abyss of the dragon is cold as frost; he stands at the red stairway before the imperial palace, and overlooks an everlasting prosperity.

the wine offering to the dead is yet to cool — I sigh, who is to drink with me?

袖手天下为帝王垂衣且驭八荒

气宇舒金殿垂拱揽尽山河只手倾

长歌挽弓射天狼潜龙一朝御风翔

乾坤日月昭天下清朗

hands folded in sleeves, he gazes at the kingdom before him. as emperor he rules from his attire and directs even the most distant lands. *[7]

with poised air he commands the court, hands held together; the entirety of the kingdom shifts with a tilt of his hand. *[7]

sing high and long; draw your bow to the invading Sirius. the submerged dragon one morn rises to ride the winds. *[8]

heaven and earth, and sun and moon clears, and the world before brightens.

铁马金戈谈笑并辔封疆几回魂梦

凤阙深深夜雨潇潇数闻铃

鸿儒谈笑对面不知相逢唯知君臣纲

音容已故徒一身沧桑

armoured horses and metal spears, riding in parallel in friendly chatters at the borderlands — how many times has the soul dreamt thus?

depths of the palace, whistling of the nightly rain, a few stray rings of the bells. *[3]

an erudite scholar, now sat opposite in small smiles converse, yet know not to reunite. what leaves is the etiquette of lords and lieges. *[4]

voice and countenance already bygone, all but a body of desolation remains.

谈笑自若朝堂对气轩昂霁月风光

风云激荡历艰辛终执牙璋

漫漫更鼓朱笔落夜未央提笔写兴亡

从此立龙城孤守八方

composed in dialogue and pleasantries, assured and imposing at court. he is noble and virtuous as the bright moon and warm breeze.

having waded through the unpredictable winds and turmoils, zhang sceptre of jade at last in hand.

drums signifying the night hours sound, red comments from the emperor’s brush move through the boundless night yet to end. a lift of the brush, and prosperities and declines are writ. *[5]

from forth he establishes himself in the imperial city of dragons. alone, he awatches the eight corners of his realm. *[9]

Extra notes

for those keen on classical chinese and literature allusions

I’ve cited some allusions and references I was reminded of as I listened to the song. These are subjective, my knowledge of classical texts is very limited, take everything with a grain of salt and please do comment if you’d like to supplement any information.

[1] 缓歌曼舞九重宫朔风黄沙麾旗扬 — 《长恨歌》白居易 The Song of Everlasting Regret, by Bai Juyi

缓歌曼舞: from “缓歌慢舞凝丝竹”. This is at the start of the romance tale, where the palace is in carefree bliss and prosperity.

slow and graceful songs / slow dances / slowly the music of the strings and the bamboo reverberate in step with the dances.

朔风黄沙麾旗扬: might be a stretch; I was reminded of “黄埃散漫风萧索”. This is from the same poem as above, we are one fourth in here, and it talks of a war.

yellow dust, scattered, drifts through the air. the bleak wind howls.

[2] 玉壶冰心铁骨铮 — 《芙蓉楼送辛渐》王昌龄 Bidding Xin Jian farewell at Furong Tower by Wang Changling

玉壶冰心: from “洛阳亲友如相问，一片冰心在玉壶”

if the relatives and friends from Luoyang ask, tell them that my noble intentions are unchanged; a heart of ice in the vase of jade.

[3] 凤阙深深夜雨潇潇数闻铃 — 《长恨歌》白居易 The Song of Everlasting Regret, by Bai Juyi

夜雨潇潇数闻铃: again could be a stretch; I was reminded of “夜雨闻铃肠断声” from the same poem as [1]. (don’t ask me why, this entire song is infused with this piece it feels). This talks of the same romance tale, in which the emperor mourns the death of his beloved.

in the nightly rain, the sound of the bells could be heard. it sounds as sorrowful and agonising as the breaking of intestines.

[4] 鸿儒谈笑对面不知相逢唯知君臣纲 — 《陋室铭》刘禹锡 An Inscription of the Humble Abode by Liu Yuxi; 《江城子》苏轼 Jiang Cheng Zi, by Su Shi

鸿儒谈笑: from "谈笑有鸿儒，往来无白丁" credits to @fwoopersongs because my brain happily omitted it!

well-learnt scholars congregate in joyous talk, traversing there is no uncouth and unread.

不知相逢: there are many poems on this topic, one of the most notable ones would be “纵使相逢应不识，尘满面，鬓如霜。”

even if we met (Su Shi and his deceased wife), you should not be able to recognise me. dust covers my face, and the hair of my temples is white as frost.

[5] 漫漫更鼓朱笔落夜未央 — 《长恨歌》白居易 The Song of Everlasting Regret, by Bai Juyi (added in edit)

漫漫更鼓: Okay, "迟迟钟鼓初长夜" immediately came to mind when I saw this phrase, but I went like here's too many footnotes already and thought it was too much of a stretch to put in (there's only one word in common!). Then I looked into the original poem, in which the timely bi-hour rings of the drum felt lengthened because of the emperor's agony over losing his loved one -- and so I went like, okay, this is relevant, I actually need to add this in.

the drums reporting the hour of the night come late, and it is early in the long night.

漫漫 meaning endless, without an end in sight. This echoes the sentiments of the emperor in Bai Juyi's poem in feeling that the night is everlasting and without end.

[6] 潜龙在渊敛锋芒 — 《易经》 Yi Jing, the Book of Changes

潜龙: There’s an awful lot of “submerged dragon” metaphors in this stanza. Technically it's a figurative "talents hidden dragon" rather than literally, under the waters. This is from Yi Jing essentially, a super old book on divination that does have some wisdom of old sayings in it. The submerged dragon talks of how the dragon, currently veiled, is a powerful being simply not revealed to worldly eyes yet, and is waiting for opportunity to strike (more like, soar, in this context). These lyrics parallel Xiao Jingyan with the allusion to talk about how he stayed silent for thirteen years before his time of brilliance.

[7] 袖手天下为帝王垂衣且驭八荒 / 气宇舒金殿垂拱揽尽山河只手倾 — Taoism concept

Okie this is super complicated and involves a Taoism context, some history from the beginning emperors of the Han dynasty, and a very enthusiastic Emperor Taizong of Tang; I don’t really know how to go about this.

袖手, 垂衣驭八荒, 垂拱, these all lead to the same concept, and the middle chunk in particular is from a poem written by Emperor Taizong of Tang. Theory suggested by Laozi and Zhuangzi of Taoism, overall it talks of inaction, which is action the emperors at the start of the Han dynasty employed. They demanded less of their citizens and let the economy recover naturally (agriculture and such), and since these policies worked, the starting few Han emperors were regarded highly with this kind of purposeful and benevolent “inaction”.

In short, this song here uses these descriptions to talk of Jingyan as a competent and masterful leader.

[8] 长歌挽弓射天狼 — 《江城子·密州出猎》苏轼 Hunting outside Mizhou (yet another Jiang Cheng Zi), by Su Shi

挽弓射天狼: from “会挽雕弓如满月，西北望，射天狼。”

I shall draw my carved bow like the full-moon, point towards the northwest, and shoot in the direction of the intruders.

天狼 means Sirius star. In chinese astronomy/astrology it was somewhat related to evilness, hence the use of Sirius to denote intruders.

[9] 从此立龙城孤守八方

I just added this this is not a reference it just really reminds me of this fanfiction oneshot 此生一诺 (this life, a pledge)! It talks about XJY at the end of everything, he draws a circle about the ground and entraps himself with the promise he made to see the world a better place under his reign (from the chinese idiom 画地为牢). I recced the oneshot here if you wish to check it out.

arghhh the entire course of me writing the tl was me going oh goodness why is there yet another footnote but I’m glad to be done for now.

Like, goodness. There is not one “he” or “him” reference in the lyrics. I would love to do the same, but you can see me getting more and more resigned towards the end of the translation.

I am sooo inclined to passive voice and invert subjects for every sentence when it comes to translations, I realise, and I apologise for the almost-signature abundance of semicolons and em dashes in the translation (I blame it on the difference in punctuation nuances. — I subconsciously use semicolons for semi-parallel sentence structures, so you can spot out imperfect couplets that way.) Massive respect to all those who translate, because easy is it to hatch out a crude translation in five minutes, it is not treading about the delicate balance between literal and metaphorical, and in all honesty I feel that it is just way easier for me to write literal once, then go off the rails and do super-figurative for the other.

There are far more annotations and word definitions I’d like to add (I could literally do a classical text/poetry meta for every word lmao), but evidently, time constraints, and truthfully it would take forever to complete, so on a “ask me and I’ll try to elaborate” basis again.

The V/O — I’d love to make it more archaic, but the dialogue from the drama in this part was so modern apologies I’m sort of disappointed with the translation over here.

Re: song title. Yes, it sounds a little weird, excuse that.

I considered other translations for the song title, but none of them really gave the impression I really wanted. Words like “eternal” and “everlasting” were too permanent, I wanted to express the idea of the darkness being lengthened, yet with Jingyan’s reign it would come to an end, hence my hesitance. “Continual” is one I fiddled with: it did not give the same curt, direct feeling as “long” however, so in the end I just ended up with the simplest title.

#nirvana in fire #琅琊榜 #nif #lyb #lang ya bang #xiao jingyan #chinese translation #chinese language #cdrama #chinese #literary chinese #classical chinese poetry #fate translates #fate creates

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flowerflamestars · 6 months

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I wonder how the fae of the Spring Court are dealing with everything in Effloresce. Their High Lord took a very abrupt swan dive into insanity at his failed wedding. His second, who everyone seemed to like, physically intercepted their High Lord in the middle of slaughtering the wedding guests. No one has seen him since but hey the Wall is broken now, I guess. Alis and the sentries must be having a time.

The Effloresce timeline is NOT a fun one for the Spring Court.

Tamlin is having his canon, betraying of all ideals, half descent into madness, half horrifying ruthless drive alliance with Hybern.

But what's really, really pushed him over the edge?

He thinks he murdered Lucien.

He failed to protect Feyre from the dreaded Night Court. Failed his Court under Amarantha. Killed her and still, couldn't keep everyone safe, not even from himself. It is HIS FAULT Lucien is dead- loyal, kind Lucien, who was trying to stop Tamlin from losing control. Lucien, who died so ugly it was some kind of magical implosion, run up against the Wall.

(Effloresce Tam has been...weaving in and out of sanity for a while. Matebond denial probably would held strong if, you know, the person on the other end WASN'T Amarantha. But the fact of the matter is, it's all caving in. He wasn't strong enough, he thinks.)

Spring, without a competent High Lord OR their long held, trustworthy second in command, is having a bad, bad, bad time.

Their old enemies who slaughtered the last Lady of Spring and her children have taken their lady before she could even be theirs. Their even older, worse, implacable enemy is on their shores. Their High Lord's mourning has taken a deranged, destructive turn, enough so that their meadows are thorn and their air is choked in pollen.

I like to think Alis took one look at this ever worsening situation and fully fucked off to Summer.

