The Black family doesn't bother with geography. They don't know *anything*. You could show Sirius a map of Narnia, tell him it's England, and he would 100% believe you. Bellatrix burns maps on sight. Regulus probably didn't know if he was drowning in a lake or sea, or in England or Scotland for that matter. The only one I can be kinda convinced knows something geography is Narcissa and that's only because she wanted to know why she couldn't fly to France.

Chapter 3: Entangled Ambitions - A Pact Sealed in Royal Halls

Pairing: Gojo x fem!reader

Warnings: reader's death, language

Genre: Isekai, Romance, Fantasy

Synopsis: Your life takes a tragic turn as you perish in a car crash, only to awaken in a whimsical world of fantasy with none other than Jujustu Kaisen characters as its main protagonists. But as if that wasn't enough, you're about to marry the prince version of Gojo Satoru. How will you navigate through this world of history and fantasy? Does your life take the same sudden twist of fate as that of your favorite characters?

<- Previous Chapter l Next Chapter ->

Satoru’s heart stops beating for a moment, eyes widen at the harsh words you just spit at him. How would someone like you know about his powers? He was always keen to hide them, never used his abilities in the presence of someone apart from Suguru and his family. He doesn’t even know you that well. You, the daughter of Naobito Zenin. How on earth did you find out?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

You clear your throat, nerves threatening to fail you. This is the only chance you have left. If Gojo Satoru doesn’t rethink his decision…No, there is no way you’ll die again.

“I am talking about your ability to manipulate the area around you freely, the fact that you can distort space. You are also able to create barriers and voids that nullify any incoming attacks, which makes you almost invincible in battle and is responsible for your great reputation as a fighter. But if your followers get to know about the real reason behind your skills…You know how great the fear of people with special powers is in this country, that all of them get executed. Not even Your Majesty will be spared from this.”

You are walking on thin ice. He is the prince, after all. So much higher in his rank that it would be easy for him to get you executed due to false accusations. But this might be the only card you have left, your last spark of hope. If Gojo Satoru won’t marry you, your father will let you get killed. And apart from that, this might be the only chance you’ll get to meet your favourite characters. What about Geto and Nanami? If Naoya and Gojo exist, they are definitely somewhere in this world as well. You are literally living the dream of every anmie and manga fan.

Well, except for the stinging fact that you call Naobito your father and Naoya your stinky brother.

“That are some heavy accusations you’re throwing at me, Lady (y/n). You know as well as I do that I could get you executed right on the sport for your unwise words despite the fact that you are a daughter of the Zenin family”, he replies.

The way he crosses his legs while smiling down at you arrogantly makes the urge to fall onto your knees and beg him for forgiveness grow louder and louder. But no, this is exactly what he wants. At the moment, all Prince Satoru does is playing and testing you. You can’t allow yourself to be messed with. After all, he has absolutely zero clue about what he is in your old world, that you actually died and reincarnated here. He definitely does know that your life depends on his mercy, though. And that your proposal benefits both of you.

“Why did you decide on marrying me in the first place? Was it because you fell in love with my portrait or rather because your family forced you to choose a wife and you thought I wouldn’t cause trouble because I’m a Zenin, because you considered I would urge to get away from my possessing family as soon as possible?”

Threatening him any further has no use. After all, Gojo is aware of the fact that you know about his hidden talent. Instead, you should focus on things you can actually prove, things that are obvious.

“You are a very loudmouthed young lady. I expected you to be more sublime. As a member of the famous Zenin family, you sure got taught etiquette and obedience from a young age, didn’t you?”

He can’t help himself. Just one look into your glimmering lavender eyes makes him provocative you even further. Of course, every little thing you said is true. Yes, your words are a serious threat on his way to the throne. Yes, his family does in fact urge him every single day to decide on a wife. Your proposal is the best solution for both of you, allows him to carry on with his unbothered life without the responsibility to satisfy his finance’s needs. But still…

“I couldn’t care less about my ancestry, Prince Satoru. All I care about is my own freedom”, you clarify, determination dripping from each and every pore of your face.

“And if you don’t decide on helping me, I have to find another gentleman who suits my requirements better.”

“Another gentleman? You are aware of the fact that I’m the prince, right?”

Out of all the arguments you brought up in this conversation, this one is the one that bugs him the most. Out of some strange reason, the sheer thought of you getting promised to another man doesn’t sit right with Satoru.

“As a prince, you are far above my status anyway. If it weren’t for politics and the reliability when it comes to the advanced weapon technology of my family, I wouldn’t even be considered as your fiancé”, you argue in all seriousness.

“What if I don’t allow you to marry another man?”

“Then I will find my ways to do so.”

“Fine, I will propose to you at the ball this weekend.”

Wait…what? After all the arguments, the discussions and the stinging fact that he stares at you with narrowed eyes, he actually agreed on it? Just when you’re about to thank him and leave, he gets up and opens his full mouth.

“But I want to re-arrange the conditions to suit my needs as well.”

Your pounding heart almost stops inside of your chest. For a moment, you just sit there and stare at him plainly like an idiot. Gojo Satoru, having conditions? This definitely doesn’t sound appealing at all. But do you really have another chance? It might be true that you are able to find another gentleman, the anger of your father will carry on, though. And who knows if he wouldn’t kill you even if you marry another wealthy man. No, this engagement is your best and eventually only option.

“What conditions are we talking about, precisely?”

“Once a week, I am allowed to present you as my fiancée in a way I will decide on my own. As the prince and future ruler of this country, I need to reflect a strong relationship with my future queen to the outside. It has to be credible. Everyone must think that we are deeply in love with each other, Lady (y/n).”

Shivers run down your spine before you’re able to stop them. Just one look into his blue thirsty eyes…This man won’t touch you even in your sleep. Doesn’t he have multiple young women just waiting for a chance to hit on him? Playing his wife for an additional day of the week. How wasteful, considering that you’ll never be more than his fiancée, that this engagement will get cancelled the minute it doesn’t benefit both of you anymore.

“I will fulfil my role over the span our engagement last and accept your addition, Prince Satoru.”

“Great! Now that this is out of the way, let me tell you one last thing.”

Before you’re even able to react any further, he grabs your arm and pulls you close. For a moment, you forget how to breathe, your nose tingling by the exquisite scent that radiates from him. You actually never wondered about the way he smells. But now that he is so close you would be able to touch him, so close that you can feel his breath brushing over the bare skin of your face, heat begins to crawl up your spine. Suddenly you feel like fainting, the immense presence of him standing this closely to you simply taking your breath away.

“If you decide on betraying me by telling anyone about my secret, I will execute you. There are no real feelings between us, I won’t even bat an eyelash.”

“First, make sure you keep your end of the bargain, Prince”, you bite back out of instinct, holding his gaze without any mercy.

Does he really think you’re scared of him? He might be Gojo Satoru, the honoured one, the strongest, the prince of this country. You might have been surprised by the way he grabbed you out of thin air. You are still (y/n), still you.

Instead of backing up, you take another step towards him and grab the collar of his elegant jacket. But you know all of his dirty little secrets, parts of his past and future. You are definitely no one to be messed with as well.

“And make sure you don’t disappoint me.”

You let go of him as sudden as you grabbed him, creating a safe distance between both of you by crossing the room and coming to a stand in front of the exit.

“Send me an invitation to the ball along with a pricy bouquet of lavender flowers. It was an honour to visit you, Your Majesty. I am looking forward to our next meeting.”

One last polite curtsy, one last elegant smile. But just when you’re about to call the waiter in order to open the door for you, it swings open by itself.

And your cheek clashes into something particularly hard.

“Oh no, I am beyond sorry My Lady! I wasn’t aware of your presence!”

That voice…You get greeted by a pair of the manliest hands you’ve ever seen, hands gliding up his definitely toned arms. He lifts you off the ground as fast as you stumbled onto his, arms holding you into place tightly.

“You must be Lady (y/n), what a pleasure to finally meet you. I am Sir Geto Suguru, the steward of Your Majesty.”

“S-Suguru?”

Your widen eyes focus on his face in an instant, heart almost beating out of your chest. All those times you admired his drawing, the way he acted so elegantly. The countless fanfictions you’ve read with this exact first meeting.

Only to end up with him in bed later on.

“That is my name”, the man in front of you replies along with a small laughter.

That smile. That oh so charismatic smile. And that manly smell, a mix of mint and leather. You force yourself to gift him with a smile and create a safe distance between both of you. So this is him, the best friend of Gojo Satoru. Even in this world, you can tell how close they are to each other.

Will it stay like this, though?

“I’m sorry, I must have hit my head a little too heart”, you comment, finally ripping your eyes away from his brown ones.

“Do you know each other?”, the firm voice of Prince Satoru interrupts.

A look into his face tells you that he isn’t amused by this sudden meeting at all.

“I’ve never seen Lady (y/n) apart from the portrait that was sent to you, Prince Satoru. But may I say, you look even more mesmerising in person.”

“Weren’t you about to leave when Sir Geto arrived, Lady (y/n)?”

Gojo smiles at you without his eyes, a cold glare decorating his face that is definitely supposed to intimidate you.

But instead of backing up, you take a risky step towards Geto Suguru and bow oh so sweetly.

“Oh Sir Geto, I don’t deserve your kind words. After all, it is you who is a feast for my eyes. No excuse me gentlemen, I still have lessons to attend. I hope we’ll meet each other again this weekend, Sir Geto. Have a nice week, Prince Satoru.”

Without gifting him another single look, you turn on your heel and walk out the door.

You did it. You convinced him to propose to you. But…is this really what you want? Is Gojo Satoru really what you want? Just the way he stared at you with arrogance dripping from each and every poor. Urgh, you fucking hate him. There’s no way to deny that he’s driving you over the edge. Why on earth does it have to be him? Why not Geto, what about Nanami?

Why does it have to be Gojo Satoru?

“She seems like a really nice young lady”, Suguru comments visibly amused while sitting in your former place.

“What your tongue, Suguru. She will me my fiancé after this week is over.”

Tags: @m0k0k0 @lees-chaotic-brain @sanicsmut @risuola @fire-loving-siren

@sunshine7queen @gatitam @kentocalls @hellkaiserinphoenix @skylarlyn823

@livmarauder @nothisispatrick300 @haileycannotcometothephonern @xstom @byakuya61085

(Thoughts) Interesting Novel detail - baby Lari knew she didn't belong in Belois + Lari's original personality

One of the uncanny things about Lari, is that she doesn't remember much of her past at all. In comparison, Rupert remembers his past quite clearly, even as young as 3 years old. It might be because of the extreme stress she suffered at the end of her life in TL1, where the trauma of everything caused her to forget a lot of things (like Lehan's face), but there's a hint she has some repressed memories from the household violence going on. That would also explain why she had so much difficulty remembering specific details of events happening, but only vaguely remembered small bits and details of "happiness". As we know, Lari doesn't remember much before age 12, such as often being disciplined in the Room of Repentance, and she forgot about how she was often caned/whipped as discipline for relatively minor insubordination. This detail is brought up again in the Vacation Arc, where Sir Baileys reminded Lari she had given him a handkerchief when she was six years old (easy to forget, small detail), but what stood out to me was he said "you were a handful (little troublemaker), that loved to play hide and seek, and often tried to run away from the mansion, to the point where the Count assigned a whole team of page knights to monitor her whereabouts and form search parties if she was missing for too long."

Again, Lari thinks that "she has no recollection of the past, she just has fragmented, inconsistent recollections of the time". But she was surprised to hear she was such a troublemaker, because as far as she knew, "she was always a well-behaved, quiet child", because that's what the family said. But Sir Baileys added, that even though she was a handful, she was still very kind: when he cut his hand on the thorns when trying to free her from being tangled in a rosebush, she cried when she saw he was hurt and offered him the handkerchief. When Lari sees the portrait of Cecie, she again recalls Baileys words: "that as a child, she often wanted to run away and go home" in addition to the other evidence of Aunt amelia, Amanda and Cecie's friendships, Viscount Coen and Countess Lemille's words that finally sink in.

Once again, the story hints that Lari's original personality is a naive, impulsive, temperamental/slightly hot-headed, impatient, sweet child, but all that was disciplined into submission and etiquette classes, so what she's left with in TL1 (and the start of TL2) is a aloof, ignorant, passive doormat that listens to whatever the family says, and has no shred of independence. But through her freedom to be herself around Rupert, she again reverts back to her "original/natural" self: naive, impulsive, hot-headed, impatient, and sweet person, as we see throughout the story as she grows up. So what the story hints at is: Baby Lari knew she didn't belong in Belois, and wanted to "go home" by leaving the estate to the point she had a team of knights to monitor her. The older Lari completely believed she was part of House Belois, but baby Lari had some sort of idea something was wrong. Whatever personality she had, was beaten into submission into a defeated 'doll' that House Belois could control through physical and mental disciplining. It was such a long-term, ongoing thing where she blocked out those memories and was unable to remember anything after the age of 12. She was completely gaslight into having low confidence, she was ugly, and undesirable, and affected her prospects of romance because she would rather be alone than to rely on someone who doesn't exist (sorry Rupert ^^;)

He caught you when no one else did; defeated you when no one else could. Whether you liked to admit it or not, Eraserhead had clearly proven his worth.

So why didn't you prove yours, little villain?

Another portrait for my POV yandere series, this time of Aizawa. Got a few people requesting me to draw/write for him so hopefully y'all enjoy it 🖤

Below the cut, as customary for the series, is a longshot one-shot that delves further into the backstory (Aizawa x Villain Reader, nsfw, dark themes, 8k).

TWs: dub-con, graphic smut, Bad Bondage Etiquette, degradation/humiliation, brat (villain) taming, cumplay and slight bimbofication. Scumbag Aizawa is real.

— — —

   The day you met Eraserhead, looking back, saying your worries had been misplaced would be an understatement. With not being apprehended and losing street cred at the very top of your list, it was decidedly easy to skip over any of the other big red-lettered warnings.

   You first felt the tickle in your nape while you carried your acquisitions across downtown Musutafu, accompanied by the familiar presage of someone watching your every movement. The city around you was bustling, as was the norm, as loud and meandering in its complaints as a chronically diseased elder, yet the alleys you took as shortcuts grew quieter and quieter with each step. 

   It was eerie, alarming, and a platitude of other adjectives you shamefully chose to neglect. 

   “So this is the great V/N in the flesh,” the lazy cadence of someone calling out your alias froze you mid-step, the way his owner dragged each syllable telling you he hadn’t yet decided whether you were worth wasting his breath on. 

   Your body was responding before you even had a chance to properly process the threat, running on instinct and muscle memory as you twirled to face the mysterious man and prepared to...

   “Cute dress, kid.” Eraserhead in the flesh stood barely a few feet away, glowing scarlet orbs illuminating his preternaturally blank expression and transforming it instead into a visage of pure intimidation. “Didn’t pitch you for the frilly type.”

   The growing panic in your chest put a hitch in your breath as you stared back. Yet you couldn’t help but still try, fruitlessly hoping—hands clenched, nails puncturing your own flesh as you tried to force your dormant quirk awake. And all for naught, considering your efforts were only repaid by the hatchet of your sinking realization being buried even deeper. 

   Although, the Pro-Hero also appeared to notice your meager attempts, taking a few steps closer to your form with a condescending gleam in his otherwise somber features. 

   Before you were conscious of what you were looking at (and before you had half a mind to attempt a quirkless attack on the hero), you observed the weapon wrapped around his neck unfolding fluidly, the extensions of fabric reaching out to envelop you in a forceful embrace that left your arms tucked to your sides and your back uncomfortably straightened. 

   “Better to trap you before you get any wild ideas. It’s your fault you’re in this position in the first place anyways,” he was taunting you, prodding you and poking you as you found yourself completely at his mercy, uselessly struggling much in the same way many of your victims had surely felt in their last few moments at your hands. 