The sentries are pretty divided- killing Lucien is probably one of the only things Tamlin could have done to really fuck up their loyalty. They don't want Hybern as allies. They're mourning a whole bright future they thought was coming for about half a second and trying to keep people alive, out of Hybern's way.

The wards are fucked, and of course they are. Tamlin's off the rails. Lucien was probably the one reenforcing them. The Wall is strong as ever, repelling even fae creatures used to ranging all the way to sea- nothing is getting through, and why would it? The humans must know war is coming, too. Lucien Vanserra died on the Wall, who knows what horror spilt Vanserra blood might achieve.

And all that's before Hybern really swarms in to get to the Wall.

#what's funny #(horror funny)#is that by ripping Lucien apart and presuming him dead #Tamlin is about 70% of the way to what Feyre wanted to achieve so badly in acowar #Tamlin is NOT OKAY #and too magical as High Lord for that not to have far reaching consequences #he's going to turn it around #but you're so right to wonder #in Tamlin's mind #he basically lost everything and it's 10000% his own fault #AND RHYSAND'S FAULT

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kemendin · 8 months

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Chapter I: In a Single Understated Word, Unfortunate

When a critical mission for the Empire goes wrong, MALAVAI QUINN and LORD KHEL SUTEK find themselves lost behind enemy lines in the inhospitable ice-wilds of ILUM. With only each other to rely on, and their recently-formed relationship still relatively untested, the strain of survival under such circumstances is bound to cause a few cracks. But for two men with life-long tendencies towards walling themselves away - perhaps a few cracks are just what they need in order to start sharing things they've long kept inside.

Malavai Quinn x Light Side Sith Warrior Words: 5000/?? A/N: Been working on this one on and off (okay, mostly off) for over a year now, and while it's not yet finished, I decided to finally release the first chapter into the wild. Started as a light-hearted thing, ended up as deeper exploration of the early relationship between Khel and Quinn. Nothing like the threat of freezing to death to bring a couple closer together, amiright?

Read on AO3 (short excerpt below cut)

‘Present circumstances’ were, in a single understated word, unfortunate. But then there had been no way of knowing, when Quinn set out from the Imperial base alongside Lord Khel Sutek, the Emperor’s Wrath, that the two would find themselves stranded behind enemy lines with few supplies, fewer options for getting back, and facing the inexorable onset of night.

The mission had started out well enough. The loss of the Empire’s single remaining crystal mine to Republic control had necessitated going after their enemy’s stores instead. Scouts had relayed a careful route through the jagged forests of ice that covered this world, and while ground troops formed another blatant assault on the bulk of Republic forces, Lord Khel had led a small speeder-mounted strike team into the very heart of the the enemy’s presence here: an ancient temple constructed by the Jedi that stood guardian over one of the most generous deposits of Adegan crystals on the entire planet. The Sith’s team was only one of half a dozen smaller forces, all making coordinated bids for the Republic-controlled stockpiles of the crystals that were scattered across the frozen wasteland.

Once the team’s presence was realised within the temple, resistance to their infiltration had been fierce; but by then the Republic troops were divided, and the Imperials had made it too far in to be completely repelled. Still, fighting their way out with the precious cargo had been a more hair-raising feat, and they’d lost several good men before the sturdy containers were secured to the waiting speeders and the team could make their escape.

And that was where it had started to go wrong, because - and in fairness, not entirely unexpected - they’d found said escape route cut off by Republic reinforcements.

In typical Khel fashion, the unflappable Sith had leapt ahead to draw their ire. Bundled against the cold in his frequent colours of cream and soft brown, wielding lightsabers of deep gold and nearly white, the Mirialan could easily be mistaken for a Jedi - and he held no qualms about using that confusion to his advantage.

The Republic squad had hesitated this time, had let him get too close; and within moments, their regret was audible, as shouts of alarm rose above peals of desperate blaster fire echoing off the ice.

Quinn had covered his lord from the side, his own blaster adding to the confusion, and in the chaos the crystal-laden Imperial speeders had managed to slip past the Republic lines. Malavai hoped that they had made it all the way to the rendezvous point, but there was no way to know; because as he and Khel made their own break and whizzed away on the last speeder, an errant shot from one of the remaining enemy troopers had struck the vehicle and sent it careening off across the ice.

With Force-enhanced reflexes Khel had seized Malavai and pulled them both from the speeder, and they’d gone tumbling together through the barely broken snow as their transport exploded against a cropping of ice several hundred metres away. Quinn had sustained no injury more severe than some scrapes and bruises beneath his thermal-wear, protected as he was by the Mirialan’s own body and hastily summoned Force shield. And as for Khel… well, Malavai was fairly certain that his lord wouldn’t even admit to dying, unless it were advantageous to do so.

So now, here they were, trudging as quickly as they could manage across the brittle terrain, trying to put some distance between themselves and the Republic’s forces. As Khel did something clever with the Force to roughly cover their trail through the snow, Quinn was fiddling almost constantly with his comm unit and becoming more irritated by the minute.

“No joy on the communications front, then?” asked Khel, and Quinn’s initial reply was a visible puff of breath.

“I’m afraid not.” Malavai tapped at his earpiece and pursed his lips. “Frankly, I can’t tell if they’re jamming frequencies, or if this abominable cold is doing the job for them. Either way, the fact remains that I can’t get through.”

Khel gave a noncommittal sort of grunt as he turned around again to glide a hand over their wake, smoothing out their shallow tracks through the ice. “That may not be the worst thing, right now. If signals aren’t getting through, that means they can’t trace us.”

“Possibly, my lord, but overall I think I’d prefer the risk of contact. We could at least be certain that the rest of the team made it back with the crystals. I’d like to die knowing it was for a good reason.”

“We’re not going to die, Quinn,” said Khel patiently, as he resumed walking beside the captain.

“No? You’ll pardon me for contradicting you, my lord, but the probabilities aren’t in our favour.” The cold was making him more than a bit tetchy. “Considering the situation - our remote location, our nearly non-existent supplies, the plummeting temperature -“

Khel paused, turned, and hushed him with a gloved finger against Quinn’s slightly blue lips.

“We’re not going to die,” he repeated. “At least, not here. That would be a wretched end, wouldn’t it?”

#swtor #swtor fanfiction #swtor fanfic #malavai quinn #sith warrior #swtor oc #swtor ilum #swtor sith warrior #star wars fanfiction #star wars the old republic #swtor:khel #kem oc #kem writes #kem fics #i caved (pun intended)#otp: servants of the empire

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tanglepelt · 11 months

Text

Run Ghost Run 13

Prev AO3 Master Next

Danny gets treatment, not that he needs it. Jason does not agree.

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

Why did Red have to look at him? Why had he made that deal? Why was he going through with it?

He really didn’t want to. Danny had been so confident he would win. So sure, he could keep going. He’s been through so much and always manages to push through it. He barely could stand before collapsing.

Now here he was on the ground. Caving into the deal. He just felt inclined to comply. Like he had to.

Danny even went as far as to let Red help him up. Even taking off his sweatshirt. This did not track.

Why is he letting him unwrap the bandages? Heck, he isn’t even fighting him on it. Hell, he still fights Sam and Jazz on any injury he got. Tucker gave up on forcing treatment. Really it was only a very few weapons that left a mark. Why now was he just idly letting it happen?

Not fighting him on any aspect

Sam told him he once punched Tucker while unconscious.

Which didn’t make sense?

Logistically, he had no requirements to follow along. Even if it was somehow a legally binding deal. Danny was in fact only a minor. Not able to make these agreements.

Frick, the last of the bandages. Danny still wasn’t moving.

Red was going to see them. He was going to see the cuts. This dude did not need to see his stomach. The other injuries... were fine. Those injuries weren’t that horrid. Sure, he was bruised. So, what if his stomach mayhaps be bleeding? It was only a little bit. It was mostly inside him.

The injection site. That stupid injection from the GIW. He just knew that was going to look bad as well. He really hasn’t paid much attention to that specific spot. The Y had really taken priority while on the roof and billboard.

But what his pare- Jack and Maddie did to him.

He really didn’t want to think about it, being treated. No just let it be... it has to heal at some point.

The bandages did hide the injury. Why reveal it? If you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist, that’s just how the rule goes. If only everyone else and his body agreed.

He knew the stitches were bad. He rushed them at night on a roof. It would be obvious he did it on his own. Which he did technically imply he was on the run from the government. But this crime lord actually was persistent on not letting him dip. Did he really want to show the injury off? Was the blood even red or green? Was it ectoplasm leaking through the bandages? Was he even an actual human right now? Did he go ghost? What color was it?

No, it was red. He looked down. Human blood, which should have been a sign. Jack and Maddie had made a ghost bleed before, never enough to actually harm them. But enough to see. They bled green, not red.

He was bleeding red.

Red all through the bandages. He was him despite what they claimed.

Jack and Maddie just didn’t think so. They only thought of him as a body snatcher. Just jamming right into him. No care, no hesitation. Just cut after cut, that burning through his neck, and how he could still feel it nothing had stopped it. He couldn’t stop the noises either.

No budging on the cuffs. Not breaking or bending. This stup-

Autopsy marks

Red had died. That confirmed that. HE Had come back not the same way as him, not via normal medical procedures.

Well, Red got him out of his thoughts on his vivisection that his parents would deem dissection. Out of all the ways to be brought out. The guy who had seen the marks essentially just said bet.

Bringing up his own marks.

Not done fresh, not while awake. Not a vivisection he didn’t even call it a dissection.

Autopsy.

Red said autopsy marks.

Faded and light. With how red smelt he wasn’t surprised. Danny had been fairly positive the man had come in contact with the river of revulsion. To be heavily covered in the stench it just made sense. Active and free ghost repellent. Nothing his doctor would order.

Now coming back to life after an autopsy. That. That was unexpected. He himself came back. Only because he was brought back right away. He didn’t linger long enough to get an autopsy. That would have only shown death via the portal. But coming back after that.

No that.

That…

That was unexpected.

Something he had not expected to ever hear. That sounds like it could be problematic. The very balance of life and death. That’s an issue he should deal with. Or maybe he just wouldn’t. Someone coming back to life… well was that actually a problem. Being alive is fun. There shouldn’t be a leak like that, especially since it wasn’t real ectoplasm that brought him back.

HE would just have to ignore that for now. Not his problem.

Danny technically wasn’t king; he had no powers so why report anything? Also, he really didn’t want to get caught… an abnormality wasn’t that big of a deal.

One person being brought back to life, ages after dying, it can’t be that big.

Yea…

Not his problem.

*******

Jason could handle this. Totally handle it. Definitely, totally absolutely no need to freak out at all.

Maybe he should have hounded them for more info. Not gone radio silent yet again. Jason had just wanted to focus on the passed-out child. The lady from his dreams taunting him about helping some prince. The timing just felt odd to suddenly run into a kid who needs help.

As well he didn’t want to deal with every other bird/bat in Gotham. If they're going to bug him so much, they can track him down. He’ll focus on the kid. It was only a matter of time. They never knew when to back off.

Still.