   "Eraserhead," his pseudonym resembled an insult on your tongue, your rage and resentment making for rather colorful enhancements. "Don’t you have anything better to do than trapping helpless girls with this weapon of yours? Didn't peg you for a pervert."

   Usually, you managed to reign in some of your nastier attitudes, channeling them into your quirk and the violence you could inflict with it…

   But tied up and under the influence of his own ability as you were? All you had was pettiness. 

   "You can dress up as a civ all you want. Won't be fooling me." He took several steps, closing the distance between you two with barely the hint of a smile morphing his stern expression.  

   You could see the faint stubble on his handsome face from this up close, blood-shot eyes that refused to blink as they studied you in ample detail. Could even see the scar carved onto one of his cheekbones, a textured promise of the fight he had survived and now wore as a medal. 

   Such was your luck, that the Pro to finally catch up with you had to be this rugged scumbag. 

   "I'm not even engaging in any criminal activities, Eraseridiot." Your insult was terrible, but you were never much of a verbal sparrer. Not when you could use your fists instead. "What are you gonna send me to the pigs for? I know my rights."

   And you did. So when the condescension on the lazy hero's face turned into a full-on expression of mockery as he approached your "bag of acquisitions," you audibly gulped. Goddamn stalker couldn't have been following you for that long? Could he? 

    If only you knew. 

   "Then," he held up the bag with an indolent brand of interest, the contents dangling tauntingly from his clutch. "How do you explain this over here? I reckon even dirt like you knows what stealing qualifies as." His other hand dived for the contents and before you could voice any protest, cheeks blushing furiously, a slow hint of a chuckle was bobbing his adam's apple. "It would be a fun thing to peg you down for, though."

   That damned weapon of his didn't give out an inch as you started to furiously struggle, becoming instead impossibly tighter with each futile attempt at freeing yourself.

   "You fucking psycho, is this your sick way of trying to pick me up or something?"

   But your quip did not deter him at all (if anything, it spurred him on). The hand inside the bag tensed for a moment before he was retrieving the sole object inside. To say mortification was written all over your face would be an understatement. 

   A dark pantyhose now hung from Eraserhead's nimble fingers, not a second being wasted by the Hero before he proceeded to bring it up to his face, carelessly stretching the garment until you could see every single one of his features through the sheer material. The way the moonlight caught in it, bouncing off and bathing his patronizing face, made for uncomfortably intimate imagery. 

   (Yet a part of you, one you would never admit existed if further questioned, also could not help but notice the striking attractiveness of it all, making you want to squirm for completely different reasons while the man continued to exert his quirk on you through the fabric of your fucking lingerie.)

   "Gotta say, didn't take you for a pantyhose kind of gal either. Girls like you…" He uttered the last part more like an afterthought, tossing the bag aside before his hands continued toying with the tights absentmindedly. "Are suited for something like fishnets much more."

   By that point, you were sure he was just playing with you. You were such a harmless joke, restrained and showcased like a prize for his viewing pleasure.

   "Reckon you must own quite a few pairs, uh?" He continued egging you on when you failed to give a timely enough answer. 

   (Perhaps the fact that he so easily guessed that detail should’ve been your first real warning, too.)

   Yet you couldn’t help how his condescension and the downright dirty way he stared at you sent dark shivers up your spine, the threat he represented turning strangely alluring under the dim street lights illuminating you both. 

   As a villain, you had robbed, murdered, set people ablaze, and even stolen a popsicle or two from some crying kids. So why were Eraserhead's words having such an effect on you? Why did, a part of you deep down, seemed enthused by the awful way in which he was speaking to you?

   "You don't have any proof I stole them. I just threw away the receipt after I bought them. Very environmentally unconscious of them, too, when electrical ones are a thing."

   Now you were just rambling. What an adorable sight. 

   "Hmm, never thought I'd hear "environmentally unconscious" being uttered by a two-bit criminal." He stopped stretching the lingerie for a moment, thoughtfully scratching at his incipient stubble with his free hand instead, "Are you really trying to sell me the good samaritan angle?"

   To his credit too, he seemed genuinely puzzled by your approach for an instant. Guess even an experienced pro like him still had room to be shocked. 

   "I'm not trying to sell you anything, imbecile." The snobbishly controlled tone of yours was back, the shaking of panic subsiding while you held onto your only hope of leaving this confrontation unscathed. "And my rights clearly state you need proof to apprehend me. Need causality to exert your quirk on me, too, or you would be the one breaking the law." 

   Now, Eraserhead wasn’t annoyed per se. You could tell from what little he had already spoken (and from the myriad of cautionary tales you had been told) that little could rattle the man at all, but your comment definitely appeared to intrigue him. It made you feel like an animal being studied, pinned down, and ready to be dissected for his own morbid curiosity.

   "Isn't this just rich?" His tone was almost lethargic, words dragging on with a faint rumble. "Are you going to run off to the police, then? Tell them how a Pro trapped you and tried turning you in for a very obvious act of theft?", his eyebrows were raised, eyes more awake despite his monotone voice carrying on. "Be my guest then."

   Because of course you were all bark, no bite and he was more than willing to call you out on your shit. So instead of continuing down that route, you decided to veer for a new approach, switching from your assortment of insolent tactics. 

   "Do you get off on this, then?" Your voice morphing into meekness while you adopted an expression of distress, bottom lip jutting out with the sparkle of thinly veiled sarcasm glimmering in your eyes. "Do you like thinking of yourself as the Big Bad Hero, maybe?" And you could tell by the way the incipient smile froze on his lips that your question had caught him off guard. Made you wanna press even harder, "Do you like the idea of taking a defenseless little girl into an alley and showing her just how bad you can be? Maybe planned on teaching me a lesson, is that it?"

   His frown mimicked yours now, no longer any hints of cruel enjoyment on his part. His eyes still glowed red, but he was now squinting ever so slightly, zeroing in on you not only due to the limits of his quirk but also due to the words rapidly continuing to escape your impudent mouth. 

   "Does Eraserhead like to fuck his lays into being law-abiding citizens? Is the power over someone else what really gets you off, perhaps?"

   It was like a spell was cast on the both of you. He couldn't drift his attention, his eyes couldn't stop scanning your face — quickly flickering from the hatred coloring your gaze to the slight quiver of frustration shaking your lips. The hand which he still used to grab your stockings was now a closed fist, knuckles growing pale from the poorly contained strength.

   "Bet you plotted this entire thing, you creep. Wanted to take me behind an alley and show me my place." Your taunts were becoming increasingly more risqué, the anger blurring your sense of preservation—and the hint of something else too, a secret excitement you were unwilling to recognize. "Wanted to have me all submissive and obedient under you, surely. Show me what a scary hero cock can do, is that it?"

   But instead of earning another entertaining grimace, you had a first-row seat to the rapidly darkening expression on his face. Eyes squinted at the same time that the bandages settled even tighter around you, cutting off your breath for a moment before relenting just enough not to suffocate you. 

    And that's when you first felt it for the first time, just when your jests died on your lips and you drank on his foreboding reaction. The grip of Eraserhead's quirk, more constricting than any ropes, wavering faintly around the prison he had constructed around you; the distinct buzzing in your hands returning for a mere instant before flickering out again.

   Now that was interesting.

   "Should watch what you're saying," the pro-hero sounded gruff, voice tinted by a new kind of intensity.

   Like a shark smelling the smallest whiff of blood, you couldn’t help your instincts urging you to dial down. 

   "Always knew you hero types had a hard-on for the power trips. Bet you were using all of this as a decoy. Is this when you strip me and hold me down? When you plow me into the floor of this alley and tell me to "behave or else"?" 

   You knew your jabs were going too far, getting too brazen… yet as much as you enjoyed making the Pro visibly uncomfortable, once he decided to close the distance between you two there was little you could do to stop yourself from flinching. A fire inhabited his expression, the vivid brightness emanating from his stare not only intimidating, but downright frightening too.

   "Are you trying to rile me up?" His hand gripped your face with force, bandages shifting until they were enveloping your neck, holding you up and forcing you to reciprocate his glare, "What do you think will you achieve by antagonizing me even more, V/N?"

   You just looked at him through your eyelashes, still somehow managing to play up the innocent act through the layers of fear settling in. And as expected, it only served to further his irritation, calloused fingers digging even deeper into your cheeks and coaxing the claws of terror to continue trailing their nails all around you. 

   "I’m just trying to understand you, Eraserhead." The way you smiled at him was defiance personified despite it all, your tongue wetting your lips while you caught his eyes following the movement. There was the slightest give of his quirk again, a fluctuation in his concentration informing you that you were finally on the right track. "And I think, given the fact that I haven’t been cuffed yet, that we can both still come to a mutual agreement."

   Fingers twitched around your jawline, muffling your words while your sides were squished together harshly. But even manhandling you, the Hero couldn’t hide the spark in his eyes, an interest you foolishly believed to be ignited by your former comments. 

   "So you are indeed trying to rile me up then." It was an assertion, not a hint of doubt in his leisure intonation. 

   Instead of replying this time, you just slowly blinked his way, observing your imitation of meekness reflected in a gaze that refused to abandon yours. It had been so long since you last tried to play coy, so long since you needed to depend on anything besides your own strength and ruthlessness. You couldn’t help the thrill you got from playing the role. 

   "Think you’ll get me distracted enough to break away, I bet." He was whispering directly against your skin after getting dangerously closer, the heat from his cushioned lips provoking an involuntary shiver. "Do you believe nobody else tried this approach before, little villain?"

   You gulped, feeling caught before you even had time to properly set the stage. 

   "I wasn’t..."

   "Weren’t what, trying to seduce me?" There was a sense of levity hidden somewhere under his timbre, stored between words that kept dragging on in a mantle of aloofness. "Or did you not mean any of your words?"

   When you didn’t reply, you could feel the cruel smile resurfacing against your earlobe. 

   "If I lift your dress right now, do you think I’ll have my answer?" His question sounded almost casual, as weightless as your alias had been when he first called you out. 

   Your heartbeat sang in your chest, an anxious hummingbird trapped inside your ribcage. Because you knew the answer, you both did. 

   When the hand still clutching your bunched hosiery came up to press the fabric against your thighs, you could not help the gasp that escaped you.

   "I bet all those things you were just saying…" His tone drifted off as the stockings were slowly guided up the vastness of your legs, fingers barely grazing you through the thin layer of the stolen undergarments. He was thoroughly teasing you, enjoying the manner in which your expression contorted in response. "You just want me to do them to you, don’t you?"

   Even if you would’ve wanted to object, the pressure of his nylon-covered digits finally reaching your dampened panties was enough to kill any possible refusal. He traced the outline of your slit, soft touches running across it with deceitful lightness, and your mind became positively staggered as you were rendered overwhelmed by his actions. 

   You didn’t have to worry about his next move for long, either, because barely a moment’s notice passed before his entire palm was eagerly covering your crotch. And the new way in which he groped you was demanding, the heel of his wrist putting just enough pressure to drag a shamefully loud mewl from you. 

   The douchebag even had the gall to laugh at your reaction, the sound of his mirth prompting you to writhe even harder as he continued to feel you up through your rapidly soaking underwear. 

   "Knew you’d be a slutty one." His breath was hoarse against the side of your face, the stubble on his jaw scratching against your skin in a way which made you wonder how it would feel pressing elsewhere. "So fucking wet, it must hurt being this eager."

   He didn’t specify what exact kind of pain he meant, whether your growing need for release or the insufferable blow all of this represented to your pride. Somehow, though, you had an inkling that he was referencing both. 

   "Wanna show me just how needy you are?" His words echoed with each laboured breath of his, one of the few signs you had that he was clearly very much into the whole affair despite his detached demeanor. "Maybe you could show me more of your adorable little cries." 

   As Eraserhead rutted his palm against you another time, you found your hips lowering down to chase the feeling much to your own chagrin, more moans making their way out of your panting mouth while he coaxed you to sing the notes of his preferred melody. 

   It was true that you hated his guts… but another fact was that you hadn’t had action in a long while either. Even with the threat of imprisonment hanging over you, you could not deny how desirable the idea to get to cum against that veiny hand of him was, to grip those muscular shoulders as you reached the perdition he was so tantalizingly offering. 

   Decidedly forgotten was your plan of you being the one distracting him. For fuck’s sake, you really were a needy whore. 

   "Why not show me how you cum for me in this alley, if you’re really that desperate?" His words kept getting cruder, his tongue tracing a languid stripe from your earlobe down to the side of your neck, a beautiful path of distractions threatening to dip your sanity even lower. "Be the dirty little villain that I know you are, doll."

   But just as soon as the stimulation was hitting you a second time, so it suddenly disappeared. One second fingers were flexing against your tender flesh, coated by your arousal through the layers of fabric separating you and fluttering with the promise of an impending release, and then the very next instant you were left to whimper (a villain like you, actually whimpering!) in the unbearable wake of their absence. 

   When your eyes searched for the Hero’s again, in his blown out pupils you could only dare interpret part of the enjoyment he was getting from watching you scram for his touch, beautifully bold handwriting spelling out arousal for all to read.  

   Watching you so easily betray your own ego after all of your lip service? More than simple music to his ears, it was an entire sonnet. 

   "But, now that I think of it, you were the one trying to walk away free from this. So why should you be the one getting pleasured?"

   Even in your precarious situation, you couldn’t help rolling your eyes. 

   "Are you fucking kidding me?" Apparently, your discomfort at being denied was enough to forego your better senses.

   The bindings contracted around you in quick response to your insolence, your neck being craned even further and your arms mishandled until they were behind your back instead of at your sides, a sharp pain blooming from your shoulders as you struggled to adjust.

   Treated like this, he really did make you feel like a helpless little doll. (Goddamn, that thought alone was enough to have your juices gushing again, the trails of your excitement starting to make a mess of your inner thighs.)

   "You don’t get it, do you?" He asked in a despondent voice, unblinking eyes still refusing to abandon your face as he elaborated, "you should already be on your way to some second-rate villain prison, cuffed and muzzled and someone else’s problem."

   At his reminder of what you believed to be your impending fate, the mocking pout on your face transformed into a retelling of real horror. Because your spotless reputation was the one trick in your book that had managed to give you a sliver of notoriety over the rest of the unremarkable criminals, much more significant than any quirk or grandiose crime. 

   So for someone like you to lose that? You might as well hang up the villain costume and retire, for all anyone would care. (And yes, you had been called an attention whore a lot throughout your life, but who could blame you when you couldn’t help but thrive on it?)

   Sensing your spiraling thoughts, the Pro raised his eyebrows in an almost pitiful stint, as if he was truly empathizing with the agonized look of your face. 

   "I know you don’t want that, doll." As his declaration dragged on, the grip that had been steadying your jaw was swapped instead for the peculiar feeling of damp fabric —your pantyhose being pushed against your cheek and spreading your own juices around, all while Eraserhead intently studied the new wave of disgust coloring your features. "So why not show me that even a villain slut like you can behave? Give me a reason to believe that and..." The slickered garment was now pressing to your closed lips, your eyes starting to water with the weight of the humiliation you were being made to endure. "Maybe then I’ll consider letting you go."

    You knew he was lying, had every right to doubt the sincerity of his promise and, in its place, conclude he just meant to take advantage of you in your desperate state and then leave you for the pigs to find anyway. 

    You knew all of that, and yet you still opened your mouth and allowed him to do as he pleased. When he worked the pair of soiled stockings inside, you had troubles recognizing the pathetic sight being reflected your way from the wild hue of his gaze. 

   For someone who had always prided herself in being a predator, you had never looked more like prey.

   "Fuck, that’s it, doll." He pushed the piece further with his fingers, forcing you to stretch your lips until your jaw started to hurt from the strain. His fingers swirled inside, pressing the soaked material against the flat of your tongue and instructing you to eagerly lick it.