A hey. The kid was cut open. That would have been nice. He may not be responding but a message may have been nice.

That group really deserved a visit. The facility needed to burn down. Preferably with the perpetrators still inside. Give them a little warm-up of their afterlife.

Jason couldn’t think about this right now. Danny said not to freak out. He couldn’t show his inner turmoil. He went into a neutral expression.

Not quick enough.

Danny went from defeated acceptance into nervous energy and looking ready to bolt. With how grievous the injuries were he wouldn’t get too far. Or even off the couch.

He really needed to get him into the spare bedroom.

Out of all the info he had gotten this had not been mentioned. He knew the kid got injected with something the injures he was warned about. Didn’t equate to vivisection. He couldn’t have a mini freak out right now. Calming down the victim had to come first.

Lying would get him nowhere. No guarantees that he’d be fine now or excuses. Saying everything will be okay would not de-escalate the situation. Offering a lollipop wouldn’t help anything.

No. None of that. He needed to connect.

His own scar came to mind. The only one that remained after the pits.

He remembers after the pits. His mind came back to himself. It was then he saw his own reflection. It had felt all wrong.

His own body scared in a way to remember he was killed. His own autopsy scars are light and faint.

It wasn’t the same thing by any means. It could be just enough to get the kid out of his own thought. Give him something else to grapple with.

Get the haunted look out of his eyes. Dannys breathing getting more rapid. Get him out of his own head. No one deserves to remember their own death.

His expression was calm and neutral keeping his voice as neutral as possible. “I’ll admit to not being used to seeing those markings fresh, I mean I see my own autopsy marks anytime I’m shirtless in the mirror.”

The change was near instant. Rather than the dark look, now the kid had one of confusion, trying to solve a puzzle. Well, he could work with that.

Let him process that information, then work on getting his guard down. Confusion would be a lot easier to work off of, much better than panicking. He could guide confusion into a reluctant calm. Probably. He wouldn’t be able to properly stitch it up otherwise. And they needed it. The angles of the stitches... man he had to have dealt with that himself. No wonder they were Sloppy and loose.

The fact any were still in place was a shock.

Danny had to have been alone for that.

They were irritated and red, signs of an infection. This was bad. No way he was getting the kid to a doctor. Given the meta factor, normal stuff might not work in the slightest. He could handle the patching up.

Meta drugs or something that could work.

That could be an issue. Maybe that med kit in the bag had something.

He’d have to ask the kid. No way a trusted medical professional would get within 30 feet of this kid.

No way the kid would agree to see Leslie. Well. Maybe in civies and not any sign of being a legit doctor. But bringing anyone in could end in running. Meaning worsening the injuries. He shouldn’t have even been moving after this. Recover was going to be tough.

Even if he did have rapid healing. It certainly wasn’t helping with how he was going. Jumping off roofs and running around. Not good for recovery.

But.

It made sense.

It made too much sense.

Thought for after everything was cleaned and fixed up.

Jason's phone started to buzz against him in his pocket. Bruce no doubt. He's been dodging his calls since last night. Jason had bigger problems to deal with right now.

“Wounds infected, know of anything that works on it” Jason really didn’t expect an answer. Danny was tight-lipped in the alleyway. He had a better tactic to try… “If not ill just wash it out and hope for the best. Takes longer to heal if not, longer you won’t make it to the door.”

Kid rolled his eyes and groaned “My bag, med kit... it glows green. It will probably work” he didn’t seem very sure of if it would or not. No time like the present. So, it was off to the bag.

Glowing green vial…

Nearly the same color as the pits. Only greener and less chunky. So close to pit waters.

“It’s ectoplasm... not pit??? Water. It’s also toxic, so I guess be wary. Unless you’re into that, I guess. I’m literally an ecto-being. Not some pit being. Who calls that stuff pit water? That’s just gross. Did it come from someone’s armpits? Like some stinky old man. No something to fear according to the government. Like they didn't start it”

If he was gonna talk. He most certainly was gonna let him.

“Hunted down for the government's stupid law. Human opened the dang portal. The others wanted to play, not get shot. 0 out of 10 getting shot is deadly… nearly enough as electricity” Danny got quiet after that. He was gonna prod. Just a tad.

“They do that to ya”

“I wish…. it was my parents” spitting out the last word eyes glowing green “Apparently I’m not human enough for them.”

Green glowing eyes, another thing for the mental file.

Here he was looking to confirm the government agency. He knew it was legit, but hearing if they did that to a kid was... Well, That would have given the motivation to eradicate that specific branch. He didn’t need any more motivation, the more he had the quicker it would go down. The kid has too much going against him.

He now had “Parents” to look into.

First calming down the kid. Hopefully getting him into an actual bed. The couch was okay but with those wounds. Not gonna be good enough.

“You drink this stuff or dump it on?” He asked while pulling out one of the vials. Danny just made grabby hands at it. So, he simply handed it over.

Danny just took it like a shot.

Huh?

The white in the kid’s hair started to turn black and must be linked somehow. Maybe a sign of health? Powers? Too many things it could be.

Filing that in the mental file.

Danny’s eyes were dropping. Either the emotional backlash or ectoplasm was getting to him. Good enough to patch up and move the kid to the room. Little to no argument on his part.

Most of exhausted himself already. Easy to do when you have one foot on the grave. The kid would be out for a while. Should be at least.

Yet again to be on the safe side. The backpack was left in the living room the wall opposite the room. The bedroom door was left open. That room made enough noise he wasn’t worried about him walking out. Him going intangible.

That prevents the creaks.

Hence the trackers inside the lining of the backpack. He was a decent enough seamstress. He had all night.

Of course, his phone was vibrating. Despite turning that off.

Did Bruce really think he was going to give up his location? The man keeps calling and texting. He had his meeting with the league, they just needed to deal with the GIW. He could babysit the kid. This was the one safe house he has manages to stay secret. Let him enjoy it until they undoubtedly track it down. Which. Well. They probably already had the location at this point.

Ugh, another vibration. He refused the call. Muting it yet again.

Jason knew he’d have to get the information soon. He couldn’t just dip and for all they knew the kid had enhanced hearing. So, it wasn’t wise to send anyone up.

Not when the kid had just passed out. Who knew how long he would have been out? Danny was most likely to bolt when he first woke up.

It was a no-go on any outside interference. The kid may not be able to successfully get away. He doubted he could bolt out the window. It was the second story. But he wouldn’t take that risk. That supposed ectoplasm in the vial, which was to lose to the Lazarus green pits for him, did bring back some black hair.

He had to be cautious. The brat probably has some of his powers back.

The room did go cold.

Good for Danny, bad for keeping him safe. The kid was a flight risk enough.

And his phone was going off yet again. Bruce because of course it was. Man, he's really gunning for it. Jason had muted his phone three times at this point. Ugh. He wasn’t going to stop, was he?

Jason did need more information.

Ugh.

The kid was out for a second time. He would be out for at least 10 minutes. F it. He could just pop outside. He’d just be quick.

“What”

#dp x dc #danny fenton #danny phantom #dp dc crossover #dp x dc crossover #dc x dp #red hood #jason todd #run ghost run

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aknosde · 1 year

Text

to preserve the heart

// Grover Underwood & Percy Jackson & Annabeth Chase // Grover Underwood & Sally Jackson // Grief and Mourning // Implied/Referenced Character Death (but as we all know he wasn’t dead) // The Hobbit References // Hurt/Comfort // happy ending i promise! // 12.5k

ao3

—————

November.

The late-autumn sun has long since set and the birds have long since fled back to their nests when the green analog clock of the microwave flashes bright throughout the kitchen, releasing a canned and screechy beep.

It’s far too old, like much of the “modern” technology of the Big House, probably edging up on thirty years old. Grover manages to get to it before it can let out another ungodly squeak and wake up Chiron, who would undoubtedly have questions as to why Grover is reheating Sally Jackson’s vegetarian enchiladas at two in the morning. Considering he’s Lord of the Wild, he wouldn’t be under any obligation to tell Chiron, but ten years of working for the man has made Grover susceptible to things like his no-bullshit stare and crossed arms.

Grover quickly transports the glass tupperware from the microwave to the polished concrete surface of the kitchen island, grabbing a fork and sitting down.

The Big House is silent around him; Chiron, Argus, and Dionysus are fast asleep at the dead of night, and the guest rooms and house infirmary lie empty. He can hear occasional wing beats from the Harpies, easing through their nightly patrols, and out the kitchen window the strawberry fields stretch out into the night. The only light comes from the moon and the occasional torches placed along the pathways, the bright yellow-white glow of the kitchen lights an outlier. For once in his life Grover’s glad to be awake at this hour; no battle or injury or nightmare to shock him into his body, just the dark peace that comes after war and the landscape extending far beyond him.

He takes a bite of the enchiladas—the Jackson family recipe, passed down generation after generation, which Grover swears one day he will get his hands on—and picks up his pen, staring at the blank sheet of his notebook in front of him.

His mind slips.

He can feel it. Water and oil, his thoughts and emotions bead against each other as if they are some child’s homemade lava lamp, shaken, taking over his vision. They dance, they swing, swirl and swish. And then they separate.

It’s painful.

Grover grapples at the kitchen counter, like he could recongeal his brain if he could just hold it hard enough, and then it’s all falling out of his grasp—water and oil are natural repellents, he knows—and away. Grover is left gasping for breath, Sally’s enchiladas on the floor, broken glass scattered on the island, and his hand bleeding.

A minute later, clutching his bleeding hand under the faucet of the kitchen sink, Grover realizes that the presence in the back of his mind that had been sleeping calmly has disappeared. He paws at it, mentally; gropes for the impression of the calmness and warmth of sleep and something that has always felt in his brain like the smell of freshly ground cinnamon mingling with petrichor—but there is only something blank, something white, something missing.

Percy.

He can’t feel Percy.

He sinks to the kitchen floor.

December.

The end of December comes more swiftly and painfully than anyone could have imagined, with great sheets of wind and biting skies of snow.

The lashing cold turns Grover’s face numb as he stands outside of JFK arrivals, eager to return to the protection of the camp van. He rubs warmth into his hands before adjusting the cowboy hat concealing his horns. Juniper has admitted to finding this disguise both endearing and amusing, but remembering how Percy had broken into laughter upon seeing it for the first time sets something bittersweet on Grover’s tongue. He shoves his hands in his armpits while he waits.

It truly is deathly out. Hurricanes and earthquakes have been skirting the East Coast for the past month, but now they are growing closer inland. Grover has half a mind to whistle a tune, something to make the wind let up around him at least, but mere seconds after giving in it turns the snow into a wintery mix of hail and rain that ripples out around him, remarked on by the sighs of everyone else waiting outside of baggage claim. Grover is just lowering the brim of his hat—a mite sheepishly, not that anyone would be able to identify him as the cause of the weather change—when Annabeth passes through the sliding doors, duffle bag slung over her shoulder.