   You had never felt as debased in your entire life, being forced to choose between savoring your own arousal while tied up in an alley or ruining a reputation you had fought so earnestly to maintain. 

   (And yet your thighs were pressing together now, attempting to create some meager friction to alleviate a yearning that did nothing but shift, demand, grow.)

   "Look at you cleaning up your own mess," he almost sounded proud of you as you kept dutifully sucking, his other hand brushing your hair away from your shoulders in a strangely consoling way. "Seeing you all obedient like this, one could be fooled into thinking there is yet hope for reform."

   By the time the Hero finally took his hand away, bunching up the stockings before fitting them into one of the hidden pockets of his dark costume, you thought you could discern a mocking smile through the clouds of tears.

   "But now, now, doll… are you gonna keep crying or do you wanna try and take proper care of me next?"

   Not finding it in yourself to raise your voice again, you instead opted to wet your lips hesitantly as you awaited for him to elaborate further. There was a question dying to be asked, struggling somewhere alongside the myriad of insolent retorts and insults you wished you could swing the Hero’s way without being harshly reprimanded. 

   "I wouldn’t call that proper exactly," a chuckle reverberated from the back of his throat, gravely and dark as he misrepresented your movements. Fingers still slick from your saliva caressed your bottom lip, massaging it in a way which played straight into the undermining tilt of his words. "Although I’m sure you must be dying to wrap your pretty lips around my cock. Would give you a good reason to stay quiet, uh?"

   You really had been intending not to fall for his obvious goading, not trying to give the Pro anymore reasons to be harsh with you (or even worse, give him an excuse to leave you alone and to a fate worse than his company ever would be). 

   Had tried so hard too, but the cocky villain in you could only take so much degradation before it snapped. 

   "Goddamn it, are you trying to fuck me or bore to death?" As for the slight quivering in your voice, you dearly hoped he wouldn’t pick up on it. 

   Predictably enough, that slip earned you another harsh tug from the capture weapon, your whole body pulled back until you thought you were about to be snapped. 

   "I was just about to praise you for being all sweet for me, V/N." The switch from his pet names to your alias felt like a bucket of ice being dumped on you, voice a slow drawl while he tugged once more from your bottom lip, but this time harsh enough to have you wincing. "I’m trying to teach you how to be a proper girl, so don’t make me regret it. Or would you prefer to go take a prolonged vacation in a holding cell?"

   He already knew your answer judging by the way his eyes coldly studied you, unearthing the secrets you uselessly attempted to hide with an ease that unnerved you (and, as much as you loathe to admit, fascinated you). 

   When he tugged at your mouth again, nails sinking just enough to be noticeable, you knew he was expecting a verbal answer. And a nice one, at that. 

   "Then fucking get on with it…" Words slurred at the end, caught up in the increasingly somber aura of your captor before you swallow thickly, quickly adding as an afterthought, "Please."

   At that, his scowl receded enough for some satisfaction to find its way back into his grimace.

   The more you struggled, the sweeter your surrender became.  

   "Not perfect, but better," he conceded with a thoughtful hum.

   If you had properly studied just who he was beyond his active Heroism, then you would’ve understood just how accustomed he was to insubordination. If anything, your act only served to make him feel more at home.

   You had barely any time to wonder about whatever he had planned next though, because in an instant that damned contraction of his was moving you around once more, twisting you until you were facing the brick wall of the alleyway with heaving breaths. 

   Your legs were now maneuvered until you were forced to keep them apart just a smidgen, the new inviting space between your thighs surely a most intoxicating promise for the sick man manhandling you. And your back experienced pain afterwards too, harshly pushed until you had no option but to allow yourself to be pressed against the dirty walls; As a result, you found yourself with your ass backed up and for the world to see, the frilly skirt of your dress caught somewhere between all the movements.

   Yet even being roughed up as you were, when a hand reached out to tug your ruined underwear away you couldn't help greedily rutting into it, too worried by the fire gathering in your lower belly to care about maintaining a semblance of the reluctance you would later claim to have experienced. 

   It was almost comical for the Hero to observe the pathetic image you were now serving up on an ornate platter —especially when compared to the list of deviant crimes and horrors your spreadsheet of accomplishments preached. For all intents and purposes, you really were a horrible, messed up individual…

   So it was a wonder why his mind had kept supplying him with the same descriptor ever since he first saw you, the same sweet little word that he thought might as well be written all over your skin for how accurate it described you.

   A cute little doll (soon to be his cute little doll). Despite believing himself to be a fairly responsable Hero, the man had never wanted to play with anything as much as he did with you.

   The sound of a zipper being lowered was alarmingly loud in the emptiness of your surroundings, as loud as a wail to your sensitive ears. When you squirmed below your restraints, nonetheless, you could no longer pinpoint whether it was from unadulterated fear or a sick sense of anticipation.

   How easy it had been to break you, even if you would never recognize it openly.

   "Knew you were into it, and now watch your ass trembling in excitement for me." He was chuckling again, not pretending like the cruelty coating his words had any other intention but to degrade you further. It had been just his luck, to find the one villain who just so happened to enjoy it. "I really hit the jackpot with you, didn’t I, doll?"

   When the lewd sound of one of his fists pumping his cock reached your ears, you didn’t even bother disguising the whines of complaint refusing to be contained any longer. 

   "Stop..." Words spilled from clenched teeth, growled out with an annoyance that no longer sought to defy, "Fucking..." but to demand instead, "Teasing."

   "Hmm, that’s cute. Why don’t you try begging me though?" His cadence was growing as bated as his breath, littered by intermittent curses as his eyes dined on the sight of your glistening core, held up and offered up for him to do as he pleased. "Beg for me to use you, and if you put on a good enough show I might just let you off."

   Another shiver rampaging it's way through your body, an exhilaration that could not be entirely pinpointed. 

   "Please…" You started, rough intonation dripping with venom —But Eraserhead didn't seem to mind the sardonic nature of your pleading though, not as you heard the litany of damnations being spilled from his lips. Your shameful excitement, your bitterness, your hatred… he would feast on it all and do it gladly. "Get on with it, bastard. Didn't anyone tell you never to toy with your food?"

   A low murmur was your only response at first, followed by the lewd sound of his pre-cum covered cock being harshly jerked.

   "Hmmm, aren't you being a bit too demanding…" His steps echoed again behind you, his unoccupied hand coming up to massage your ass with a rather firm grip. "Even with the begging, I don't think you've learned your place yet."

    When he planted a slap in the same place he had been eagerly caressing before, sharp and flaring up your nerves with the sting of pain and humiliation, you couldn't stop your scream from turning into a wanton little moan halfway through. 

   Even if he was hitting you, it still meant he was touching you, and so enticingly close to the place you actually needed tended to.

   "Do it…" your breathing was too heavy to speak in full fluid sentences, body flushed and mind filled with the buzzing of desire. "Do it again, fuck."

   You were still not begging him like he asked, but it seemed like your choice of words still greatly pleased him. Another slap rained on your ass, his big warm palm massaging the same reddening spot right after.

   And he kept going, the spanking echoing through your body and sending both pain and pleasured shivers up your spine—lewd sounds mixing in with the increasing pace of his other fist pumping his cock. Even without directly touching you, your pussy clenched and weeped with each firm hit. 

   "Damn, it's my first time meeting such a masochistic whore." Punctuated by his most painful slap yet, the globes of your ass left trembling and a furious shade of crimson to match his lust-filled eyes. "I can see why you've managed to stay free for so long, little villain." The debasement, paired with the pain of his firm strikes, had you moaning even louder. You couldn't even recognize your own sounds, nor the thrills you felt at this entire fucked up ordeal. "Wonder how many other Pros you showed this beautiful sight to."

   Even through the fog of sensations impeding you from being wholly coherent, though, you still couldn't help but want to set the record straight. 

   "None, fuck…" Words merging into another expectant whine when you felt his hand gripping your flesh again, only this time he was kneading you in an oddly tender way —Urging you on, fingers creeping closer to your needy hole. "I'm not… usually in the business of fucking Heroes. Shit, I hate this…" 

   But you didn’t, and when you were surprised by the warmth of his naked erection barely grazing the sensitive outer lips of your cunt, you couldn't help the sigh of relief that escaped you. 

   "Goddamn, V/N, even while you're an ill-mannered brat you still manage to know just what to say." 

   And then the older man was sliding his cock in the juncture of your thighs, teasing your core by pressing against it while grunts began to escape him. You thought you could cry from having him so close yet still not where you wanted him, but then his shallow thrusts against your legs proved to be much more stimulating than you first expected. 

   The fat head of his cock even managed to somewhat stimulate your puffy clit with its movements, pushing in its direction as your essence continued to leak out and cover you both. And It was so absolutely debauched, to think a Hero was using your thighs like a fucktoy while you were tied down and unable to stop it....

   But it felt so good. Even without him actually in you, you had never been this turned on before. 

   "More… ughhh," you were now screaming with the side of your face pressed flush against the disgusting brick walls, needy sounds filling the night and making it privy to your descent into madness.

   Another thrust, this time angled just precisely enough not to caress your pleasurable areas. Punishment, you feverishly thought while you attempted to wiggle your ass, eager to force more of that delicious friction you were quickly becoming hypnotized by. 

   "Now, V/N," his gruff voice had adopted a mocking tone of reprimand as he continued to rut against the soft skin of your thighs. "Haven't I taught you anything, yet? If you want something…" The hand returned to your heated skin, digits underneath you both spreading your pussy enough for the chilly night air to send shivers straight to your core. "You gotta say please."

   And say please you did. Screamed it even, so eager for more and already far beyond feeling any embarrassment. 

   He didn't fuck you, not like you really wanted, but suddenly his thick shaft was sliding between your lips as his capture weapon aided him in angling your body just right, pulsing against your hole while he found a new rythimn. When both of his hands returned, one of them held you back to make the process even easier while the other swiftly joined his cock in tending to your eager pussy.

   So lost were you in the new raw excitement seizing you, in the knowledge of just how messed up you both were for engaging in such debauchery —so distracted that you didn't even notice the faint buzzing returning to your arms, the vibrancy of an old frequency being reactivated and allowed to encapsulate you again.

   (You didn’t notice, but fuck if it didn’t made your orgasm all the sweeter.) 

   You were cumming like that, your moans resembling squeaks, your body feeling closer to a used fucktoy than a human being. The hero kept rutting against you, the joint efforts of his cock and hand mercilessly continuing to abuse your spasming cunt while your cries filled the space with their decadence. 

   You felt dirty, guilty, maybe even a little ashamed as the orgasm briefly gave you a clarity of mind your arousal had clouded.

   And yet, despite it all, it had been the best you felt in years, possibly ever. As the Pro now tugged your hair, forcing you to wrench your neck just enough to look at him over your shoulder, you couldn't help licking your lips in expectation of what he had in store next.

   "You're gonna show me your face next time you come, little villain." He gave you just enough time to nod, eyebrows drawn as your pleasure got impossibly dragged out by the stimulation he still bathed you with. "And you're gonna keep begging me, keep showing me why you deserve to stay free, okay?"

   It was commendable, how collected he managed to sound while thrusting into your thighs like that, the sounds of skin slapping against skin driving each of his words home. 

   "Yes, fuck, whatever you want…" Despite your senses shortly coming back earlier, you were still too far gone to rethink your poor choices. You just knew you wanted more, and so you asked for it. "Just give me more, please."

   So fucking obedient. If your parents could see you know, their failure of a villain daughter being all proper and learning to beg for what she wanted? Well, perhaps saying they'd be proud was a stretch, considering you were also the one getting fucked in the middle of a filthy alley. 

   What you hadn’t expected, however, was just how well your begging would work. 

   Because the next thrust of his shaft was not between your legs, but aimed to finally breach your needy cunt instead, easily filling you up in one go with how utterly soaked in both of your juices you already were. The girth of him had you already clenching with renewed vigor, his hand stopping his assault on your clit just to give you enough time to truly savor the new intoxicating sensation.

   And when your eyes found his again, so drunk on the waves of pleasure you were that you also failed to notice the lack of scarlet coloring the orbs boring into yours, now inescapable voids of dark desire and a type of intense fixation you thought hadn't been there moments ago. 

   (Or maybe it was always there, and you had been too busy with your own turmoil to notice the clues being left by your so-called enemy).

   "Want me to stuff you properly?" His guttural question hit you at the same time as his sharp movements found your tender spot with experienced ease, walls tightening around him while your entire body struggled to continue holding yourself upright, relying more and more on the capture weapon to keep you from toppling over. 

   The binds still hurt from how tightly they wrapped around you, bruises sure to be left on their wake, but by that point you weren't so sure anymore the sting was an entirely bad thing. If anything, it just made the pleasure all the sweeter by comparison.  

   "Want me to fill you with so much cum that you reek of hero cock for the rest of the week?" He laughed while he regurgitated some of your words from earlier, the hand pressing against your lower stomach caressing you with a distinct sense of ownership as he elicited another loud moan with a sharp movement of his hips. 

   Noticing you reacting not only to his actions but to his quips, you could practically hear the self congratulatory smirk as he spoke next.

   "Bet the other villains would love knowing how much of a cockhungry whore you turned into too, doll. Talk about fraternizing with the enemy."

   And he was right, in a way. Because what would your fellow villains think, seeing you being wrecked by one of the most infamous Pros in the business, lowering yourself to pleading and screaming as he rearranged your insides. 

   Would you get called a disloyal whore or just a plain traitor? Not only would your spotless reputation and the myth you had fought to build collapse, but from its ashes your eternal shame could be erected. 

   A shame that would tower over you, looming around you while the eyes of your peers followed you everywhere. You could even picture the jests veered your way, the looks of utter disgust and ridicule...

   Somehow, the idea of anyone finding out only made your screams grow louder, impossibly more fervent. 

   "Fucking… get on with it."

   However, his rhythm was rapidly interrupted after your jab, his cock pulling out almost entirely as your core convulsed with the sudden staggering emptiness it was left to grapple with. More whimpers, struggling against the set of eternally unforgiving ties encasing your body. 

   "But you're making me do all the work, little one" Another slap shook your entire frame as it landed heavily on your still pained cheeks. You were so sore, both from the previous set of hits and from the sheer exhaustion starting to set in, muscles tight and resentful from the awkward positions your body had been manhandled into. "If you really want to continue this, how about you start doing some of the heavy lifting, uh?" Just like before, his palm started massaging the tender spot he had just smacked, fingers digging into your supple flesh being as close to comforting as the Pro seemed capable of. "Show me just how good you can be."

   And you could've argued, truly, could've even attempted to hold onto the last vestiges of your pride…

   You could’ve done a lot of things, but the truth was that when his weapon relented its hold at last, retreating from the underside of your knees and giving in just a smidge for the first time since you had been captured, you didn't waste any seconds before you were chasing after your high with renewed vigor.

   Greedily sinking into him with an obscene sigh, you audibly marveled at the curve of his member being deliciously imprinted in your insides. While you copied the cadence the Hero had previously employed, his grip on your lower belly fluttered, almost like he couldn't decide whether to take control back or allow you to humiliate yourself further with your own zealousness. 

   It seemed like the later prospect won him over in the end though, because he remained almost impassively still as you did all the work needed to bring you both deliriously close to your peaks. 

   The sight must've been spectacular, watching you, renown villain V/N, so thoroughly broken and willing to heed his every command. Impaling yourself on his cock, moaning and continuing to beg him for something you were already taking for yourself. 

   If he died right then and there, he doubted Heaven wouldn't have as much appeal as the scene still unfolding before his eyes. (But again, considering his actions, Heaven wouldn't really be the right place for either of you.)