She looks as poorly as he suspects he does, despite the fact he’s stood out in the terrible weather for the past ten minutes and she hasn’t. Her hair is limp in its ponytail, just visible under the beanie she is wearing so low that Grover wouldn’t be surprised if someone suspected her for attempted shoplifting the moment she stepped into a bodega. There’s a sag to her mouth and bags under her eyes; he wonders for a moment if she told her family what’s going on, if they would treat her better or worse because of it.

It only takes a second for her to spot him and walk over, and he untucks his hands from the warmth of his armpits and hugs her. The water resistant material of her puffer coat crinkles as he pulls her off her feet, if only for a moment, and he’s rewarded by her exhale of a laugh as he sets her back on the ground. She holds onto him so tightly that he feels his back crack in two places.

“Oh my gods, that felt amazing,” he tells her as they release, stretching his arms over his head to loosen the rest of his back.

Everything feels normal for a moment; Annabeth smiles, says, “Just doing my job as your chiropractor,” and adjusts her bag on her shoulder. The rain doesn’t seem to be bothering her, collecting like mist on her face and eyelashes, but then a message comes in on her watch and she looks at her wrist, her face falling.

“Something going on at home?” he ventures, maybe a little desperate; she hasn’t mentioned even her father in weeks. It’s to no avail. Annabeth shakes her head at her watch and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Grover nods, more to himself than her, and nudges her shoulder with his own.

“Let’s get outta here.”

—————

The drive is slow—the traffic in and out of JFK is always congested, but everything is worse in the holiday rush—and quiet. He’s cold in his sweatpants and fake sneakers. The van, like his windbreaker, may keep the elements at bay, but neither does much to ward off the chill in the air. Annabeth falls asleep in her puffy orange coat—it’s an old one of his; she must have stolen it ages ago and waited until she thought he’d forgotten about it. One of her hands secures her bag on her lap and the other holds her phone face down on top of it.

At the red lights he examines her profile. The crease in her brow has disappeared in her sleep. The shadows under her eyes are less apparent in the lighting of the car, faint enough to make him think they were dramatized under the fluorescents of the arrivals overhang. They are such small victories Grover thinks that together they barely count as one, but he holds onto them anyway.

Once they make their way past the clog of cabs headed towards Times Square, the drive to East Harlem returns to a level of traffic that, for New York, might even be considered light. Tourists are congregating in Midtown and most locals have already departed for their parties or shut themselves inside with their families. Grover parks, wheels surely half buried in slush, and leans back in his seat, wanting to let Annabeth sleep for a bit longer. Gods know they all needed the rest.

Last year around this time had been terrible too.

Percy’s always miserable around Hanukkah for reasons he’s never decided to share, but last year he had been withdrawn since the end of Annabeth’s quest, and it had only gotten worse around December. He always seemed to be sleeping when Grover called, holed up in his room and under the covers, or getting ready to head out on a mission with a steel in his eyes that Grover had never thought he’d see—never wanted to see. Speaking with Annabeth during those months was equally troubling. She’s always been a hardass—and it’s not like that has to be a bad thing, but she was so desperate to pretend she was fine living with her dad and that the distance between her and Percy wasn’t bothering her that she made everyone else’s business her own.

Now, with Percy gone and Annabeth hanging on by a thread, he’d rather it be last year.

Grover checks the dashboard clock—it’s just after eight, but the sun sets so early in the winter it could be anywhere from six to ten and he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference—and kills the engine.

He tugs on her bag lightly until she stirs instinctively, tightening her grip on her bag, and then says, “C’mon, A,” until she gets the idea and gets out of the car, following him sleepily into the Jackson’s building. It’s a tall apartment complex—though maybe not that tall for New York standards—with a perpetually broken elevator and low pile carpet down the hallways that doesn’t look like it’s been cleaned since it was installed. According to Percy, it’s the nicest place he’s ever lived. According to Grover, Percy needs to live someplace else. He doesn’t dwell on the places Percy might have lived before this.

Paul opens the door, looking, as always, more like a college professor than a high school English teacher, and is almost immediately run over by Miss Jackson who exclaims, “Annabeth!” and wraps the girl in question in a large hug. Grover, who received this treatment when he stopped by before picking up Annabeth, sets their bags down by the door and lets Paul pull him into small talk about the traffic.

The apartment has managed to transform in the two hours it’s taken him to pick up Annabeth. All of the throw blankets and pillows on the couch have been folded and fluffed, the dining room table has been cleared of work materials, the overhead has been dimmed, and best of all, the lid of the pot that has been bubbling on the stove all day has been removed. Grover knows he won’t be able to eat it, Sally had apologized for the meat, but the aroma of the spices is nearly intoxicating, spilling out of the open kitchen. There’s simmering dried New Mexican chiles and bay leaves and orégano cimarrón and the whole space smells wonderful. He stands over the pot, next to Sally, in the kitchen, hoping for it to become embedded in his clothing.

All in all, it’s a nice night. He and Annabeth set the table, and although the job is a lot quieter without Percy they manage to get a few jokes out of each other. Paul brings plates and the handmade tortillas from Mrs. Cardenas that Percy raves about out of the kitchen. He asks Annabeth about her classes, and soon enough they fall down a rabbit hole of classic literature and English essays and symbolism that Grover hasn’t had to deal with in years. When Sally sits down they eat, and she asks about working as Lord of the Wild. None of them talk about Percy.

A part of Grover wonders, as he washes the dishes in silence with Annabeth, if the rest of his life will be like this. If he and Annabeth will trek to Manhattan a few holidays every year and sit at the Jackson’s table, if they’ll eat food and talk about their lives and pretend that the person who brought them together never existed at all. That’s not what they’re doing, he tells himself, but it feels like it.

Annabeth is optimistic, or at least pretending to be. She pushes on and on: flies from California to New York and back again, coordinates search parties and interrogates campers. Nowadays—and he hates that, hates that enough time has passed for him to even think it—it looks a lot like she’s running in place. It’s not that Grover isn’t sympathetic to her cause. It’s not even that he has no hope. It’s just that Grover knows how things like these go. There is a reason the first 24 hours are most integral in a missing persons’ case: that’s when three-fourths of people are found. Percy has been missing for a month, today. Grover may have full confidence in his abilities, but the world is a cruel place, especially to a demigod child of the Big Three.

It’s defeatist of him, he knows, but after a month he feels ready to say, emphatically, screw everyone else. Grover wakes up everyday, and not only does he know that his best friend is missing, but he feels it. He feels Percy’s absence in the back of his mind. Like a part of himself is missing, like Percy took some of his brain with him, like he’s been left unable to complete neurological functions because his best friend is gone and there’s nothing he can do about it.

“Hey,” Annabeth says sternly.

She points to the planter box sitting on the windowsill above the dishrack, where Sally’s basil is thrashing from side to side like it wants to uproot itself. He tries humming a tune to get the plants to settle, but nature magic is as perceptive as it is temperamental; it knows when he’s lying. Grover steps back and grips the edge of the counter, takes deep breaths as he watches his knuckles white out, and tries with all his might to calm down.

“You got it,” Annabeth says after a minute.

When he looks back up the basil has stilled, but it’s begun to wilt too. He fills a glass, blesses it, and waters the box, watching the plants straighten—the only work around his emotions he knows.

“I’mma use the bathroom,” he tells Annabeth, and then he hightails it out of the kitchen.

The Jackson-Blofis bathroom is small, just a shower, toilet, and sink crammed into nine square feet, but at the very least it shocks Grover back to his senses and secures him some privacy. It smells like Percy in here—his shampoo and conditioner and curl cream; Grover swears he could map out his wash day by smell alone. He’s bought identical neon blue toothbrushes since they were twelve and even now one stands in the cup on the counter. Grover stares at it and it stares back at him, saying, pull yourself together, dude. Percy would never say something like that to Grover—not at a time like this—but what does Percy know, he’s not here. Grover has to go out to the living room in the next thirty seconds so no one thinks he’s taking a massive shit and spend another twelve hours in the Jackson-Blofis apartment without unintentionally killing every plant in the place.

Grover takes a deep breath, resists breaking the mirror with his fist—he’s not one for senseless acts of violence, not to mention he doesn’t know how to throw a punch—, and opens the door.

—————

The Jacksons have two couches: one that Sally’s had as long as Grover’s known her, and another from Paul. Sally’s is small, more of a loveseat, and sits near directly across from the bathroom. Annabeth is staring at him when he exits, sitting on it in Percy’s normal spot. Grover sits down next to her, almost awkwardly perpendicular to Sally and Paul on the larger couch, and Annabeth doesn’t say a thing—as is the theme of the evening

He leans back and imagines Percy is sitting on his other side. The three of them always sit here when they’re over. It’s never much of a conscious decision. Watching TV or playing video games or listening to music without anyone else home, or at least in the living room, they tend to spread across all available surfaces. Annabeth takes the loveseat and Percy takes the couch and Grover takes the rug and they shift within and between their domains for hours, taking turns bullying each other into getting snacks or drinks or the remote to adjust the volume. When Sally and Paul come home, though, and sit on the couch as they are now, the three of them cram into the loveseat. Annabeth takes the right and Percy takes the left and Grover sits in the middle. Seated there, between his two best friends, is perhaps the safest Grover ever feels.

Now, with Annabeth on his left instead of Percy and no one to his right, he feels laid bare.

Grover moves himself to the right arm, just for the feeling of something against his side, and stretches his legs out to meet Annabeth’s near the middle. Filling up space—that’s all any of them have been trying to do all night. Even Percy’s bedroom door, known for always being open two inches, whether per Miss Jackson’s teasing insinuations regarding Percy and Annabeth or because Percy likes light slitting through the crack and into his room while he sleeps, is closed tight. Like the apartment will feel complete if they cannot see the gaps left by Percy.

The gaps are still there, they’re still apparent, Grover wants to scream; he wants to fill this terrible silence left in Percy’s place, the way Sally and Paul speak to each other in whispers and the way Annabeth says hardly anything at all.

He gets up, jerkily, and feeling Annabeth’s eyes on him he picks the first record within reach and turns on the record player before he can think about it too much.

It begins with background chatter, men talking, greeting each other, and they sound so close, both in proximity to Grover and in relation to each other, that Grover instantly feels like one of the holes in the room has been filled with warmth. There’s a saxophone a second later, a winding string of notes like a river of sunlight, and he stops, hands hovering over the record player in reverence, the name of the song on the tip of his tongue. It’s so familiar.

When the singing begins, less than a moment later, Grover still wracking his brain for the song, the artist, he notices that behind him Sally and Paul have gone silent. He wonders if it’s the opening line: mother, mother. He turns around to… he doesn’t know what exactly, but he finds Sally with tears in her eyes.

“I can turn it off,” he says, lightning quick, already twisting around to lift the needle.

But Sally chokes out, “No,” before he gets the chance to. “This is— He got it for me on vinyl last year.

“I raised him off this album, it’s a… shared favorite,” she adds softly, says, “Marvin Gaye,” like the man can return Percy to her kitchen, dancing with her in the galleyway while they make dinner together. Grover can see the memory in her eyes as well as his own, imagines pots bubbling on the stove and spices filling the air and Sally and Percy dancing between the sink and the small breakfast bar with Grover sitting on its other side, head propped on his hands, wondering if he and his mother would have ever danced like that, like no one was watching.