   You were just about to reach your second orgasm, toes curling inside your shoes, fists clenched and a face that spelt poetic extasis. Angling the way you took his cock, every single movement driving him painstakingly deeper, slamming against a spot that made you imagine the stars falling from the sky all around you, their light being the one bathing you instead of the malfunctioning street lamps. 

   So goddamn close…

   Only to have him pull out again, this time completely. You were clenching against nothing, all stimulation stolen from you, and the bitterness of a ruined orgasm promptly dragged curses and complaints out of you before you could even think to stop them. 

   Eyes searched his, urgently seeking an explanation for his withdrawal only to find his glare fixated instead on that same dirty pair of stockings that had started it all. 

   Eraserhead must have taken the garment out of his pocket sometime while he fucked you, unfolding it from its scrunched up state until the crotch was visibly presented for both of you to admire, dark sheer fabric still stained from a mix of your arousal and spit. 

   When the Pro looked at you again, a beautifully dark smile topped his attractive face. He looked painfully content, the way he studied your own mortified expression reminding you of an artist studying his masterwork. 

   "Only the truly obedient ones get their cunts filled." You noticed then how his other hand was jerking him off again, erection rubbing against the nylon undergarments in a most obscene depiction. Too bad you were too frustrated to appreciate any of it. "I don't think you've… hell, you haven't earned it yet, V/N."

    You didn't even notice you were tearing up from the annoyance until it was too late. And maybe that was what finally did it, seeing you actually crying at his refusal to breed you like the slut you both knew you were, writhing in exaggerated despair as you found yourself feeling jealous of a stupid pair of tights, because not long after your pathetic reaction the man was letting out a pained groan of his own and spilling himself all over the damned garment. 

   But instead of rubbing your wailing in your face after he came down from his own delicious high, last few spurts of cum slowing down to a halt, you were surprised instead by the weapon that had been binding you for the longest time finally retreating.

   As expected, you unceremoniously collapsed to the floor, feet now unprepared for supporting your weight and your entire being wholly exhausted after enduring the roughest fuck you had ever experienced. It hurt all over, although you weren't sure whether your still present longing wasn't what pained you the most. 

   When you looked up to the Pro again, trying to find an answer to the new freedom you were experiencing, you were surprised by having the cum-dripped stockings thrown in your face. 

   And quite literally so, the still wet seed dribbling down your cheek and into your trembling lips, all before you collected enough wits to grab the offending item and pull it down with an expression of unadulterated disgust. 

   "Sorry, doll, but you were pouting so irresistibly," The Eraser user actually laughed, this time the sound coming with an untroubled merriment you did not think he was capable of.

   He actually looked worn out while he tucked himself back into his costume, accommodating the pieces of clothing until all hints from your ravenous affair disappeared. The bandages were wrapping themselves around his neck once more, looking more like an extravagant scarf than the most precise set of inmovilazing gear you had ever endured. 

   However, something about his attitude had you forgetting all about his newest slight, much too worried by a new cause of worry. 

   "Hold on..."

   Eraserhead looked down at you from his place after you raised your voice, urging you to continue as he finished getting himself presentable. The air of nonchalance around him was almost more intimidating than any of the actual threats or vulgar comments he had voiced prior. Almost.

   "Are you…" you swallowed the sudden lump in your throat, voice still raspy and hoarse after what had just transpired. "Are you really letting me go?"

   The man just raised one of his eyebrows at that, eyes crinkling for the first time and looking strangely amused. 

   "Doll, I stopped exerting my quirk on you while I was still teasing you good and proper," he declared bluntly. When his orbs glimmered again, you now felt like an imbecile as you finally realized they had completely lost the reddish hue to them. "So you know what? I thought you deserved to get an out of jail free card for behaving yourself… even if you still need to work some more on your manners."

   To call your shocked expression dumbfounded would be a disservice. 

   When his now bottomless eyes bore into yours for one final time, all you could do was stare back in dazzled shock. Your quirk was back, the Pro himself had just confirmed it, and yet you were still nailed to the spot, still anticipating his next words without even thinking of attacking him in the meantime.

   One little tumble and you were already his brightest pupil yet. He was now so glad to have waited that long, it only made the outcome all the more fulfilling. 

   "You don’t need to be so surprised, Y/N, we'll be seeing each other soon,” He kneeled in front of you for an instant, both hands reaching out to hold up your face in a gesture more resembling a lover than… well, whatever the hell you two were. So entranced you were then, that the use of your real name barely even registered. “It’s been difficult to keep you away from trouble thus far,” his acknowledgment reverberated in the alley, its meaning something else lost to you as you couldn’t help but become entranced by the new peculiar softness he addressed you with, “but getting you like this now, seeing you break so easily… fuck, I’ll mold you right back up, doll, you don’t need to worry your pretty little head about anything else.”

   And just then, for the first time you realized, the Hero’s lips were brushing against yours gently, uncharacteristically careful as he kissed you slowly. Even his hands were tender while they guided you, treating you as if you truly were a doll that could just be snapped with a mere wrong movement. As if he hadn’t just been treating you like a dirty hole for him to use and abuse just short instants ago. 

   But at least he did not seem to care about the mess that was your face at the moment, about the cum stains or the still damp trails of tears. And, for whatever reason, you found yourself returning the gesture in kind, melting into the oddly affectionate touch of a man you were still halfway sure you loathed. 

   Even after he left you, alone and a mess still toppled over on the floor with the shadow of humiliation cloaking your shoulders, your fingers couldn’t help but touch your lips with a bizarre mixture of bewilderment and horror.

   He told me I would see him soon, your mind supplied as you found yourself irreparably fixating your stare on the pair of now completely ruined tights you were still holding onto. The fact that you felt any type of excitement about the notion did not fail to mortify you. 

   God, even for villain standards you were fucked. 

But it was okay, because misery loved company and, with time at his disposal and the right amount of coaching, Shouta was sure he could teach you to properly crave his soon enough.

— — — 

And, 8k of foul smut later, if y’all read through that whole thing... drop by my ask to recieve your congratulatory gold stars! ⭐ (jk but I do appreciate hearing y’alls thoughts, it’s what keeps me halfway productive 🖤)

Last but not least, very special thanks to my best pals @reinawritesbnha​, @snappysnapo​ and @drxwsyni​ (who actually proof read this and helped me out immensely with her Big Brain Feedback. A TALENTED ANGEL). 

Over and Over, Again and Again: KyoHaru (commission)

The absolutely lovely @ouranbound commissioned me for her birthday. This was so much fun and I just melt every time I read it 🥺 thank you so much sweetheart, I hope your day is magical!!

Info on commissions here (updated!)

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Despite the heat, despite the outdoors, Kyoya considered it a lovely afternoon, if only for two reasons: he had a book in his hands and Haruhi’s head in his lap.

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Kyoya Ootori x Haruhi Fujioka

Genre: Fluff

Contains: first I Love Yous, established relationship

Warnings: Mentions of alcohol, but no drinking

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Kyoya did not like being outside. It was often hot and sticky, the sun too bright and burning his skin, or too cold and blustery, the wind too harsh for his delicate constitution. Even refraining from walking to work, using his own driver to commute the blocks. It was silly, yes, and quite wasteful, but he had the money, and all that money allowed him to demand comfort. He never could understand why the others seemed to strain at their leashes to go outdoors--Mori and Hikaru organizing hikes and fishing trips, Tamaki and Kaoru scampering after them. He couldn’t find pleasure in swatting at the sweat running down his back, or cleaning his glasses every few minutes. The outdoors were quite insufferable.

But Haruhi liked the outdoors, and he liked Haruhi.

He supposed it was because of their different upbringings. While he had all the luxury of indoor pools and air conditioning, she didn’t. The outdoors were free; a simple space where commoners could exist without the expectation of spending money. Unlike any mall or restaurant, beneath the sun, the air cost nothing.

So he put up with it whenever she requested it. Her cool touch was more enticing than air conditioning, anyways.

He began to regret it, though, when their wine was no longer chilled. They had arranged a lovely picnic, lounging in a field his father owned. There were plans to develop it, one day, but for now it remained wild. A place where lovers could stow away amid the tall grass waving in the wind.

They sat in the shade of a lemon tree. Remains of rei-shabu and morokyu were stowed away in their picnic satchel, next to the ice pack. Their glasses were still filled with strawberry wine, though their minds and stomachs were too content to have more.

Despite the heat, despite the outdoors, Kyoya considered it a lovely afternoon, if only for two reasons: he had a book in his hands and Haruhi’s head in his lap.

It would have been lovelier in late May or early June, but he had been so busy with the end of the fiscal year. He was afraid of Haruhi’s impending disillusionment, with their relationship still so new, but if she was ever discontent, he knew she would tell him. Dating him had not turned her into a placated doll, as he had feared. He still took care of her, showering her in wealth whenever she asked, but it was rare; mostly, she just wanted to spend time with him, and he just wanted to take care of her, making sure her stomach was full and loans paid.

Not to say he didn’t spoil her, though. He had bought the very dress she was wearing, a strappy yellow thing with magenta stitching. And the gold earrings, shaped like roses on dangling stems, which laid so artfully on the backdrop of her velvet brown hair splayed against his thigh. Her hair was long enough to begin curling slightly at the ends, whenever it wasn’t done up in her tight law school bun.

It was rare he saw her like this, heart unbound and carefree. Her skin was soft beneath his fingertips as he ran them against her cheek, half dreaming, half admiring. She slept in his lap, tuckered out from their afternoon. Lips red from wine pulled back slightly, a whimper on the tip of her tongue. For a moment, he feared had awoken her, hand frozen on her jaw, but she turned her neck back into his leg and resumed her breathing.

He sighed in relief. He had already ruined much in his life. The peaceful portrait beneath him was too pure to interrupt.

Once she was back asleep, he gave one last glance to her blushed cheeks and held up his book. It was old, a brown cover etched with gold, antique and clearly made for a bygone era, tattered pages though born on a press just a few years ago. Kyoya felt like that sometimes. An anachronism of his own kind. Set in one spot and lost to the pages of history.

But not here. A butterfly landed on Haruhi’s nose. Instead of swatting it, he watched, breathed in the life bellowing into his bones. In the world, at work, with his family, his soul felt ancient; his shoulders shook with the weight of an old-world empire. But with her, he was fresh, bathing in the fountain of youth. He was no longer an Atlas, cursed with the weight of the world; he was Dionysus with Ariadne--his shining jewel in the sky.

The love he had for her transcended space and time, yet she was blissfully unaware.

Tamaki’s advice echoed in his ears. He had to tell her eventually, else he’d lose her. Trained in all things etiquette, he still stumbled over even the most human of phrases.

Kyoya shook his head. The day he listened to Tamaki’s advice would be the day he’d resign from the Ootori group. As he returned to his book, his focus shifted. Some old French thing on culture, it mocked his feelings with dry phrases and tiny text. Tamaki had taught him enough French to get by, but reading it was another matter. It was to better himself and improve his chances with foreign business relations, was what he told himself, at least.

Haruhi’s ease and fascination with the language certainly had nothing to do with it. Nor did the jealousy in his palms when he would watch the two he loved most converse and giggle without him.

Some time after he resumed scanning it, regretting how he left his translation dictionary at home, Haruhi awoke. Not with a sigh or startle, as he was accustomed, but silently, with a breath, as if he were the bridge in which she crossed from one world into the next.

She laid still and watched him read, brilliant mind sweeping over each and every word. From the angle of his head tilt, she could see his eyes behind his glasses, a sharp, rare, deep black. Nondescript, and beautiful, the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen--above Tamaki’s lavender, Mori’s silver, the twins’ bronze and amber. She loved them because within their deep pools of tar, she saw her future.

Haruhi didn’t know for how long she looked at him. She had just started to fall back asleep when he spoke.

“I can feel you staring at me,” he murmured, not even taking his sight from the page.

She stayed focused on the smooth, pale skin of his jaw. It clenched and unclenched periodically, whenever he came across a phrase or word he didn’t know. She could have offered her help, but his lap was just too comfortable.

“I like the view,” she shrugged.

When he set the book down, eyes widened, she already knew what he was about to say.

“Out of all the sights, of the trees, flowers, and fields surrounding us, you think me more admirable?”

She was the lawyer--she was the one used to provoking confessions from people--but his cunning as a businessman made the words drip from his lips like honey, accentuating even as he dipped his head down to hers. Haruhi scrambled to shift her weight to her arm, propping herself up to meet his lips. And yet he hovered, smirking as he watched her mouth chase his, quieting her displeased whines with a chuckle.

“What, no answer?”

He was the devil in disguise, with a voice so silver and smooth, and she knew it. But if he were the devil, she was his Persephone--his lips were her pomegranate, and she bit.

She mustered her frustration into finally catching him in a kiss, swatting at his chest when she tasted his beleaguered smirk.

“You know my answer,” she retorted. “I choose you every day, over and over again.”

“I know,” my darling.” He removed his glasses, the only barrier between them, and pressed his forehead to hers. “And for that, I love you.”

He said it. It wasn’t how he planned on saying it, but it was there, suspended in the air by wires thin as twine. Her hand stilled in his hair, but she didn’t remove it.

“That’s the first time you’ve said it,” she breathed, an elation and joy she didn’t know she missed bubbling in her chest.

Kyoya opened his eyes. They had clenched shut on instinct, as protection, so he wouldn’t have to see the way she rejected him. But her calm voice coaxed them back open, and they settled on her lazy smile.

“It is,” he affirmed. “I thought...I thought you knew. It’s been so long.”

They had been dating for three months, yet known each other for nine years, and Kyoya had loved her for most of that. She had loved him for only half that, that she knew, but their affection was ancient, the kind read about in archaic stone tablets. The kind that would wait forever and ever to be discovered again and again.

“I do,” she whispered. “I love you, too.”

And just when he thought his back would break from carrying the world, she kissed away his pain into an immortal love.

-

“Henry VIII was at Whitehall Palace when the Tower guns signaled that he was once more a free man. He then appeared dressed in white mourning as a token of respect for his late queen, called for his barge, and had himself rowed at full speed to the Strand, where Jane Seymour had also heard the guns. News of Anne Boleyn’s death had been formally conveyed to her by Sir Francis Bryan; it does not seem to have unduly concerned her, for she spent the greater part of the day preparing her wedding clothes, and perhaps reflecting upon the ease with which she had attained her ambition: Anne Boleyn had had to wait seven years for her crown; Jane had waited barely seven months.

It was common knowledge that Henry would marry Jane as soon as possible; the Privy Council had already petitioned him to venture once more into the perilous seas of holy wedlock, and it was a plea of the utmost urgency due to the uncertainty surrounding the succession. Both the King’s daughters had been declared bastards, and his natural son Richmond was obviously dying. A speedy marriage was therefore not only desirable but necessary, and on the day Anne Boleyn died the King’s imminent betrothal to Jane Seymour was announced to a relieved Privy Council. This was news as gratifying to the imperialist party, who had vigorously promoted the match, as it would soon be to the people of England at large, who would welcome the prospect of the imperial alliance with its inevitable benefits to trade.

Although the future Queen had rarely been seen in public, stories of her virtuous behavior during the King’s courtship had been circulated and applauded. Chapuys, more cynical, perceived that such virtue had had an ulterior motive, and privately thought it unlikely that Jane had reached the age of twenty-five without having lost her virginity, ‘being an Englishwoman and having been so long’ at court where immorality was rife. However, he assumed that Jane’s likely lack of a maidenhead would not trouble the King very much, ‘since he may marry her on condition she is a maid, and when he wants a divorce there will be plenty of witnesses ready to testify that she was not’. This apart, Chapuys and most other people considered Jane to be well endowed with all the qualities then thought becoming in a wife: meekness, docility and quiet dignity. Jane had been well groomed for her role by her family and supporters, and was in any case determined not to follow the example of her predecessor. She intended to use her influence to further the causes she held dear, as Anne Boleyn had, but, being of a less mercurial temperament, she would never use the same tactics. 