He smiles at her, and it feels real, if weak. Grover lets himself find the beat of the music—they must be at least half way through the song by now, but it’s slow and relaxing and comforting and the rhythm is easy to find, first with his head and then with his feet. He must look odd, dancing by himself in the Jackson living room with Annabeth, Sally and Paul all watching him, but he lets himself relax into it. The next song starts, but the instrumentals are similar. He sways and spins, once, twice, and at the end of the third twirl he offers his hand out to Sally.

She only pauses a moment before letting him tug her to her feet.

“I’m just getting back, but you knew I would,” he sings along, and she laughs to herself before joining in.

He remembers this album now. He remembers What’s Going On playing at Sally and Paul’s wedding, he remembers this record sounding through Percy’s last apartment when he would come over, he remembers Marvin Gaye’s voice filtering through his own uncle’s ancient radio in their little house when Grover was small.

By the next song Paul and Annabeth have begun to dance, too; something slow and waltz-inspired. Grover guides Sally into a leisurely spin—he’s taller than her now, by a few inches, and she passes beneath his arm easily—and then lets her trade off with Annabeth and join her husband.

He and Annabeth fall into step with each other easily. There was a ballroom dancing class at Camp when they were younger, he recalls, and apparently they both remember the steps. Today, when all he’s thought back to are the things that are gone and the things that have changed and the things that may never return, it is a sweet memory. Annabeth leads him around Paul and Sally in the center of the room.

“I love you, Grover,” she says when they circle back around to the record player.

“I love you too, A,” he says.

—————

During the next song, Sally begins to cry. Grover doesn’t look, only listens to her small gasps and feels Annabeth’s arms tighten on him, letting him take the lead.

“I miss him,” Annabeth says, for the first time.

So, for the first time, he says, “I miss him, too.”

April.

The text comes in on a Wednesday, right in the middle of a meeting of the Council of Cloven Elders.

Grover shifts in his seat, feeling the small bulk of his phone in his pocket brush against the twisted branches of his chair. Against the hard wood, the vibration is audible, and Leneus shoots him a dirty look, daring him to pull his phone out during council. Grover doesn’t, of course, he’s more polite than Leneus has ever been, but he does anxiously twirl his finger in his fur until the meeting is over. As soon as Maron bangs his gavel and closes the session Grover jumps out of his seat and takes off through the forest.

Grover’s phone is a green flip phone, a burner that Percy had scrounged up the cash to buy and gift to Grover after Grover’s disappearance preceding the Battle of Manhattan. At nine months old, it’s bangged up around the edges from a skateboarding accident, covered in stickers, and has his initials carved in the back courtesy of a bored Annabeth and a key.

He pulls it out of one of the several pockets of his utility vest, walnuts falling out with it, and rubs the cactus sticker subconsciously. Phones make him… anxious. It’s not so much the monster-tracking ability, because ultimately there is little risk for him in that respect, especially since Leo has taken it upon himself to disprove the theory, but he was very explicitly given the phone in case of future emergencies. Perhaps that’s why Percy took the time to cover it in stickers and send goodmorning texts and call him once a week, but all of that does nothing to distract from the fact that it hasn’t given him a modicum of good news in the past five months.

The message is from Sally, and it simply says: I’m going to start packing on Saturday.

The pixelated type swims, though he isn’t crying, and after seconds-minutes-hours looking at it he snaps his phone shut so hard it pinches his fingers. He picks up his dropped walnuts, shoves them all in his mouth, and goes to find Annabeth; they need to talk before he decides anything.

—————

She’s sitting with Conner at the top of a hill.

Their belongings are spread out in the tall grass, a towel that neither of them are sitting on and packages of junk food and Annabeth’s dagger and phone, face down. Annabeth isn’t smiling, knees curled beneath her chin and hair falling out of its bun, but Connor is, throwing gummies in the air and catching them in his mouth, and in the same way Grover isn’t happy much anymore but loves watching his friends have fun, he knows that Connor smiling is enough for now.

“Hey, man,” Connor says as Grover hikes up the side of the hill. He’s just begun to work up a sweat after running through the woods, but the cool and sunny late April air feels good against his fur and skin, especially up here where it’s undisturbed.

Annabeth twists around and says, “Oh, hi.”

“Hi.”

They all go quiet for a minute—Grover doesn’t want to sit down, and he’s waiting for Annabeth to get the message and stand up, but both she and Connor seem to be waiting for him to take a seat. It’s awkward.

“A, can I talk to you a minute,” he says, shifting from hoof to hoof.

Annabeth gives him a look, equal parts aren’t we doing that right now and fine, sure, sit down, so he adds, “In private,” sparing an apologetic glance at Connor.

“I’m happy to get out of your hair if you need,” Connor says, raising his hands, “But I already know about Ms. Jackson’s text.”

“You do?” Grover asks, and shamefully it comes out half way between surprised and defensive.

Grover likes Connor. He’s always liked Connor. But he is Percy’s best friend, before nearly everything else, and although Percy and Connor are friends—in the way people are friends when there aren’t a lot of people you know and even less close to your age, in the way people are friends when half of the people you know have died—their friendship has always been complex. Strained. It’s never fully recovered from the way the Hermes cabin had shunned Percy after he was claimed. Not to mention that two years ago Grover had caught Annabeth and Connor making out in the supply closet of the arts and crafts cabin.

“He was with me when it came through,” Annabeth says softly, turning away from Grover and resting her chin on her knees.

“This was my distraction,” Connor says, spreading his arms out to gesture to the bags of junk food and card decks and other small toys. Grover spots a yoyo lying in the grass. “But if you need to talk I can pack up.”

“No, no,” Grover says after a moment, not wanting to take away whatever reprieve Annabeth has found in Connor’s company. He sits down between the two of them, forming a small isosceles triangle, and feels the air around them relax a bit. It doesn’t stay that way.

“So–” he starts, looking toward Annabeth.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she snaps.

“Yeah,” Grover says, pausing. She never wants to talk about anything related to Percy except her efforts to find him; the four months since New Year’s hasn’t changed that. This is something they need to talk about, though. If they don’t, if she doesn’t come to terms with the fact that Percy’s things are going to be packed up, whether she wants to be a part of that or not, she will regret not addressing it.

“Too bad,” he says. Annabeth looks up at him, shocked.

Her gaze hardens a moment later. “I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

Standing up for himself still feels new, even now, but it also makes him feel strong. He understands how tired and angry and sad Annabeth is, but he’s not going to be her pushover. He’s feeling all of that too. They’re both grieving.

“Leave me alone, Grover.”

“No. I appreciate the fact that you don’t want to talk about it. I appreciate the fact that you don’t want to think about it. I appreciate the fact that you would rather sit out here and distract yourself. You don’t deserve to have to always live in your sadness, I want you to be happy, but ignoring this isn’t going to make you happy.”

“She shouldn’t be getting rid of him!” Annabeth shouts, unbidden.

Grover doesn’t miss a beat. “She’s not getting rid of Percy! You know she’d never want to get ‘rid of’ her son! We’ve known from the day he went missing that he might never be coming back. We’ve known. And we’ve known that at some point we’d have to do something about it. Sally’s taking a step, Annabeth. A single step. It’s been five months! We’ve been working off of a stranger’s feeling for four and a half!”

“Percy’s alive!”

“He might be,” Grover says. “But he also might be… he might be dead.”

The silence that overtakes the hilltop is jarring, all consuming. Grover cannot hear the wind through the grass, the birds chirping in the trees, the sound of his own breathing. Just blood rushing in his ears; grief and terror.

“Fuck you,” Annabeth spits, tears brimming along her waterline. Still, Grover doesn’t regret saying it.

“His room’s being packed up Saturday,” Grover says with a calmness that he’s too numb to feel. “I’m not making you go. If you don’t, though, it has to be your choice. You can’t force it out of your mind until it’s too late.”

Grover stands up, brushes dirt and grass off his fur, and grabs a bag of mini oreos. “Do you mind if I–?”

“Knock yourself out, man,” Connor says. He’s leaning back on one hand, shuffling a deck of cards with his other. Grover appreciates that he sat back through his and Annabeth’s spat.

“Thanks.”

“I’m not going,” Annabeth says, voice still sharp in a way that seems to fit right between Grover’s ribs. She never used to cut him this deeply; it’s a change that stings.

“Fine,” Grover shoots back. “I’m not saving anything for you.”

May.

The echo of packing tape being pulled off of its roll once again breaches the idle conversation he and Sally have been maintaining for the past few hours.

It was nothing important and mostly stilted; partial references to Thalia or Nico or Annabeth, small anecdotes about their jobs, mentions of grocery shopping—but Grover still mourns it. He hates the silence that comes each time a box is sealed, the minutes that tick away as a new one is unfolded.

Grover tears the tape with his teeth, leaving a sliver of it on his tongue that no amount of spitting or scraping of his teeth dislodges. He takes the strip of tape, closes the box, and picks the sliver off with his fingers. Adhesive tastes disgusting, not to mention it’s made out of hooves. That has to be some type of cannibalism, right?

Pale sunlight filters through Percy’s open window, now bare of its blinds. The breeze makes appearances every now and then, brushing against his back and ruffling the neck of his shirt. The first time it happened he had spun around and stuck his foot out to trip Percy. The second time it happened it felt like a ghost.

“Thanks for doing this,” Sally says after he’s broken out a new box, like she’s said after every new box.

He moves over to Percy’s bookcase. It’s a small thing, barely three feet tall and only slightly wider. The scuffs and stains along the wood suggest both that he’s had it for ages and that he’d gotten it at least second hand. It’s surprisingly packed.

“It’s no problem, really,” he says after far too long, and then he takes a seat and begins.

The first shelf is a smattering of titles, more than half unrecognizable to Grover. Some are hardcover and some are paperback, but all are well worn and well used. He skims his fingers back and forth down the line of spines like roulette, stops on one whose title has been completely worn off, and pulls it off the shelf.

The Hobbit. A copy not much larger than his hand, despite its thickness, with its spine almost completely worn away. Grover turns it around slowly, discovering that nearly a third of the pages have been dogeared; it sparks such a curiosity that he can feel it like a physical pain in his chest, one that cracks open and spills out as he opens the book to find leagues of notes. Spanish, Latin, English, Greek. Percy has filled the margins with pencil and ballpoint and gel pen, crammed symbols between paragraphs, gone over words in bleeding highlighter.

Grover reads one of the quotes Percy has picked out, near the end—

There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

—skips back to the margins for Percy’s thoughts, a sentence done in mixed Greek and English.

He shuts the book before Sally can catch him pouring over it and throws it down next to the box, not in it. Just this one, one last thing to keep private; to tuck away without anyone knowing; something for just him and Percy.