Jane’s well-publicized sympathy for the late Queen Katherine and the Lady Mary showed her to be compassionate, and made her a popular figure with the common people and most of the courtiers. Overseas, she would be looked upon with favour because she was known to be an orthodox Catholic with no heretical tendencies whatsoever, one who favoured the old ways and who might use her influence to dissuade the King from continuing with his radical religious reforms.

Jane was of medium height, with a pale, nearly white, complexion. ‘Nobody thinks she has much beauty,’ commented Chapuys, and the French ambassador thought her too plain. Holbein’s portrait of Jane, painted in 1536 and now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, bears out these statements, and shows her to have been fair with a large, resolute face, small slanting eyes and a pinched mouth. She wears a sumptuously bejeweled and embroidered gown and head-dress, the latter in the whelk-shell fashion so favoured by her; Holbein himself designed the pendant on her breast, and the lace at her wrists. This portrait was probably by his first royal commission after being appointed the King’s Master Painter in September 1536; a preliminary sketch for it is in the Royal Collection at Windsor, and a studio copy is in the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Holbein executed one other portrait of Jane during her lifetime. Throughout the winter of 1536-7, he was at work on a huge mural in the Presence Chamber in Whitehall mural no longer exists, having been destroyed when the palace burned down in the late seventeenth century. Fortuitously, Charles II had before then commissioned a Dutch artists, Remigius van Leemput, to make two small copies, now in the Royal Collection and at Petworth House. His style shows little of Holbein’s draughtsmanship, but his pictures at least give us a clear impression of what the original must have looked like. The figure of Jane is interesting in that we can see her long court train with her pet poodle resting on it. Her gown is of cloth of gold damask, lined with ermine, with six ropes of pearls slung across the bodice, and more pearls hanging in a girdle to the floor. Later portraits of Jane, such as those in long-gallery sets and the miniature by Nicholas Hilliard, all derive from this portrait of Holbein’s original likeness now in Vienna, yet they are mostly mechanical in quality and anatomically awkward. 

However, it was not Jane’s face that had attracted the King so much as the fact that she was Anne Boleyn’s opposite in every way. Where Anne had been bold and fond of having her own way, Jane showed herself entirely subservient to Henry’s will; where Anne had, in the King’s view been a wanton, Jane had shown herself to be inviolably chaste. And where Anne had been ruthless, he believed Jane to be naturally compassionate. He would be in years to come remember her as the fairest, the most discreet, and the most meritorious of all his wives.

Her contemporaries thought she had a pleasing sprightliness about her. She was pious, but not ostentatiously so. Reginald Pole, soon to be made a cardinal, described her as ‘full of goodness’, although Martin Luther, hearing of her reactionary religious views, feared her as ‘an enemy of the Gospel’. According to Chapuys, she was not clever or witty, but ‘of good understanding’. As queen, she made a point of distancing herself from her inferiors, and could be remote and arrogant, being a stickler for the observance of etiquette at her court. Chapuys feared that, once Jane had had a taste of queenship, she would forget her good intentions towards the Lady Mary, but his fears proved unfounded. Jane remained loyal to her supporters, and to Mary’s cause, and in the months to come would endeavor to heal the rift between the King and his daughter.

-          Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII

“A story of a later date had Queen Anne finding Mistress Seymour actually sitting on her husband’s lap; ‘betwitting’ the King, Queen Anne blamed her miscarriage upon this unpleasant discovery. There was said to have been ‘much scratching and bye-blows between the queen and her maid’. Unlike the King’s invocations of the divine will, however, there is no contemporary evidence for such robust incidents; the character of Jane Seymour that emerges in 1536 is on the contrary chaste, verging on the prudish. As we shall see, there is good reason to believe that the King found in this very chastity a source of attraction; as he had once turned to the enchantress Anne Boleyn from the virtuous Catherine. Yet before turning to Jane Seymour’s personal qualities for better or for worse, it is necessary to consider the family from which she came … The Seymours were a family of respectable and even ancient antecedents in an age when, as has already been stressed, such things were important. Their Norman ancestry – the name was originally St Maur – was somewhat shadowy although a Seigneur Wido de Saint Maur was said to have come over to England with the Conquest. More immediately,  from Monmouthshire and Penbow Castle, the Seymours transferred to the west of England in the mid-fourteenth century with the marriage of Sir Roger Seymour to Cecily eventual sole heiress of Lord Beauchamp of Hache. Other key marriages brought the family prosperity. Wolf Hall in Wiltshire, for example (scene of Henry’s autum idyll with Jane if legend is to be believed) came with the marriage of a Seymour to Matilda Esturmy, daughter of the Speaker of Commons, in 1405. Another profitable union, bringing with it mercantile links similar to those of the Boleyns, was that of Isabel, daughter and heiress of Mark William Mayor of Bristol, to a Seymour in 1424. Sir John Seymour, father of Jane, was born in about 1474 and had been knighted in the field by Henry VII at the battle of Blackheath which ended a rebellion of 1497. From this promising start, he went on to enjoy the royal favour throughout the next reign. Like Sir Thomas Boleyn, he accompanied Henry VIII on his French campaign of 1513, was present at the Field of Cloth of Gold, attended at Canterbury to meet Charles V; by 1532 he had become a Gentleman of the Bedchamber. Locally, again echoing the career of Thomas Boleyn, he had acted as Sheriff of both Wiltshire and Dorset. It was a career that lacked startling distinction – here was no Charles Brandon ending up a duke – but one which brought him close to the monarch throughout his adult life. Sir John’s reputation was that of a ‘gentle, courteous man’. That again was pleasant but not startling. But there was something outstanding about him, or at least about his immediate family. Sir John himself came of a family of eight children; then his own wife gave birth to ten children – six sons and four daughters. All this was auspicious for his daughter, including the number of males conceived at a time when women’s ‘aptness to procreate children’ in Wolsey’s phrase about Anne Boleyn, was often judged by their family record. It was however from her mother, Margery Wentworth – once again echoing the pattern of Anne Boleyn – that Jane Seymour derived that qualifying dash of royal blood so important to a woman viewed as possible breeding stock. Margery Wentworth was descended from Edward III, via her great-great-grandmother Elizabeth Mortimer, Lady Hotspur. Indeed, in one sense – that of English royal blood – Jane Seymour was better born than Anne Boleyn, since she descended from Edward III, whereas Anne Boleyn’s more remote descent was from Edward I. This Mortimer connection meant that Jane and Henry VIII were fifth cousins. But of course neither the Wentworths nor the Seymours were as grand as Anne Boleyn’s maternal family, the ducal Howards. The Seymours may not have been particularly grand, but close connections to the court had made them, by the generation of Jane herself, astute and worldly wise. Sir John Seymour was over sixty at the inception of the King’s romance with his daughter (and would in fact die before the end of the year 1536); even before that the dominant male figure in Jane’s life seems to have been her eldest surviving brother Edward, described by one observer about this time as both ‘young and wise’. Being young, he was ambitious, and being wise, able to keep his own counsel in pursuit of his plans. Contemporaries found him slightly aloof – he lacked the easy charm of his younger brother Thomas p but they did not doubt his intelligence. Edward Seymour was cultivated as well as clever; he was a humanist and also, as it turned out, genuinely interested in the tenets of the reformed religion (unlike his sister Jane) … The vast family of Sir John Seymour began with four boys: John (who died), Edward, Henry and Thomas, born in about 1508. A few years later the King would speak ‘merrily’ of handsome Tom’s proverbial virility. He was confident that a man armed with ‘such lust and youth’ would be able to please a bride ‘well at all points’. Then came Jane, probably born in 1509, the fifth child but the eldest girl. After that followed Elizabeth, Dorothy and Margery; two sons who died in the sweating sickness epidemic of 1528 made up the ten. Apart from her presumed fertility, what else did Jane Seymour, now in her mid-twenties (the age incidentally at which Anne Boleyn had attracted the King’s attention), have to offer? Polydore Vergil gave the official flattering view when he described her as ‘a woman of the utmost charm both in appearance and character’, and the King’s best friend Sir John Russell called her ‘the fairest of all his wives’ – but this again was likely to loyalty to Jane Seymour’s dynastic significance. From other sources, it seems likely that the charm of her character considerably outweighed the charm of her appearance: Chapuys for example described her as ‘of middle stature and no great beauty’. Her most distinctive aspect was her famously ‘pure white’ complexion. Holbein gives her a long nose, and firm mouth, with the lips slightly compressed, although her face has a pleasing oval shape with the high forehead then admired (enhanced sometimes by discreet plucking of the hairline) and set off by the headdress of the time. Altogether, if Anne Boleyn conveys the fascination of the new, there is a dignified but slightly stolid look to Jane Seymour, appropriately reminiscent of English medieval consorts. But the predominant impression given by her portrait – at the hands of a master of artistic realism – is of a woman of calm and good sense. And contemporaries all commented on Jane Seymour’s intelligence: in this she was clearly more like her cautious brother Edward than her dashing brother Tom. She was also naturally sweet-natured (no angry words or tantrums here) and virtuous – her virtue was another topic on which there was general agreement.

 ... Her survival as a lady-in-waiting to two Queens at the Tudor court still with a  spotless reputation may indeed be seen as a testament to both Jane Seymour’s salient characteristics – virtue and common good sense . A Bessie Blount or Madge Shelton might fool around, Anne Boleyn might listen or even accede to the seductive wooings of Lord Percy: but Jane Seymour was unquestionably virginal. In short, Jane Seymour was exactly the kind of female praised by the contemporary handbooks to correct conduct; just as Anne Boleyn had been the sort they warned against. There was certainly no threatening sexuality about her. Nor is it necessary to believe that her ‘virtue’ was in some way hypocritically assumed, in order to intrigue the King (romantic advocates of Anne Boleyn have sometimes taken this line). On the contrary, Jane Seymour was simply fulfilling the expectations for a female of her time and class: it was Anne Boleyn who was – or rather who had been – the fascinating outsider.

-          Antonia Fraser, The Wives of Henry VIII

“Whilst Jane was always denied a political role, her political interests are clear. She favoured Mary, attempted to save the monasteries and sympathized with the rebels during the Pilgrimages of Grace. Jane’s politics were largely conservative. Her strong character is visible both by her ruthlessness in watching the fall of Anne Boleyn and in the way in which she ruled her household. Jane could have been a queen as strong and influential as Catherine of Aragon or Anne Boleyn had been in the early years of their marriages. Unfortunately for Jane, when the opportunity finally arose with the birth of her son, she did not survive. Had Jane lived, as the mother of the king’s heir, she could have asserted her authority safe in the knowledge that her position was finally secure. After Henry’s death, when Jane’s son was only nine years old, she would have had a very strong claim to the regency as the mother of the king. Jane Seymour could have been so much more and, whilst it is possible to glimpse her potential, much of what she could have achieved will forever be speculation. Jane did not live to take on the political role that would have been open to her as the mother of the heir to the throne and her real legacy is her son, Edward VI, and the prominence of her brothers, Edward and Thomas Seymour. Although Henry would go on to have another three wives after Jane’s death, Edward was his only son and, on Henry’s death in January 1547, he became king aged nine as Edward VI Edward was hailed by many in England as a future great king and Jane would have been proud of her son. Edward’s tutor, Sir John Cheke, for example, wrote of the king that ‘I prophesy indeed, that, with the lord’s blessing, he will prove such a king, as neither to yield to Josiah in the maintenance of the true religion, nor to Solomon in the management of the state, nor to David in the encouragement of godliness’. Roger Ascham, the tutor of Edward’s sister, Elizabeth, also sang the youth king’s praises, writing that ‘he is wonderfully advanced of his years’. Edward was raised to be a king and received a formidable education, writing very advanced letters even in early childhood (even if is clear that he must have received some assistance in the earlier letters). In one letter to his father, Edward wrote: In the same manner as, most bounteous king, at the dawn of day, we acknowledge the return of the sun to our world, although by the intervention of obscure clouds, we cannot behold manifestly with our eyes that resplendent orb; in like manner your majesty’s extraordinary and almost incredible goodness so shines and beams forth, that although present I cannot behold it, though before me, with my outward eyes, yet never can it escape from my heart. Edward was raised to be king in the manner of his father but in his appearance, with his pale skin and fair hair, he always resembled Jane. Jane’s greatest regret, when she came to realize that she was dying, was that she would not live to see her son grow up … 

Jane’s legacy is also her own reputation and her relationship with Henry VIII. Jane never inspired the deep obsession in the king that he felt for Anne Boleyn or the admiring love that he, at first, felt for Catherine of Aragon. Instead, he married her almost on a whim. She was the woman best placed at the perfect time. There is even some evidence that Henry came to regret his haste in marrying Jane after seeing some other beautiful ladies at his court. Jane never raised the passion in Henry that some of his other wives did. Throughout their marriage, it is clear that Henry did not entirely view his marriage to Jane as permanent. It was essential that Jane fulfilled her side of the bargain and that was to bear a son. Until that time, as Jane was very well aware, she was entirely dispensable. In spite of this, with her death in giving him the son he craved, Henry’s feelings towards Jane entirely changed and he came to look back on their marriage through rose-tinted spectacles. A commemoration to Jane was written some time after her death and perhaps best sums up how Henry came to view her: Among the rest whose worthie lyves Hath runne in vertue’s race, O noble Fame! Persue thy trayne, And give Queene Jane a place. A nymphe of chaste Dianae’s trayne, A virtuous virgin eke; In tender youth a matron’s harte, With modest mynde most meeke.

Jane spent her entire marriage trying to prove to Henry that she was his ideal woman and, posthumously, she succeeded.

-      Elizabeth Norton, Jane Seymour: Henry VIII’s True Love

“How a woman like Jane Seymour became Queen of England is a mystery. In Tudor terms she came from nowhere and was nothing. Chapuys confronted the riddle in his dispatch of 18 May 1536, which was addressed to Antoine Perrenot, the Emperor’s minister, rather than to the Emperor Charles V himself. Freed from the decorum of writing to his sovereign, the ambassador expressed himself bluntly. ‘She is the sister’, he began, ‘of a certain Edward Seymour, who has been in the service of his Majesty [Charles V]’; while ‘she [herself] was formerly in the service of the good Queen [Catherine]’. As for her appearance , it was literally colourless. ‘She is of middle height, and nobody thinks she has much beauty. Her complexion is so whitish that she may be called rather pale.’ This is a neat pen-portrait of the woman whose mousy, peaked features and mean, pointed chin, are denred by Holbein with his characteristic, unsparing honesty.  So much Chapuys could see. But when he turned to her supposed moral character he gave his prejudices full rein. ‘You may imagine’, he wrote Perrenot, man-to-man, ‘whether, being an Englishwoman, and having been so long at Court, she would not hold it a sin to be virgo intacta.’ ‘She is not a woman of great wit,’ he continued. ‘But she may have’ -and here he became frankly coarse- ‘a fine enigme.’  ‘Enigme’ means ‘riddle’ or ‘secret’, as in ‘secret place’ or the female genitalia. ‘It is said’, he concluded, ‘that she is rather proud and haughty.’ ‘She seems to bear great goodwill and respect to [Mary]. I am not sure whether later on the honours heaped on her will to make her change her mind.’ Whatever was there here -a woman of no family, no beauty, no talent and perhaps not much reputation (though there is no need to accept all of Chapuys’s slanders)- to attract a man who had already been married to two such extraordinary women as Catherine and Anne? But maybe Jane’s very ordubarubess was tge oiubt, Anne had been exciting as a mistress. But she was too demanding, too mercurial and tempestuous, to make a good wife. Like the Gospel which she patronised, she seemed to have come ‘not to send peace but the sword’ and to make ‘a man’s foes ... them of his own household’ (Matthew 10.34-6). Henry was weary of scenes and squabbles, weary too of ruptures with his nearest and dearest and his oldest and closest friends. He wanted his family and friends back. He wanted domestic peace and the quiet life. He also, more disturbingly, wanted submission. For increasing age and the Supremacy’s relentless elevation of the monarchy had made him ever more impatient of contradiction and disagreement. Only obedience, prompt, absolute and unconditional, would do. And he could have none of this with Anne. Jane, on the other hand, was everything that Anne was not. She was calm, quiet, soft-spoken (when she spoke at all) and profoundly submissive, at least to Henry ...”

-          David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII

Images: Jane Seymour painted by Hans Holbein the Younger. Variousa actresses from costume dramas that have played Henry VIII’s third consort. Elly Condron from the documentary drama Secrets of the Six Wives documentary presented by Lucy Worsley. Anne Stallybras from the BBC miniseries The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970). Jane Asher from the BBC film Henry VIII & his Six Wives (1972). Lastly, Kate Phillips from Wolf Hall (2014).

Arranged Marriage Au “I know it’s already been arranged, but let me do this properly…Will you marry me?” for 'Nemi please! Thank you 💙💙

Ahhh this one gave me so many feels bc I’m such a sucker for puppy love to romantic love fics. And just... I kept screeching and terrorizing my dogs by telling them how cute it is while writing this. Hope you like it, bby! 😂💜✨✨

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Sanemi x F!S/O: “I know it’s already been arranged, but let me do this properly…Will you marry me?” (Arranged Marriage Prompts, SFW Scenario):

The first time that Sanemi ever saw her, she had been out on the balcony of her father’s palace— head buried in her books, as her tutor kept prattling on about etiquette practices and some other topic that he had been too preoccupied to understand.

He didn’t know how long he had stayed there, simply admiring her from afar, as he kept his hands on the cart handle to keep it from being stolen. Though, he highly doubted that anyone in the affluent part of his village would even want to steal a rickety old cart.

“Hime-sama, Hime-sama,” The tutor squawked at the young girl, which effectively shook Sanemi from his reverie— only to realize that she had also been looking at him through the gaps between the artfully placed parapets.  

Almost instantaneously, Sanemi’s cheeks flared up with a blush, as he averted his gaze from the smiling princess’.

That was the first time that he had ever seen (Y/n)— yet the scene always played so vividly in his mind; as opposed to all of the times that he had gone to see her after that day.

He’d known that there was no chance of them ever being together— or even a chance of her knowing his name— as he was nothing more than a peasant back then, yet he still found himself taking the time to go through the road that passed by her palace, if only to get a glimpse of her when she was on the balcony.

They had never spoken a word to each other, and the most they had ever exchanged were covert smiles and small waves, but Sanemi’s young heart was sure: he was truly, madly, and deeply in love with her.

So, when Oyakata-sama had mentioned her name while asking for any volunteers to marry her in an arranged marriage, he had immediately raised his hand and offered himself up to be the liaison between one of the Kazoku families and the Demon Slayers.

The merger between the two factions wouldn’t have even been formed in the first place, had the youngest son of the (L/n) family not been saved by a Slayer when a demon tried to attack the palace in Sanemi’s old village.

So, in a way, he had that demon to thank for bringing him closer to (Y/n) once more.

***

His heart was beating so fast as he was led through the maze-like halls of the very same palace he’d admired from when he was a child. Everywhere he looked, portraits and expensive paintings lined the walls, which added to the ominous and borderline foreboding feeling that emanated from the place.

Still, it wasn’t because he was afraid of the atmosphere; but his nervousness had more to do with the fact that he was finally going to see the girl he loved back then— the very same girl whom he hadn’t forgotten, even after all the years they had been apart.

Sanemi couldn’t quite explain why he felt so strongly for a girl that he didn’t know beyond her sweet smiles, and the usual talks that he heard from the people at the marketplace, but he reckoned that it must have been because she had been the only one whom had showed him such kindness— even if it was with just a smile when he passed by.

Those smiles and shy waves of hers were the only silver lining in his dark and dreary past.

She had saved him by keeping him going with that smile; unknowingly pushing him to strive further, until they could stand on the same ground without being judged.

Because, if he really sat down and thought about it, he was only where he was at that point because she had been the only one on his mind while he was killing demons. His need to rid the world of demons stemmed from his need to protect his loved ones, and that counted her.

Even though they were worlds apart back then.

But now…

“Hime-sama, Shinazugawa-sama is here to see you,” The courtier announced softly, as she opened the doors that led out to the balcony— the very balcony that he had first seen her at on that day.

Now, things were different.

Sanemi’s heart felt like it had stopped in his chest at the very sight of her back facing him— and, when she turned around, it was as if the entire world had slowed down and there was no one else in existence but the two of them.

All he could see was her, and the realization that bloomed on her face as she took her first look at her betrothed. Silence reigned between the two of them, and neither dared to move as memories of that day played in both of their minds.

After what felt like an eternity, a shaky laugh bubbled from the young woman’s lips. And, before she even realized it, her feet had already begun to carry her across the room in short but quick strides— all so she could throw her arms around him.

“It’s you!” (Y/n) whispered, all while trying to hold back the tears that pricked the backs of her eyes. “I’ve been looking for you for so long.”

And she had. The moment she had become old enough to choose her own courtiers and ladies-in-waiting, she wasted no time in having them look for the silver-haired boy from her childhood; only to be unsuccessful in each and every one of their secret searches for him.

It was like finding a needle in a haystack, but (Y/n) had never lost hope that they would see each other again— that was, until she had received the news from her father that she was going to get married to one Shinazugawa Sanemi from the Demon Slayers; if only to form an alliance with them.

She had been so devastated after hearing the news, but had put off all her efforts in searching for that boy from back then. Because, really, she saw the unfairity in being unfaithful to her future husband when they were in the same boat.

Realizing just how bold she had been, (Y/n) pulled away from Sanemi— only to be pulled back against his chest. The action served to make her heart beat even faster than it already was, and she tried to show no outward reactions to avoid embarrassing herself— but her hands wouldn’t stop shaking, even as her fingers gripped the back of his haori tightly.

As if he was going to disappear if she let go of him again.

“What happened to you?” The young woman asked under her breath, while secretly basking in the feel of his warmth seeping through her clothes.

“A long story, princess. And if you’re asking about the scars… well,” Sanemi sighed, but couldn’t quite keep the smile off of his lips as he held (Y/n) closer. “They’re a long story too.”

“We have time.”

The Wind Hashira couldn’t help but chuckle at that answer, even though his nerves were practically eating him alive. He was so fearless in the face of demons, but with her he was beginning to find that he was powerless— if the immense pressure he felt on his shoulders was anything to go by.

Still, he slowly pulled away from her and held her at arms’ length, so he could see her face much more clearly. He then swallowed past the lump that suddenly formed in his throat, and cleared it so that his voice wouldn’t come out raspy.

“I know it’s already been arranged… but let me do this properly,” Sanemi began, his eyes never leaving her own even if his instincts told him to look away just so he could save face. He had practiced so many times in the mirror before going there, but doing the actual thing was much harder than it had been than when he was in the privacy of his own room— and his own reflection. “Will you marry me?”

Sporting vs Herding

i.

I wanna talk about two blogposts, Seph's "War Over Being Nice” and Alastair's "Of Triggering & the Triggered." Each lays out the same erisological idea: that there are two distinct modes or cultures of running discourse these days, and understanding the difference is crucial to understanding the content of conversation as much as its form. Let's go.

One style, Alastair writes, is indebted to the Greco-Roman rhetorical and 19th C British sporting traditions. A debate takes place in a "heterotopic" arena which is governed by an ethos of adversarial collaboration and sportsmanship. It is waged in a detached and impersonal manner, e.g. in American debate club, which inherits from these older traditions, you are assigned a side to argue; your position is not some "authentic" expression of self. Alastair:

This form of discourse typically involves a degree of ‘heterotopy’, occurring in a ‘space’ distinct from that of personal interactions.

This heterotopic space is characterized by a sort of playfulness, ritual combativeness, and histrionics. This ‘space’ is akin to that of the playing field, upon which opposing teams give their rivals no quarter, but which is held distinct to some degree from relations between the parties that exist off the field. The handshake between competitors as they leave the field is a typical sign of this demarcation.

All in all, it is a mark against one in these debates to take an argument personally, to allow arguments that happen "in the arena" to leave the arena. This mode of discourse I see exemplified in LessWrong culture, and is, I think, one of the primary attractors to the site.In the second mode of discourse, inoffensiveness, agreement, and inclusivity are emphasized, and positions are seen as closely associated with their proponents.  Alastair speculates it originates in an educational setting which values cooperation, empathy, equality, non-competitiveness, affirmation, and subordination; this may be true, but I feel less confident in it than I am the larger claim about discursive modes. Provocatively, the two modes are dubbed "sporting" and "herding," with all the implications of, on the one hand, individual agents engaged in ritualized, healthy simulations of combat, and on the other, of quasi-non-agents shepherded in a coordinated, bounded, highly constrained and circumscribed epistemic landscape. Recall, if you are tempted to blame this all on the postmodernists, that this is exactly the opposite of their emphasis toward the "adult" realities of relativism, nebulosity, flux. Queer Theory has long advocated for the dissolution of gendered and racial identity, not the reification of identitarian handles we see now, which is QT's bastardization. We might believe these positions were taken too far, but they are ultimately about complicating the world and removing the structuralist comforts of certainty and dichotomy. (Structureless worlds are inherently hostile to rear children in, and also for most human life; see also the Kegan stages for a similar idea.)  

In the erisological vein, Alastair provides a portrait of the collision between the sporting and herding modes. Arguments that fly in one discursive style (taking offence, emotional injury, legitimation-by-feeling) absolutely do not fly in the other:

When these two forms of discourse collide they are frequently unable to understand each other and tend to bring out the worst in each other. The first [new, sensitive] form of discourse seems lacking in rationality and ideological challenge to the second; the second [old, sporting] can appear cruel and devoid of sensitivity to the first. To those accustomed to the second mode of discourse, the cries of protest at supposedly offensive statements may appear to be little more than a dirty and underhand ploy intentionally adopted to derail the discussion by those whose ideological position can’t sustain critical challenge.

ii.

Seph stumbles upon a similar division, though it is less about discursive and argumentative modes, and more about social norms for emotional regulation and responsibility. He calls them Culture A and Culture B, mirroring sporting and herding styles, respectively.

In culture A, everyone is responsible for their own feelings. People say mean stuff all the time—teasing and jostling each other for fun and to get a rise. Occasionally someone gets upset. When that happens, there's usually no repercussions for the perpetrator. If someone gets consistently upset when the same topic is brought up, they will either eventually stop getting upset or the people around them will learn to avoid that topic. Verbally expressing anger at someone is tolerated. It is better to be honest than polite.

In such a culture, respect and status typically comes from performance; Seph quotes the maxim "If you can't sell shit, you are shit." We can see a commonality with sporting in that there is some shared goal which is attained specifically through adversarial play, such that some degree of interpersonal hostility is tolerated or even sought. Conflict is settled openly and explicitly.

In culture B, everyone is responsible for the feelings of others. At social gatherings everyone should feel safe and comfortable. After all, part of the point of having a community is to collectively care for the emotional wellbeing of the community's members. For this reason its seen as an act of violence against the community for your actions or speech to result in someone becoming upset, or if you make people feel uncomfortable or anxious. This comes with strong repercussions—the perpetrator is expected to make things right. An apology isn't necessarily good enough here—to heal the wound, the perpetrator needs to make group participants once again feel nurtured and safe in the group. If they don't do that, they are a toxic element to the group's cohesion and may no longer be welcome in the group. It is better to be polite than honest. As the saying goes, if you can't say something nice, it is better to say nothing at all.

In such a culture, status and respect come from your contribution to group cohesion and safety; Seph cites the maxim "Be someone your coworkers enjoy working with." But Seph's argument pushes back, fruitfully, on descriptions of Culture B as collaborative (which involve high self-assertion); rather, he writes, they are accommodating in the Thomas-Kilmann modes of conflict sense:

iii.

Seph and Alastair both gesture toward the way these modes feel gendered, with Culture A more "masculinized" and Culture B more "feminized."[1] While this seems important to note, given that a massive, historically unprecedented labor shift toward coed co-working has recently occured in the Western world, I don't see much point in hashing out a nature vs. nurture, gender essentialism debate here, so you can pick your side and project it. This is also perhaps interesting from the frame of American feminist history: early waves of feminism were very much about escaping the domestic sphere and entering the public sphere; there is an argument to be made that contemporary feminisms, now that they have successfully entered it, are dedicated to domesticating the public sphere into a more comfortable zone. Culture B, for instance, might well be wholly appropriate to the social setting of a living room, among acquaintances who don't know each other well; indeed, it feels much like the kind of aristocratic parlor culture of the same 19th C Britain that the sporting mode also thrived in, side-by-side. And to some extent, Culture A is often what gets called toxic masculinity; see Mad Men for a depiction.

(On the topic of domestication of the workplace: We've seen an increased blurring of the work-life separation; the mantra "lean-in" has been outcompeted by "decrease office hostility"; business attire has slid into informality, etiquette has been subsumed into ethics, dogs are allowed in the workplace. Obviously these changes are not driven by women's entrance into the workplace alone; the tech sector has had an enormous role in killing both business attire and the home-office divide, despite being almost entirely male in composition. And equally obvious, there is an enormous amount of inter- and intra-business competition in tech, which is both consistently cited by exiting employees as a hostile work environment, and has also managed to drive an outsized portion of global innovation the past few decades—thus cultural domestication is not at all perfectly correlated with a switch from Culture A to B. Draw from these speculations what you will.)

There are other origins for the kind of distinctions Seph and Alastair draw; one worthwhile comparison might be Nietzsche's master and slave moralities. The former mode emphasizes power and achievement, the other empathy, cooperation, and compassion. (Capitalism and communitarianism fall under some of the same, higher-level ideological patterns.) There are differences of course: the master moralist is "beyond" good and evil, or suffering and flourishing, whereas Culture A and B might both see themselves as dealing with questions of suffering but in very different ways. But the "slave revolt in morality" overwrote an aristocratic detachment or "aboveness" that we today might see as deeply immoral or inhuman; it is neither surprising nor damning that a revolting proletariat—the class which suffered most of the evils of the world—would speak from a place of one-to-one, attached self-advocacy. One can switch "sides" or "baskets" of the arena each half or quarter because they are impersonal targets in a public commons; one cannot so easily hold the same attitude toward defending one's home. This alone may indicate we should be more sympathetic to the communitarian mode than we might be inclined to be; certainly, those who advocate and embody this mode make plausible claims to being a similar, embattled and embittered class. A friend who I discussed these texts with argued that one failure mode of the rationalist community is an "unmooring" from the real concerns of human beings, slipping into an idealized, logical world modeled on self-similarity (i.e. highly Culture A, thinking over feeling in the Big 5 vocabulary), in a way that is blind to the realities of the larger population.

But there are also grave problems for such a discursive mode, especially when it becomes dominant. Because while on the surface, discursive battles in the sporting mode can appear to be battles between people, they are in reality battles between ideas.

iv.

As Mill argued in On Liberty, free discourse is crucial because it acts as a social steering mechanism: should we make a mistake in our course, freedom of discourse is the instrument for correcting it. But the mistake of losing free discourse is very hard to come back from; it must be fought for again, before other ideals can be pursued. 