The rest of the shelf hasn’t received quite the same attention from Percy, though Grover does find a few more books with dog-eared pages and the odd underlined quote. Many of them are more classic literature, the types of books Percy always complained about reading in school; there’s The Great Gatsby, and Fahrenheit 451, and The Outsiders. He sees Sherlock Holmes, and The Secret Garden, and A Wrinkle in Time. It’s more than a little surreal to see just how much Percy read; all of the books he forced his way through because despite his hatred of reading he loved the story. Grover writes a few of the titles down on his arms as he makes his way through the first shelf.

The second clearly hadn't received as much love. The books are old, second hand, but their pages are stiff like they weren’t opened often. A second copy of The Hobbit shows up, a hardcover with a gilded title, and he sets that to the side too, not quite sure what to do with it.

The bottom shelf is composed of peeling paperbacks with other people’s names on the inside covers. Nearly all of them have stickers on the back labeling them as being markdowns or on sale, and quite a few bear stickers from school libraries that Grover can just barely recall Percy mentioning. The last book left in the case is shoved to the back corner, and Grover can’t tell if it’s on purpose or if it was pushed back by the crowd. He crouches down, snatching the cover that almost melts into the wood, and then, by chance, flips it over.

On the back, in sharpie, Percy has written, The Fucking End.

Grover hurriedly flips to the last line of the last page, exacerbating a tear it seems Percy had deliberately started on the back cover, and starts laughing to himself.

Percy isn’t one for sad endings. Grover can recall tirades on assigned novels for English, lectures on short stories, even rants on movies stretching from The Little Mermaid to Parasite. And then, like a switch, Grover’s stomach falls. Percy wasn’t one for sad endings.

There’s that keyword, that turn of phrase.

He tosses the book in the box and seals it.

“Thanks for doing this, again,” Sally says, and they start all over.

Grover used to cry a lot, as a kid. He cried when his mom left, and when his dad died, and years later when his uncle followed suit. To be a Satyr was to live with death, Leneus said in those early days after his father died, before his uncle took him in. The greatest honor was to be sent to find Pan, and the knowledge of the one hundred percent mortality rate was something they grew up with. It was something he was supposed to get over.

But for all that he didn’t know his dad, he never got over it. And for all that he did know his uncle, he never got over it. And even when he was out there, a vest and backpack and him against the world, he didn’t get over it. The pain and loneliness, the trail of grief that stayed in his wake all these years, followed him just as much as his passion did. Every night he curled up and cried, alone in the woods, yearning for safety and home and comfort, ready to return to Camp and see Percy and Annabeth, he replayed one of the last conversations he and Percy had before leaving.

They’d been sitting on top of one of the hills within Camp’s borders, the one closest to the beach, scattered with tall grasses and overlooking the ocean. It’s a picture perfect scene in Grover’s memory, a cohesive color palette of pale blue and sage green and smudgy tan. He and Percy are framed, dark silhouettes against the clouded sky.

“I’m gonna miss you, man,” Percy said. Grover can’t remember the precursor to the comment; whether they had been talking before or if Percy said it unbidden, but even living the moment Percy seemed painfully genuine.

“I’mma miss you, too,” Grover said as Percy pulled him into a hug he didn’t pull out of. It really was the last piece of comfort Grover remembers from before leaving for his search, and even two years later he can remember the feeling resting his chin on the shoulder of Percy’s pilling fleece jacket.

How long they stayed that way, he doesn’t know; he just knows he pulled away when he started to cry, wiping fiercely at his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said, but Percy had none of it.

“It’s alright. Don’t apologize.” And then a tacked on, “You don’t have to stop, either.”

“Wh–What?”

“You don’t gotta stop.”

“No, I know. Why? People hate watching other people cry. I hate watching other people cry.”

Percy hummed in thought, tapping his fingers on his thigh, and pulled one of Grover’s hands off of his face.

“I’ve always really admired you for crying,” he said eventually. Grover’s fidgeting stilled. “I– I can figure out what to say to people, but it doesn’t really mean I’m being open, or honest, you know? You’re a kind and genuine person, Grover, even when it doesn’t work to your advantage. I think that’s really brave.” He’d bumped Grover’s shoulder with his own, then. “If you cry it shows others you’re brave.

He hasn’t cried yet. It’s Grover’s most terrible secret, this buzz in the back of his mind that seems to be locking every opportunity for emotional catharsis away, that he can’t cry for Percy. His best friend is dead and he can’t cry, hasn’t cried. He can feel loneliness, pain, regret, anger, guilt, even nothing at all, but he can’t cry—all of the piercing sadness that has hit him with every other death, friends and family alike, will not come for his best friend. It’s absence is excruciating.

And worst of all— Worst of all, he doesn’t want it.

Grover doesn’t want the dull blade of sadness that overtook him after the deaths of his father, uncle, and the mass of campers after the Battles of Manhattan and the Labyrinth. He doesn’t want to sob uncontrollably at random intervals because the knife of Percy’s death in his gut could be pushed in further, twisted at any moment. At Percy’s disappearance he was forced on his knees into a guillotine, the blade his grief for this boy he was supposed to protect—the one kid he had succeeded with, the one kid he kept alive—capable of falling at any moment it pleases. Over and over again.

As he looks for the next thing to pack up he tells himself that he leaves the clothes for Sally, for Annabeth, because they are the ones that deserve the privilege, not him. But he’s only being selfish. Nothing big, he decides. He won’t pack away anything important, anything meaningful. Not Percy’s clothes or photos or skateboard. Nothing that can push Grover over the edge. Just this once, he thinks, I’ll be selfish.

—————

The receipt is innocuous.

Grover's moved to the floor outside of Percy’s closet, putting shoes he’s not looking too carefully at into yet another box, and when he settles back on his heels something paper crinkles beneath him.

After Percy’s first day of sophomore year Grover had treated Percy to lunch at Shake Shack. Percy rarely went out to eat—his idea of splurging was renting a movie and getting microwave popcorn; the electric piano Sally had given him after his sixteenth birthday had nearly driven him to tears—but it was a half day, summer still strong in the city, and Percy had been glowing with the experience of returning to a school for a second year.

They skateboarded through two red lights and Percy almost got clipped by a truck. They swapped desserts and shared fries and Percy had made fun of Grover’s mushroom burger. Grover lectured Percy about how much water was spent making his singular hot dog and Percy had stuck his tongue out in rebuttal. It was fantastic.

Now, Grover traces one of the drawings Percy had scratched into the receipt.

This isn’t something that’s supposed to make him cry. Percy’s basketball sweatshirts or the ratty old earbuds Grover drew on years ago are supposed to make him cry, that’s why he’s steering clear of them. He should be sniffling over a track ribbon like Sally is. He’s here for Sally, gods dammit. He shouldn’t be crying at all, but tears stream silently down his cheeks like the release of blood from a wound and he fights to keep from sniffing his rapidly congesting nose lest Sally hear.

She looks up as he covertly tries to wipe the corners of his eyes, and something in her face changes the same instant he freezes like a deer in headlights. Goat in headlights. Whatever.

Sally doesn’t look like Percy, or at least not at first. Her skin is a tint lighter. Her hair is brown instead of black, and curlier. Her jaw is sharper. Her eyes are darker. But there’s something in her that is so distinctly Percy; the bags under her eyes like the ones Percy had when he was fifteen and counting down the days until he died; how she wipes under her nose when she’s upset; the way one side of her mouth pulls in when she’s crying.

She looks relieved that he is too.

Maybe Grover got it wrong. Maybe she needs someone to cry with her, talk with her (not about search efforts or the idea of Percy not being dead, because if they had good reason to believe in the search, believe in his life, then they wouldn’t be here right now).

Grover waves the receipt after a second, as an explanation, and makes several aborted attempts at speech before he finds something to say.

“I used to– Out of the three of us, Percy was our heart. Is our heart, I don’t know.”

He takes a breath, looking back down at the scrap of paper. Has it been sitting on Percy’s floor the whole time? Had it been crumpled and lost in a pant’s pocket? Did Percy tuck it away on his corkboard or leave it on his bookcase, only for it to fall off?

“Percy and Annabeth, they always said I was the heart. And they’re the smartest people I know, but– It’s like, there was me, and there was Annabeth, and we were friendly, you know? We had a history, at least. But then Percy came, and that? That was it.”

The receipt crinkles in his fingers, but he holds Sally’s eyes; after all this time putting his feelings aside for what he thought was the good of others, he owes someone something, and who better a person to give that to than Sally?

“He was like some special ingredient, a bonding agent. With him, everything just slotted into place. He was our soul. He took me, and Annabeth, and suddenly I was set for life.

“The three of us,” he whispers to himself, looking down at the receipt. He folds it carefully, wrinkles be damned, and tucks it into his pocket.

—————

When he’s set to leave, all of Percy’s belongings packed carefully into boxes and Grover’s key ring—including the key to the van Grover’s decided is his now, he’s working on a spell to make his own, environmentally friendly fuel—in his hand, Sally pulls him into one last hug.

“Thank you,” she says before pulling away. She keeps her hands on his shoulders, though, looking him in the eye for a moment before she drops them.

“I know Percy’s… I know he’s gone, and I know he’s the one that brought us all together, but if you want, you're welcome here anytime. Not just for Purim, okay? Whenever you like. I’ve got—” Sally fumbles in her pockets for a second, before pulling out a key. Grover’s struck speechless. “There’s one waiting for Annabeth, if she likes, but this one is for you.”

She presses the key into his palm, and Grover believes her with all of his heart.

“I know, baby,” she says, patting the side of his head, which is how he realizes he’s crying again. It should feel better, he thinks; crying should be relieving, but all it seems to do is grow the pressure on his chest until he can hardly breathe. “It’s hard, but we’ll be alright?”

He nods, tears still streaming down his cheeks, and gives Sally the brightest smile he can muster.

June.

The creek is audible through the woods as Grover leads the party through, humming a tune to ensure no roots or vines will trip them. They’re deep in capture the flag territory at this point, almost outside of it, in fact, and the sun is getting high in the sky. The moment he steps out of the tree cover it feels as if the temperature raises ten degrees.

At the base of Zeus’ Fist he finally pauses, grabbing his water bottle to take a sip for his drying throat, and Annabeth comes up to stand beside him, arms resting on the straps of her backpack. Her jaw is tight as she glances over to the Fist—Grover hasn’t been out here since Nico ran away from Camp, he bets it’s been just as long for her—and her gaze doesn’t soften as she meets Grover’s eyes.

The two of them haven’t made up since their fight—haven’t really recovered either. He came back to Camp with a sweatshirt of Percy’s, carefully folded and placed on the foot of her bed, because even though he said he wouldn’t save anything for her he couldn’t not, and the next day she sat with him at lunch. Everything seemed alright for a while, but after a week the tension between them became apparent. Not that either of them has done anything about it.

“Let’s cross the creek.”

But then again, maybe it’s not them today, maybe it’s what they’re doing.

“Alright.”

—————

Nico is the first one to step foot in the water—“crossing streams symbolizes crossing over into death, without Percy here it’s best for me to go first,”—and the current is obviously strong. The naiads have been pissy ever since Percy disappeared, and not only the ones around Camp. Any body of water connected to the ocean has been left to run rampant. Grover grabs Nico’s hand before he can be pulled away, reaching behind him so somebody can spare him the same fate. He expects Annabeth to take his hand, but it’s Clarisse who latches on.