Moreover, freedom of discourse is the means of rigorizing ideas before they are implemented, such as to avoid catastrophe. Anyone familiar with James Scott's Seeing Like A State, or Hayek's arguments for decentralized market intelligence, or a million other arguments against overhaulism, knows how difficult it is to engineer a social intervention that works as intended: the unforeseen, second-order effects; our inability to model complex systems and human psychology. Good intent is not remotely enough, and the herding approach cannot help but lower the standard of thinking and discourse emerging from such communities, which become more demographically powerful even as their ideas become worse (the two are tied up inextricably).

The fear of conflict and the inability to deal with disagreement lies at the heart of sensitivity-driven discourses. However, ideological conflict is the crucible of the sharpest thought. Ideological conflict forces our arguments to undergo a rigorous and ruthless process through which bad arguments are broken down, good arguments are honed and developed, and the relative strengths and weaknesses of different positions emerge. The best thinking emerges from contexts where interlocutors mercilessly probe and attack our arguments’ weaknesses and our own weaknesses as their defenders. They expose the blindspots in our vision, the cracks in our theories, the inconsistencies in our logic, the inaptness of our framing, the problems in our rhetoric. We are constantly forced to return to the drawing board, to produce better arguments.

And on the strength of sporting approaches in rigorizing discourse:

The truth is not located in the single voice, but emerges from the conversation as a whole. Within this form of heterotopic discourse, one can play devil’s advocate, have one’s tongue in one’s cheek, purposefully overstate one’s case, or attack positions that one agrees with. The point of the discourse is to expose the strengths and weaknesses of various positions through rigorous challenge, not to provide a balanced position in a single monologue

Thus those who wish us to accept their conceptual carvings or political advocacies without question or challenge are avoiding short-term emotional discomfort at the price of their own long-term flourishing, at the cost of finding working and stable social solutions to problems. Standpoint epistemology correctly holds that individuals possess privileged knowledge as to what it's like (in the Nagel sense) to hold their social identities. But it is often wrongly extended, in the popular game of informational corruption called "Telephone" or "Chinese Whispers," as arguing that such individuals also possess unassailable and unchallengeable insight into the proper societal solutions to their grievances. We can imagine a patient walking into the doctor's office; the doctor cannot plausibly tell him there is no pain in his leg, if he claims there is, but the same doctor can recommend treatment, or provide evidence as to whether the pain is physical or psychosomatic.A lack of discursive rigour would not be a problem, Alastair writes, "were it not for the fact that these groups frequently expect us to fly in a society formed according to their ideas, ideas that never received any rigorous stress testing."

v.

As for myself, it was not too long ago I graduated from a university in which a conflict between these modes is ongoing. We had a required course called

Contemporary Civilization

, founded in the wake of World War I, which focused on the last 2,000 years of philosophy, seminar-style: a little bit of introductory lecture, but most of the 2 x 2-hour sessions each week were filled by students arguing with one other. In other words, its founding ethos was of sporting and adversarial collaboration.We also had a number of breakdowns where several students simply could not handle this mode: they would begin crying, or say they couldn't deal with the [insert atmosphere adjective] in the room, and would either transfer out or speak to the professor. While they were not largely representative, they required catering to, and no one wished to upset these students. I have heard we were a fortunate class insofar as we had a small handful of students willing to engage sporting-style, or skeptical a priori of the dominant political ideology at the school. When, in one session, a socialist son of a Saudi billionaire, wearing a $10,000 watch and a camel-hair cashmere sweater, pontificated about "burning the money, reverting to a barter system, and killing the bosses," folks in class would mention that true barter systems were virtually unprecedented in post-agricultural societies, and basically unworkable at scale. In other classes, though, when arguments like these were made—which, taken literally, are logically irrational, but instead justify themselves through sentiment, a legitimation of driving emotion rather than explicit content, in the Culture B sense—other students apparently nodded sagely from the back of the room, "yes, and-ing" one another til their noses ran. Well, I wanted to lay out the styles with some neutrality, but I suppose it's clear now where my sympathies stand.

[1] It should go without saying, but to cover my bases, these modes feeling "feminized" or "masculinized" does not imply that all women, or women inherently, engage in one mode while all men inherently engage in another. Seph cites Camille Paglia as an archetypal example of a Culture A woman, and while she may fall to the extreme side of the Culture A mode, I'd argue most female intellectuals of the 20th C (at least those operated outside the sphere of feminist discourse) were strongly sporting-types: Sontag, for instance, was vociferous and unrelenting. 

Ursa Major

i.e. the beardrew fic 🐻😉

Read here or on AO3 *

“What brings you to town?” The lodge manager flashes Neil an easy smile as he holds the cabin key in one hand. They clink together just out of Neil’s reach, as though he won’t relinquish them until Neil has provided a satisfactory answer.

“Business,” Neil answers shortly, and reaches for the keys.

“Let me know if you want to squeeze a little pleasure in, too.” The manager, whose name badge reading Nicky is almost lost amongst an array of rainbow pin-badges, winks exaggeratedly. Neil keeps his expression carefully blank as he all but pries the keys from him. “Andrew will show you which cabin is yours. He’s chopping wood out back.”

Neil steps out onto the back porch of the reception building, takes one look at the guy ripping logs apart with his bare hands, and decides that he can find it himself. He tries to avert his eyes, but the man stops to watch him pass, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. He looks like such a stereotypical woodsman that Neil wonders for a second if he walked straight out of a Brawny advert, muscles flexing as he heaves a lump of wood half his size onto the log pile, several days’ worth of stubble dusting his jawline gold and a glowing worker’s tan defying the encroaching winter. He’s so stocky that Neil almost misses the fact that the man is somehow shorter than him, and for a moment his brain short-circuits as he tries to match his impossible presence to his impossible height.

Andrew – because this must be Andrew – barely spares Neil’s scars a second glance, eyes catching instead on the camera swinging around Neil’s neck. Neil’s hands go to it automatically – the device is worth more than his life – but he stills as Andrew drops the log with an earth-shaking thud. “Point that thing at me and I’ll break it.”

“I wasn’t going to.” Neil takes a step back, holding his hands in the air as though proving himself unarmed. “Sorry.”

“Whatever.” He turns back to his work, and without looking at him, adds “Yours is the last on the left.”

Neil makes no effort to hide his relief as he turns and heads up towards the row of log cabins, stumbling over exposed tree roots and pushing branches out of the way where the trees have begun encroaching on the dirt path. The place is quiet, which suits Neil perfectly; he didn’t pick wildlife photography because of his love for human company, after all. Of the dozen or so suites clustered around the central building, only two or three appear to be occupied, muddy hiking gear drying on doorsteps, BMWs with kayaks and bike racks strapped to the roofs parked down at the car park below. Neil chose the single bus that runs back and forth to the town across the lake once a day over risking a car rental on the worn dirt track; for better or for worse, he’s trapped there for the night.

Not that he expects to finish his assignment in the span of a day, but old instincts cry out for getaway options. He and his mother spent months in secluded mountain ranges like this one, but they were as much a threat as they were protection. It was easier to hear of visitors as soon as they arrived in the area, but harder to blend in amongst non-existent crowds.

He dumps his rucksack on his bed – he hasn’t broken the habit of travelling light quite yet – and takes in the neat little cabin (cosier than he expected, like it leapt out of a rustic furniture catalogue) before grabbing his kit and heading out into the hills.

He loses track of time quicker than usual, as he always does when he’s in new places, busy taking in the lay of the land, figuring out which trails are worth his time and which are too packed with litter and foot traffic to be of any use. The vistas are breath-taking; glittering pearl lakes studded throughout the endless verdant valleys, mountain ranges that draw across the swirling skyline like theatre curtains. Landscape photos aren’t Neil’s strong suit, but he snaps a few anyway, just for himself. They never had photos on the run, nothing that could be used as evidence, no footprints left in their wake. Neil likes having the mementos now, thin slips of glossy film that prove that he was alive, he was there, that he was real.

Sunset has bathed the woods in rich oranges as he makes his way back to his cabin, legs aching pleasantly with the memory of a good day’s exploration. There’s a packet of instant noodles waiting in his bag and a kettle in his cabin, but the smells drifting from the eatery in the central building convince Neil to forgo solitude for an hour and cough up for a real home-cooked meal.

Either Andrew has shaved since this morning or he has an identical twin; either way, the man who serves him chunky soup and bread does so with the barest pretences of politeness. Neil ignores the chatter of the other guests and staff as much as possible, flicking through the images on his digital display as he chews through a freshly baked roll. Neil’s twin theory is proven correct when Andrew sweeps into the dining room just as dessert is being brought out, windswept and scowling. Neil watches as he begins arranging kindling in the hearth, and soon the room is glowing with dancing light. Andrew stares into the flames, and the flickering glow carves deep shadows into his features, as though his face is transformed by the light. Neil doesn’t do portraits, but if he did, it would be perfect.

He snaps his gaze away as Andrew looks up, unfortunately catching the eye of the man at the next table.

“Photography, huh?” he says, grinning. He’s muscular too. Neil wonders if there’s something in the water here. “Got any good ones?”

Neil hands him the camera in lieu of answering, trying not to twitch his fingers as the stranger handles his most valuable possession.

“Oh, shit. These are seriously good, like, professional standard. Is this what you do for a living?” He hands the camera back and offers a hand with it. “I’m Matt, by the way.”

“Neil. Yeah, I work for National Parks Magazine.”

Matt whistles. “Fancy.”

“I guess.”

“Well, I’m no expert, but those look great to me. What is it, a tourism piece?”

“Oh, no, these were just for me. I do wildlife photography.”

“Plenty of that out here. I come down most weekends, usually see a few hawks, eagles too. We get lots of bird spotters in the Spring.”

“That’s great,” says Neil, “But not what I need for this assignment.”

“How mysterious.” Matt leans his chin on his hand. “Tell me more, Mister Bond.”

“I’m looking for bears, actually.”

There’s a clatter from across the room that cuts off Matt’s reaction as Andrew’s twin drops a stack of plates.

“Did I hear you say bears?” Nicky appears at Neil’s shoulder as if from nowhere. Neil fights back the impulse to bolt. “Mine is working at the reception desk if you want me to introduce you.”

Matt snorts. “Not that kind of bear, Nicky.”

“I heard there were grizzlies up here,” Neil says. “What do you mean, there’s a bear in the reception?”

“Oh, that’s adorable. No, I just meant my boyfriend. Though he gets a bit grizzly before his first cup of coffee most mornings-”

“There aren’t any bears here,” interrupts another voice, and Neil needs to learn to stop jumping if all the staff are going to sneak up on him like this. He turns to see Andrew’s brother wiping coffee stains from his sleeves. “You might as well leave.”

“Aaron,” Nicky says, “It’s fine, he’s a photographer, he isn’t here to hunt or anything-”

“Pretty fucked up face for a nature photographer.”

“Hey-!”

“It’s fine,” Neil cuts off Matt’s objection. “The scars were my father’s doing. He loved hunting. Me, not so much.”

The group falls quiet, which is the usual reaction his explanation gets. He has never gotten used to the awkward silences that his past invariably invokes, even when he leaves out the years of running, capture, his mother’s slow and terrible death at his father’s hands, his last-minute escape, the months of FBI interrogations and his eventual release. His father had deer heads mounted in his study and Neil remembers vividly the glassy, dead eyes that seemed to watch his every move. No, Neil is not a fan of hunting; he has spent far too long being the prey.

It’s at that moment that Andrew looks up from the fireplace, and Neil can tell from his expression that he has been listening. There’s a strange understanding which has no place on this stranger’s face, and for a moment Neil feels as though he’s stuck in the amber gaze like a fly caught in a honey trap.

“Why bears?” Matt says, and his words are like a hook pulling him from a lake. Neil forces air back into his lungs and turns back to the group. Nicky’s expression has softened, eyes still on Neil’s burns, while Aaron has sunk back into disdain. “Surely there’s less dangerous things to photograph.”

“They’re not dangerous if you’re careful,” Neil replies patiently. “Treat them with respect and they’ll do the same. Besides, I like bears.”

“I hear that,” says Nicky. Aaron pops him in the back of the head, but he waves him off, undeterred. “You should talk to Andrew. He might be able to help you-” There’s a muffled thud which sounds suspiciously like Aaron aiming a kick at Nicky’s shins out of Neil’s line of sight. “-or not, you know, whatever,” he finishes lamely.

Neil glances furtively over at Andrew, who has gone back to staring into the hearth. “It’s fine,” he says, wondering why his mouth feels so dry all of a sudden. “I’m used to finding my own way.”

Desert finished and cleared away, Neil sits with Matt on the couches that occupy the other portion of the communal area along with rows of bookshelves and a desktop computer that looks as though it hasn’t been touched since the nineties. Matt flicks through more of Neil’s photos, stopping on occasion to gasp or croon, while Neil accustoms himself to trusting Matt with his camera. The coffee table is stacked high with leaflets on hiking trails which Neil sets himself to memorising as well as pamphlets on good camping etiquette and forest fire prevention. When Aaron returns and announces that the main lodge is closing for the night by abruptly flicking the lights off, Neil is surprised to realise how late it is already. The fire Andrew started in the hearth has collapsed into flaky grey embers, and when Neil steps out onto the porch the thick smell of smoke clings to his clothes.

Neil and Matt part ways for the night, but only after Matt has extracted a promise from Neil that he will let him show him some of his favourite trails the next day.

Neil thinks he may be unconscious before his head even hits the pillow, and the rustle of the forest follows him into his sleep. In his dreams, wild creatures circle his bed, close, curious, watching, waiting.

He spends most of the weekend letting Matt show him his favourite routes that weave up and down the mountain peaks. Neil wouldn’t usually tolerate so much company, but it’s clear from Matt’s eager nature that he likes having someone to talk to, and his girlfriend, he explains, is on a work placement out of state until next month. Neil is surprised to discover that he doesn’t mind Matt’s presence, and at Matt’s insistence he takes several shots of Matt posing with the valley at his back, which Neil promises to email to him for his girlfriend.

Their hike isn’t all sightseeing, however; Neil pays close attention to any tracks and prints that could point him in the direction of bears, making a note on his map of everything he spots in hope of discerning a pattern. He’s surprised to see a lot of marks close to the popular footpaths, and centred around the lodge, too. Bears usually avoid humans unless driven from their own habitat. Neil wonders if the owners have been less than careful with the bins, encouraging raiders into the foothills scavenging for food.

He spends his evenings in the main lodge, where Matt draws him into conversation with the staff and other regulars. Nicky joins them whenever he isn’t working, and will drag Aaron over when their breaks coincide. Kevin, who is renting one of the upstairs rooms in the central lodge, will occasionally be persuaded to look up from his laptop, upon which he is typing meticulous notes about conservation of historically significant ruins in the area, a topic which Neil pretends to understand on the one occasion that Kevin tries to explain it to him. Andrew, on the other hand, shows no further interest in Neil following their first encounter. Other than occasional odd jobs around the cabins, Neil still isn’t clear on what he actually does, if anything. He seems to spend most of his days out in the wilderness, although Neil and Matt never pass him on any of their walks. Neil almost asks Nicky, but thinks better of it, sensing that such a query would be met with more glee than he is comfortable with.

On Sunday, Matt packs his gear into the back of his pickup and rolls his way back towards the main road, promising to return the following weekend. Neil waves him off, surprised by how quickly the quiet chases away the hum of the engine. He distracts himself from the returning solitude by taking himself off the marked trails and deeper into the wilderness, where the trees grow thick enough to block out the sky and the trickle of springs leads him into sludgy banks that threaten to suck his boots from his feet.

Eventually the earth flattens out as Neil reaches the valley floor, and the springs pool into a small lake that winks at Neil through the trees. Neil finds an embankment to set up on, and is so absorbed in fidgeting with his lenses that he misses the faint crack of branches breaking underfoot.

A shadow looms suddenly in front of him. Neil looks up, and goes still, breath caught in his throat.