The rest of the group locks hands eventually—Clarisse to Annabeth to Connor to Rachel to Drew—and they make their way across the stream slowly, Nico warding off any connotations of death at the front and Grover behind him, employing his handful of water magic. It’s a weak area for him: he’s definitely more of a mountain goat, and even as Lord of the Wild he’s used to spending a fair amount of time with Percy.

Half way across, when Grover’s got a hang of the whole walking thing again, he’s struck with the memory of Percy crossing this creek backwards, grinning like an idiot while Annabeth gaped and slapped Grover’s arm like a broken record—the first time they had seen Percy walk on water. When Percy reached the other side he had let himself sink and held up his hands, clearing a path in the water for Annabeth and Grover. The stones underhoof are probably even smoother now, he thinks. He doesn’t realize he’s reached the other side until Nico pulls him onto the bank.

The crossing of the creek has brought a shift in the energy of the group; already quiet, they’ve now become subdued. Connor drains water out of his hiking boot, Rachel fixes the straps of her top, Drew tightens her ponytail, and Annabeth checks her compass. Clarisse takes the sopping jacket that Nico peels off himself, wrings it out, and then drapes it over her own pack so it can dry. As they continue their trek the only sound accompanying them is the squelch of their shoes.

—————

Clarisse is the one who finds the tree.

She doesn’t announce it, simply waits for the others to notice her absence and trail back to her. She’s looking up at it, almost reverently, when Grover enters the clearing.

It’s a great thing, unmistakably old and so large that he doubts his arm span could encompass even half of its diameter. Its root system is so expansive and complex that it’s cleared at least five feet all around itself, only grasses and smaller plants popping up here and there. It’s the first spot since the creek that Grover’s been able to see the sky. Expanding his senses, following the roots down into the deep, he can feel a stream running beneath, and just like that he knows this is the place.

“Yes,” Annabeth says, as if she can sense it too.

Then the real work begins.

It’s meditative.

They might have been quiet, subdued, but an anxious sort of grief has been running through them all like electricity, feeding off itself. Now with a task at hand, it turns peaceful.

It begins with the sound of wood shavings; Annabeth and Clarise climb up the root structure to a portion of the tree’s face and begin scraping the bark off slowly, forming the shape of a heart. The breaking of sticks, the sound of a lighter catching, the crackle of flame is added as Nico starts a fire. There’s the sound of metal being unsheathed; Drew removes the iron poker Clarisse has carried from Camp from her pack and sets it in what will become embers, fiddling with the cool end. Glass clinks and wrappers crinkle as Connor and Rachel unpack food and blankets from their backpacks, setting up a picnic for their lunch with deft and mindful hands.

Grover waits a moment, lets everyone get settled, and then he fills the space with music. He begins with humming, then whistling, as not to startle anyone out of their work, but transfers to his pan pipes eventually, urging seeds to sprout and flowers to grow.

Drew nears him after a few minutes, not with a smile but with a look of understanding, and she kneels in the dirt, her white skirt and pink sweater be damned, and begins carefully picking flowers and weaving their stems in her hand. Mud starts to seep into the soles of her sneakers, sure to stain, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

Grover doesn’t know her very well, doesn’t recall speaking with her on more than a few occasions, but she had walked up to the Poseidon table at lunch a few days ago, unceremoniously dropping her tray as a way of announcing her presence to the rest of them, and said bluntly, “You’re going to bury Percy. I’m coming with you.”

Annabeth had been furious, but Nico had tilted his head, sharp but measured in the way Percy always did, and asked “Why?” It was the only question that mattered, Grover supposed. It’s what Percy would have asked.

Annabeth is still mad about it. She hasn’t spoken a word to Drew since she made her case—which Annabeth had scoffed through—and there is no doubt in Grover’s mind that if Drew hadn’t been waiting outside the Athena cabin bright and early this morning that Annabeth would have left her behind. Drew’s here now, though, and there’s nothing any of them can do about it. Grover was skeptical, but after watching Drew sit next to Nico without a hint of fear he’s beginning to think that there’s more to her than the rumors around camp.

Grover wanders away from the small patch of flowers he’s nurtured, resting at the edge of the clearing where he can see everyone else. He watches Clarisse take a step back from the tree, inspecting her work, bending back to make an adjustment, tucking a stray hair into her bandana. When she’s satisfied she descends the roots and takes a position next to Grover, arms crossed. It’s odd how much of a comfort Clarisse has become over the years. He’ll miss her when she leaves for college.

They stand in silence for a moment, watching as Rachel joins Annabeth on the roots, carving flowers around the heart with a white-knuckle grip on her knife, and then Clarisse leans over a bit and says, “She’s angry today,” like she’s sharing a secret. It’s not a secret.

“It’s a hard day.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Clarisse says, breaking the tension into something balanced. “But that’s not what I meant.” Her eyes focus on Annabeth and the way she’s frowning talking to Rachel, then to Drew, who’s glaring at the flower arrangement she’s begun. “She needs to get over herself.”

“You sound like Annabeth,” he says.

“No, not Drew. Annabeth has to get over herself.”

Grover pulls back to get a better look at Clarisse. “What?”

She sighs and crosses her arms, but it appears more out of resignation than stubborn anger, so he knows that she’s serious.

“Annabeth’s being an asshole, acting like she has more claim over Percy than the rest of us.”

“She was his girlfriend, his best friend,” Grover says without really thinking. The only person he can think of to have more claim over Percy is Sally.

“You were his best friend too,” Clarisse snaps. “Nico was practically his little brother, the way Percy’d go on about him. Drew might seem like a bitch and a rumor mill rolled in one, but I’ve spent enough time around her to know when she’s honest.

“Also,” she continues hotly, tightening her arms and glaring at Grover, “you weren’t here last year. Annabeth shut Percy down and shut Percy out, as soon as you disappeared. And you know what a shitty place he was in. She doesn’t get to bitch about the friends he made when she left him. It’s not fair, to him or Drew or herself.”

Grover… really isn’t sure how to respond to that. He missed a lot under Morpheus’ spell last year, but by the time he woke up everything seemed to have been sorted out. He hadn’t considered that things may have gotten worse before they got better. It was so antithetical to Annabeth’s nature; she loves attacking problems head on, before they have time to fester. Percy, too. Grover’s never met anyone so attuned to the people around them, willing to support their friends even in the smallest ways.

He wonders for the first time how much it hurt, the space between Annabeth and Percy last year. Living it, ferrying passive messages between the two of them like a harried messenger pigeon, he had many times thought to himself that they couldn’t stick their heads any further up their own asses. How dense do you have to be to abandon each other in what is most likely the last year you’ll both be alive? He’d cried over it. But now he wonders if Annabeth thought she could amputate Percy that year, leave no wound to rot. If Percy thought that letting her do so would be better, help her from beyond the grave.

When he looks at Annabeth now, pressing the heels of her palms into her eyes, standing small in front of this giant tree, what he sees etched into the lines of her body is self-loathing. Annabeth is smart. She knows exactly how much she lost, down to the second, and hates herself for it.

“You’re right,” he tells Clarisse. There’s nothing more he can say.

—————

The sun is not about to set. He feels like it should be.

In movies it’s always raining during funerals. Here, within the wide but protected borders of Camp, it doesn’t. The breeze rustles through the leaves, birds chirp in their trees, and the sun remains high overhead like Apollo wants to be here for this, too.

Annabeth reaches her hand out as he comes up behind her, slotting their fingers together. The others gather one by one; Rachel and Nico from the fire, Connor and Clarisse from the edge of the clearing, Drew from the patch of flowers. She leaves an intricately woven wreath at the base of the trunk and falls into line at the edge of the root system. The smell of burnt wood hangs heavy around the tree, the iron poker cooling against a rock. Burned into the tree: Percy Jackson, 18 August 2004 - 30 November 2020. There’s no trident, no waves like those that shimmer in the silk shroud tucked away in a shoebox in the closet of Percy’s cabin. Just his name in a heart, surrounded by hundreds of engraved flowers and vines.

Grover squeezes Annabeth’s hand once before stepping forward. Somebody should speak, he feels, but more importantly he has something to leave with Percy.

“I went to Sally’s a few weeks ago; she needed help packing up his stuff,” Grover says, crouching down to pull the hardcover copy of The Hobbit out of his bag. “Did you know his bookshelf was packed? One of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. He hated reading.” The gold lettering shines in the sun that filters through the trees, but the green cover practically melts into the moss beneath his feet. He takes a step up the roots.

“This one,” he says, picturing the title page in his mind, “is from Paul. A signed copy, but he wrote his own inscription in it, on a post-it.

“I’ve never read The Hobbit, but Paul says ‘When you find something you love, once and one is never enough, so here’s a second.’” Grover’s memorized the inscription. Stared at it long enough to.

“Percy once told me–” Tears itch at his eyes, but he doesn’t blink them back or wipe his face. “I was his first friend. It’s sappy, but I know he loved me because he found all of you, cared enough to try and try again.”

—————

That night, he sits in the amphitheatre long after campfire is over. The flames are crackling low and he’s sitting close, trying to stay warm. Connor left them all with travel sized bottles of tequila and Grover’s a little tipsy, has felt the press of grief against the back of his neck for the past half hour or so, like he’s about to cry. The same bottle of tequila, albeit full sized, sits in Sally’s liquor cabinet. It’s the only one Grover’s ever seen Percy touch. He never drank from it, though.

He’s twisting his bottle back and forth, watching the fire light through it, when Annabeth sits beside him.

“Hey.”

“Oh,” he says. “Hi.”

“Connor really got the good shit, right?”

Grover huffs a laugh, places the bottle on the scuffed marble stone with a clink. “Yeah.” There’s a pause.

“That’s not really what I wanted to talk with you about.”

“Mmh?”

“Yeah, um.” Annabeth smooths down the sleeves of her sweatshirt nervously and begins tapping out a pattern on the hem of her shorts. “I actually––uh. I wanted to apologize.”

Grover raises his eyebrows, quickly shuffling through his head for whatever she might be apologizing for. Nothing specific turns up but Annabeth, shifting her weight from side to side, eyes flitting around, forcing out each word with painful effort, obviously thinks otherwise.

“I’ve kind of been an asshole to everyone lately, and I just wanted to let you know that I know that I’ve been a real bitch. It’s not an excuse, but since he”—her breath hitches—“disappeared. I’ve just been really angry that I spent all that time, well, being angry at him, last year. I was so dumb,” she sighs and rubs one of her eyes wearily.

“Being around everyone else now just makes me pissed, because like, it’s all a reminder of the time I–” She pauses, searching for a word, and then gesticulates madly. “–Fucking wasted.

“Drew and Rachel, Clarisse and Nico even, remind me that they got him and I didn’t; Sally reminds me that she was there, watching him in what we knew was going to be his last year; and you remind me–” Annabeth’s voice cracks. She wipes fiercely at an eye that hadn’t been watering a blink ago. “You didn’t get a choice missing all of that. Who am I, doing that on purpose? Why am I such a fucking idi–”

Grover stops her with a hug. She presses her face into his shoulder, tears and snot quickly collecting on his jacket. It doesn’t matter. Shakily, Annabeth brings her arms up around his back and squeezes him tight. He feels a vertebra in between his shoulder blades pop.

“You aren’t.”

“What?” she asks, wobbly, pulling away to look at him.

“You aren’t an idiot; not then and not now.”

Annabeth laughs wetly. “Thank you, Grover, but we both know you’re wrong”

“No,” he says, thinking about all of the school yards he’s been pushed around, all of the rooms he’s had to claw his way into, all of the people who have dismissed him out of hand. Most of all he thinks about Percy on that beach, about you’re a kind and genuine person, even when it doesn’t work to your advantage, and that’s really brave. The words settle on his shoulders in something like confidence, something like strength. “I’m not wrong,” he says with conviction.

“How you treated Percy last year was an objectively bad decision. But it wasn’t irrevocable. You made up, you more than made up.” He looks at her pointedly and she giggles then, like the sixteen year old she is—a brief moment of reprieve in a year of pain, like the first ray of sun through a storm.

“Hell yeah we did,” she says. “We made out. ”

“Gross,” Grover says, before picking up his train of thought. “You did what you did then because you loved him, right?” Annabeth hesitates at the L-word, features drawing serious and giving Grover her full and rapt attention, but acquiesces with a nod. “Then it wasn't dumb.”

Annabeth takes this, chews on it with one leg drawn up beneath her, and then says all in a rush, “But I did it again! I’m pushing you away, and I barely visit Sally, and I’m being so mean to everyone . I didn’t learn!”

“You’ve learned it now,” he tells her.

When she blinks at him blankly he takes her by her biceps, strong warm muscle beneath her crewneck, sturdy like the monuments she wants to leave behind and sunny like her love, he pulls her into another hug to emphasize the point. “You came to me, Annabeth.”

It takes her a moment to process—everything he’s said, everything she’s done—but when she does she returns the hug. It’s a burning and bruising thing on the edge of the campfire that makes him realize just how long it’s been since they last hugged, and he begins to cry at that, hot tears collecting on his face and breath hitching. She rubs her hands along the corduroy fabric of his jacket and rests them at the base of his neck, fingers sneaking to his pulsepoint, and he holds her tight by her waist, clutching jersey in his fists like this moment can replace months of distance. It can’t, he knows. It will hurt for a long time—him and her, Percy and Sally. But her hand brushing against his hairline, letting him soak her sweatshirt with tears and snot, seems to finally remove the knife of Percy’s death in him, press against the gaping wound as insurance: you won’t bleed out, you will heal. For the first time, he feels the catharsis of crying.

And the thing is, during it all, Annabeth doesn’t whisper affirmations or wipe his tears away or shush him like she used to. She rubs circles into the small of his back and keeps her chin hooked over his shoulder. It’s a change, Grover thinks, but not a bad one.

“Thank you, Grover,” Annabeth says, when they’ve both finished crying.

His cheeks have been dried cold in the night air, but he’s warm sitting pressed against her side, backs to the fire. In fact, it’s the most comfortable Grover’s been in months. The stars shine above, Artemis hanging over, and he is next to his best friend. As the world exists now, there couldn’t be a better moment.

“I’m really glad you were Percy’s first friend.”

August.

The Jackson-Blofis apartment has no air conditioning.

This is not a surprise to Grover, who sat on Percy’s bedroom floor as he moved in nearly two years ago, but an inconvenience. He’s spent all the time Percy’s been in the shower pulling their small, dingey portable fans out of each room—all empty of people, he wouldn’t leave Sally to suffer in the heat and humidity—to collect them in a ring around the big couch so no matter how he sprawls across it there is always a breeze.

The shower handle wrenches shut, loud and probably rusty, right as the doorbell goes off. Grover pulls away from the record player—not like he wants to stay there anyway, none of the fans reach it—and goes to answer the door.

It’s a late and sweltering August, packed with humidity and work. Grover’s spent the past two weeks in Florida of all places, tending to a kelp species along the gulf, and Percy’s been bouncing between basketball training camp and his job working at a bodega on the other side of the neighborhood. Right back in the thick of it. Percy doesn’t take breaks in his mortal life. Hence the Thai takeout.

Grover pays the delivery man, tips generously with the cash he’s made his habit to periodically remove from Chiron’s wallet, and goes to lay out the spread on the coffee table. Percy steps out of the bathroom, toweling his hair dry, before Grover gets the chance to finish.

“You never told me you could cook,” he says, grinning like he’s a comedic genius and then dipping behind Grover to stick his finger in a container of curry.

Grover swats his hand away—“Get outta here!”—and Percy falls dramatically back into the couch, letting his legs flail about. Grover responds by sitting on top of one of them. “You’re so mean.”

“You’re so dramatic.”

“Me?” Percy says, mock aghast with a poorly concealed smile. He holds a hand to his heart. “Never.”

“Yeah, yeah. Move your freakishly long legs.”

Percy lifts the one behind Grover and leans forward, as if examining it—Grover takes the opportunity to lean against the couch back. “Freakishly? I don’t think so,” Percy says, and then he drops his leg, this time on Grover’s lap, heavy and dense like the bar of a roller coaster. He’s regaining muscle. Grover pokes his calf and the fresh line of scarring along it experimentally.

Percy glares and twitches his leg away. The scar ripples. “I’m not some autopsy specimen.”

“Did that hurt?”

“No,” Percy says forcefully. A little like he might be lying. He’s always been a good liar.

Grover grabs Percy’s ankle and shifts his leg back, rubs his thumbs firmly on and around the scar like he’s seen Sally do to break down the tissue and help it heal smoothly. It’s a clean line under Grover’s fingers, almost unassuming. He doubts anyone at basketball practice asked about it; it’s a scar he could imagine on a mortal.

When he looks back up Percy’s gone dead-faced.

“Are you—?”

“I’m fine, Grover,” Percy cuts in. “It doesn’t hurt .”

“All right, all right,” Grover says, raising his hands in surrender. “I hear you.”

After a moment Percy pulls his legs away from Grover and curls up on his side of the long couch, fills his plate and distractedly eats while he types away on his phone—texting Clarisse, probably; he’s been worried about her move to Massachusetts. Two can play at that game, Grover decides. If Percy’s not going to apologize for snapping then he’s not going to apologize for pushing. He grabs his own plate, pours the spiciest curry and chili flakes on his rice even though it’s so hot it makes him feel like he’s going to die, and pulls his book out from where it’s fallen between the cushion he’s sitting on and the arm of the couch.

He’d had to stop in the middle of a scene when his train pulled into Penn station, and he’s been itching to get back to it since. He’s immersed in the world quickly and deeply, he tells himself. That’s why he startles when Percy finally speaks. Not because he forgets Percy’s home sometimes; on the other side of their bond, on the other side of his phone, on the other side of the couch.

“I didn’t know you read Lord of the Rings,” Percy says, conversationally.

It’s an olive branch; not an apology but an acknowledgement. Grover bookmarks his page with his thumb and turns it over to look at the title as if he forgot what he was reading, accepting it.

“I didn’t,” he says absently, one of those benign corrections he’s picked up from Annabeth. He closes the book and fits it between his thighs, balances his plate on his knee so he can look at Percy. “I actually, uh, started reading it because of you.”

“Because of me?” Percy asks, frowning.

“Yeah,” Grover nods. “I found a copy of The Hobbit a while back, when I went through your bookshelf.” Something cracks over Percy’s face, deeper than recognition or realization, but he seals it up quickly, keeps looking at Grover blank faced but attentive, listening. “It looked like you liked it so I took it and read it,” Grover says, fighting the urge to squirm, feeling nervous all of a sudden, hot in the circle of fans, like he’s crossed a boundary he hadn’t realized was there.

“I actually have it with me right now if you want it back,” he rushes to say after another second under Percy’s eye. He rifles through his bag quickly, locating the waterproof pouch he’s taken to sealing his books in and pulling it out to practically shove it into Percy’s hands.

It takes Percy a moment to realize what’s happened, but once he has he handles the book almost reverently, rubbing his palms along the crumbling covers and his thumb along the cracking spine. Not for the first time, Grover wonders how long Percy’s owned it. He knows what the pages smell like, aging paper and glue, their rough feel under his hands unlike that of most modern books. Percy flips through the pages like a deck of cards, back and forth, mesmerized by the race of words and the small puffs of air that come up and shift his drying hair.

“I’m glad,” he says at last.

Grover quirks an eyebrow, and then upon realizing Percy hasn’t seen it, hums questioningly. Percy looks up, locks eyes with him so deeply and for such a long time that Grover feels as if Percy can go further than his emotions, straight to his thoughts themselves.

“Grover,” he says, softly but seriously, a tone Grover hasn’t heard since Percy’s first day back. “If you were dead, there’s no line I wouldn’t cross. I don’t care that you took my favorite book, or stole my sweatpants, or held a funeral.” His brows furrow in thought, one thumb tapping quickly against the other, and then he says: “I’m sorry for being harsh with you, you’re just trying to look out for me.”

Tears well in Grover’s eyes. Praise the fates, praise the gods themselves for giving him Percy Jackson, with his deep heart and perceptive head, and bringing him back to Grover again and again.

“I’m sorry for prodding you,” Grover says, swallowing thickly.

Percy waves him off, looking down at his calf and pressing the healing cut with his thumb like Grover did earlier. “Nah, you were right,” he says, hissing as he lifts his thumb. “It’s sore. I’m just– I’m tired of healing.”

Grover nods, thinking about these past months. The frustration that built between him and Annabeth, the pain of breaking down on Percy’s bedroom floor, the exhaustion of holding out hope and putting it away. There is a part of him that will always be grieving Percy—for every presumed death and every person he could have been if the world had been a kinder one—but after all this time Grover knows that grieving is healing, even if it never quite stops. It’s a hell of a lot better with Percy here in front of him, too.

“Let’s get you some ice,” Grover says, heaving himself over the back of the couch.

“I think they’re playing The Princess Diaries on Disney right now,” Percy tells him.

Grover crows from the freezer. “What are you waiting for, then? Turn the TV on!”

—————

Later, after Mia’s makeover has come to an end and Percy’s knocked back a few ibuprofen, the two of them slurping up off-brand popsicles from the Jackson-Blofis freezer, Percy passes the book back to Grover.

“Keep it,” he says. “And let me know what you think of The Lord of the Rings when you’re done?”

Grover takes it, leans over Percy’s legs thrown across his lap to put it in his bag, and settles back in his place by Percy’s side.

“Absolutely.”

#percy jackson #grover underwood #annabeth chase #sally jackson #connor stoll #clarisse la rue #drew tanaka #max.fic #max.txt #fic: to preserve the heart #pjo fic #fanfic #pjo fanfic #pjo

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