The bear hasn’t noticed him yet. He – which he must be, going by the size – is reared up on his hind legs, eight feet tall at least, nose twitching. Neil would normally be jumping at such a stroke of luck, but the shocking bright blond of the bear’s fur stills his fingers on the shutter. He would say polar bear if he didn’t know better, but he does, and they’re about a million miles too far south for that to make sense. So maybe it’s the surprising colour, or the surprise of being so lucky as to just stumble across him, but some combination of the two causes Neil to do something incredibly stupid.

He opens his mouth.

“Oh, you are beautiful.”

The bear goes still. Then he turns, hazel eyes fixing on Neil.

Neil suddenly feels very, very small. Rule one of tracking bears – don’t surprise them. Weirdly, though, this bear doesn’t react in typical bear-like fashion. There is no reflexive snarling, no intimidation, no panic. Just the faintest twitch of his ears, a huff of… irritation?

“Sorry,” Neil says automatically, then winces, because he is talking to the bear now, for god’s sake-

Then again, it isn’t like he’s doing any harm. “You are just adorable. I hope you know that you are so cute. Look at those chubby cheeks!”

And, okay, maybe he’s using the same voice he uses to talk to stray cats, but in his defence, how often does he get the chance to baby-talk a bear?!

The bear just sort of stares at him, which is… odd, probably, but as long as he isn’t snapping Neil like a toothpick Neil isn’t too concerned. The gaze is piercing, like the bear is seeing right through him, and it’s disconcerting enough that Neil almost loses his grip on the camera.

Speaking of which…

Click.

The bear… pulls a face. Neil is about to apologise again, but the words die in his mouth when he drops onto his front paws with a thud that shakes straight through the earth. The urge to run seizes Neil suddenly, hand-in-hand with a familiar burst of adrenaline, and for a moment he’s twelve years old, tripping over his own feet as his mother yanks him through the dark with heart-stopping urgency.

You can’t run from bears, is the thing.

Slowly, Neil pushes himself up the bank, leaning heavy on his arms because he doesn’t trust his legs to support him. The bear just…watches. No, glares.

All at once, the fear that seized him so suddenly is gone, and Neil lets out a shaky breath.

“Thank you,” he says, because it seems rude, almost, to do otherwise. He taps his camera. “You were amazing.”

He scrambles up the bank and back into the woods, heart thudding in time with his footsteps.

Back at the cabin, he plugs his camera into his laptop with shaking fingers. He doesn’t stop to check the photo preview on the camera’s digital display, wants to see it blown up on his laptop screen in full jpeg glory.

It’s been a while since he backed up all his pictures, and as the loading bar trickles towards 100%, Neil’s stomach starts to growl. Grumbling, Neil leaves his computer to finish compiling and heads down to the main lodge in search of food.

It’s midweek, so the dining room is emptier than usual, although Neil spots Andrew in his usual place by the fireside almost immediately. They’ve been successfully ignoring each other since the day of Neil’s arrival, but the day’s events spur him to take a seat at Andrew’s side. “Nicky said you know about bears.”

Andrew flicks a scrap of newspaper into the flames. “Nicky says a lot of things.”

“I saw…” Neil winces. This is going to sound insane. “He looked like a polar bear.”

Andrew huffs, although it’s hard to say whether in scorn or amusement. “You saw a Kermode bear. They’re a subspecies of the American black bear.”

“You see a lot of them here?”

“No.”

It isn’t that Neil thinks Andrew is lying, not exactly, but there’s something he isn’t saying. Neil knows the shape of a secret, how it weighs in one’s chest, and Andrew is keeping something big in there, bristling beneath his skin.

“He was beautiful,” Neil says. “The most beautiful I’ve ever seen.”

“I don’t care,” Andrew replies, and this time Neil swears he can see the bristling. “Don’t say things like that.”

“Why not? I’m a photographer. Finding beauty is my job.”

“Your job is to take pictures of shit and persuade people to pay you for it. Beauty is a construct.”

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

“Exactly.”

“But not in your eye?” Neil guesses. Andrew’s brow creases in irritation. He dismisses Neil’s comment.

“What are you going to do now that you have found your precious bear?”

Neil shrugs. “Onto the next assignment. Wherever that is.”

“Sounds like a strange life.”

“I’m used to it.”

Aaron clatters into the dining room, grinding their conversation to a halt. His irritation turns to an open glare when he sees Neil at Andrew’s side, so Neil moves off to take his usual seat.

After dinner he calls his editor with an update, slouched in one of the communal couches and watching as Aaron and Nicky squabble over a game of pool.

“Neil, I’m telling you, there’s no way you saw a Kermode bear.” Robin says as paper rustles furiously on the other end of the line. “You’re on the wrong side of the continent.”

“But I did. I wish you could have seen him. He was so… calm.”

“Neil,” Robin says, “Are you sure?”

“I have the picture to prove it. I’ll send it over as soon as I’m back in my cabin. Is this, like, a big deal? Do you think there’s some kind of undiscovered subspecies, or… I don’t know, this seems like the kind of thing bear scientists would care about.”

Nicky and Aaron’s bickering suddenly falls silent. Neil doesn’t bother looking up to see why, not when Robin is snorting on the other end of the line. “Bear scientists.”

“I don’t know what they’re called. I’m just the dumbass who takes the photos.”

“Maybe they’ll name it after you. The Josten bear.”

Neil winces. “Poor bear.”

“Alright. I’ll be waiting at my desk. But I swear, if this is another prank or something-”

“I would never,” Neil says innocently. “I know you find my pranks un-bear-able.”

“Oh my god, shut up,” Robin says, and promptly hangs up.

He’s eager to deliver on his promise as soon as possible, but Nicky catches him on his way to the door. Aaron disappeared at some point while Neil was on the phone, which is the only reason he accepts Nicky’s offer of a drink on the house, even if he won’t be persuaded from his soft drink of choice.

“That sounded like a big deal,” Nicky says, gesturing at Neil’s phone while not meeting his eyes. Once again, Neil’s neck prickles with the sense that something is being kept from him.

“Apparently I’ve found a bear species a million miles from where it should be,” Neil says. “It could be a big deal for you, too. Researchers coming to the area means more business for you, right?”

“Wow, yeah, sure.” Nicky’s smile is as pasty as it is wide. “Brilliant.”

“Speaking of,” says Neil. “I’ll be checking out a few days early. If you see Matt, can you tell him I’m sorry I missed him?”

“Sure,” says Nicky, although Neil isn’t sure he’s really listening. Neil glances at the amber liquid swirling in the bottom of Nicky’s glass and wonders if it’s stronger than it looks.

The temperature has dropped sharply in the time it took Neil to eat his dinner, and as he trudges back uphill to his cabin on weary legs the wind cuts through his light gear like a blade. His cabin windows spill orange on the path, a lamp left on, dumb, wasteful, isn’t he always complaining about light pollution-?

Neil stops dead a foot from his cabin door. He knows, knows, knows, that someone has been in since he last was there. The lodge offered daily cleaning services, but Neil had opted out for the duration of his stay, uneasy about strangers having access to his belongings even now that he has nothing left to hide. He wants to believe that they made a mistake in the cleaning schedule, but the same gut instinct telling him someone has been in his cabin tells him that it was no accident. Something is wrong.

Neil pushes the door open with the lightest press of his fingers. Adrenaline hums through him, old instincts reawakening as he prepares to be attacked.

The cabin is empty. No, not empty; the furniture, his clothes, phone charger, hiking gear, all still there…

But no laptop. And no camera.

Neil swears viciously. Before he knows it, he’s back at the central lodge, even though all the lights are out and they’re clearly closed for the night. Neil’s hand hovers over the bell at the front desk as the haze of his panic and fury lifts. They’re in the middle of nowhere, meaning the thief was either another lodger or a member of staff. Any accusations he makes won’t go anywhere.

Neil thinks of Aaron disappearing after his phone call, and instead of ringing the bell he clenches his hand into a fist.

The staff and permanent lodgers live over the main building, and although Neil has never seen the upper floor he can tell which windows are theirs by the glow on the other side of the curtains. The walls are made of thick, horizontal tree trunks that make for easy grips. Neil barely has his foot lodged against the first rivulet when he is caught in amber torchlight.

“Can I help you?” Andrew says rhetorically.

Neil drops back to the ground, teeth grinding together. If Andrew’s brother has resorted to a life of crime, there’s no way his twin hasn’t noticed. “Just looking for my things.”

“You won’t find them up there.” Andrew’s eyes flick up. “That’s Nicky and Eric’s room. I can only imagine what horrors would await you.”

“Which is Aaron’s?”

“You won’t find anything in his, either.”

“You would know, wouldn’t you?” Neil snaps. Andrew’s expression is infuriatingly impassive, and Neil knows that arguing any longer will be as productive as shouting at a brick wall. “Tell your cousin I won’t be checking out early after all. It turns out I have more work to do.”

Andrew clicks the torch off, plunging them both into sudden darkness. “I’m not your messenger boy.” Even in the dark, Neil can feel heavy hazel eyes burning into him.

“I don’t care.” Neil storms back off to his cabin, not waiting for a response. He sends Robin an apologetic text and drops onto his bed. Half-formed plans buzz around his mind like flies, but when he eventually falls asleep, it’s with the memory of a ghostly-white bear looking into his very soul. * Thanks for reading! Chapter two is on its way. <3

recently snagged myself a commission spot with @yummychii​, who asked that I give a small blurb about the characters to get into the zone for the purposes of their drawing process. I was really impressed by that, and also inspired, leading to this little Margaret/Reed episode. 

also tagging @a-productive-manor​ for I am a beggard thirsty for them reblogs :,( (just kidding. unless?)

Reed Tobson/OC The Outer Worlds rated G 

The personal timepiece on Reed Tobson’s wrist, rather than read a specific hour, pointed out the indolence as he stood amidst fine and faded furniture, his eyes casting suspicion upon the dully lustrous swathes of wallpaper. Its gleam dimmed when Margaret walked passed, moving towards the tripod-cradled camera over which she bent and fussed, effusing the click of mechanics while she saw to processes he had no need to understand.

“Are we nearly ready, my dear?” asked Reed.

After setting the timer, Margaret breezed towards him, her head-shake burdened with the barest suggestion of reproach, and coloured by coquettish, playful wisdom. “Even in the most dire of situations, the company recommends, for every standard pay-period, one day of rest. Or a span of twenty four hours divided in such a manner as agreed upon by the employee and his superior.” Subduing the space between them, Margaret reached for Reed’s tie, righting the knot with a careful tug. “And seeing as you are dangerously close to infringing upon overtime which has not been granted this week, I suggest you commit yourself to this act of shiftlessness and stop checking the time.”

Distasteful though he found the notion of such idleness—it was akin to malediction on her lips—he could not help but admit, around a glowing smile, “how I adore your grasp of the labour guidelines.”

Her song of triumph was a soft, melodic laugh. Turning, Margaret faced the camera which loomed ominously halfway across the room, its lens shining like an inky eye.

“It takes a moment to warm up. Simply stand as you please.”

For her part, she posed loose-limbed and stale-countenanced in front of him. Reed balled his hands, awaiting the flash.

“And this is the rage in Byzantium, you say?”

“Oh, yes.” Margaret looked over her shoulder. “I had my portraiture captured alongside the troupe and Mister Rockwell, as well as for the corporations that rented my contract. And, as mentioned before, the promotional endeavors offered by Universal Defence Logistics back in ‘42.”

Reed sighed wistfully. “Hundreds of people forming a queue simply to have their likeness alongside your own. And to think—I get to skip the line entirely.” His chest expanded, pride crinkling his eyes. “I suppose it’s prudent that I have my wife’s portrait in my home if Halcyon’s privileged were given the opportunity.”

“Not quite, darling. UDL owned my image at the time, and weren’t inclined to give it away, even for a price. It was about the experience—the chance to rub elbows with luminaries, producers, and picture-stars. The Ruth Ballamy of my time was, by far, the more popular choice in these things compared to little, old me. Naturally.”

“Ah. Then…” Reed felt his collar tighten, and he put great effort into rebuffing it. “My, but what an interesting expenditure of one’s time. Byzantium’s elite certainly are fortunate. And, I suppose, I am now as fortuitous as they.”

Margaret was troubled unexpectedly. Turning, again, to cast a glance over her shoulder, she could not deny the affectionate call to touch his cheek. She did so; cupping his face, her hand indulged her heart to feel the warmth of his skin, and she stirred, deeply, particularly as his eyes met her own. 

“You are better than any I’ve known in Byzantium, Reed Tobson.”

It was the incertitude of his expression which she both cherished and girded against, but she knew it to be true. As his hand encaptured hers which, moments previous, had stroked his face, and his second palm went to her waist in a moment of stupefaction, Margaret considered how fully she esteemed the sentiment.

Hundreds had crossed her path in Halcyon’s capital, their right to fortune ensured by the Grand Plan’s strings of fate, but that did not guarantee a richness in morality. Expectations were heterogeneous between the classes; yet, while pride in one’s lot was universal, so many in Byzantium complained pitiably of their indulged position.

Not Reed. Where he was—where he belonged—was a point of self-regard. And for Margaret it had so long been a subject of torture heavy in her bosom, for she had been strung along between the various corporations that traded her contract—and her life—like so little a thing; yet, now, in Edgewater, she felt she had been found. She no longer believed the Grand Plan had forgotten her, thus denying her the stability of purpose, or the spiritual integrity of being in one’s place. And, as fate would have it, her place was at Reed’s side.

But to Margaret, Reed was not only a means to an end—an affirmation of goodness, or proof of worthiness. Reed was unlike those she had known in Byzantium; he was curt and boorish at times, yet this was simply straight honesty. He did not hide behind double-meanings or preening; he said things as they were, sour or not. When Reed Tobson stated that he respected her, she believed it. And when he expressed softly, with uncertainty in his eye, “as you say,” Margaret saw nothing like Byzantium’s arrogance in his countenance.

“You’re a good man,” she warmly insisted.

Reed was unsure of how to reply. To espouse his superiority over anyone from that echelon of society seemed, somehow, grotesque, yet his wife’s perception had always been sharp, if hesitant (out of regard for etiquette).

Beyond this, however, was the plain devotion she exuded, and it refashioned Reed’s doubt to thankful confidence. There were people chosen by the Architect to imbue a certain set of extraordinary skills, and while the interconnectedness of existence meant one’s influence reached far across the stars, Margaret not only touched the lives of many, but she enriched them. Her songs had soothed spirits, strengthened bodies, and bid minds to work harder towards the piety of productivity. She hadn’t been the voice of Spacer’s Choice in some years, of course, but her brilliance did not mar in the wake of changing fashion. Creative and solicitous, she achieved what every Halcyon citizen strove for: great self-sacrifice, dedication, and she demanded only what was her due—her right as a consumer and a cog in the system.

Margaret was not perfect in the sense of infallibility of action. She failed, often, yet she met disappointment with grace, accepted defeat beautifully, and tried and tried again. In a word, Margaret was the epitome of integrity. When Reed gazed at her, he saw all that was good in the galaxy.

Caught in the moment, the couple found themselves rooted to each other like a rock polished to marvelous marble. But this did not mean that neither jumped when the camera’s flash finally sparked.

“Oh!”

Stunned—and certainly embarrassed to have his improper, emotional passion immortalized in the picture soon to print—blood burned across Reed’s cheek. He blinked for the deadened spark which had blazed through the room, but Margaret laughed freely, her hands clasped joyously at her breast, as her amused effusement echoed off the wallpaper.

“You might have given me fair warning, dearest,” Reed said, pinching the bridge of his nose and blinking away the stars.

“Oh, darling.” Margaret sighed while approaching the camera which slowly produced its yield. “That’s part of the gambit, I’m sorry to say. Oh, and look! Reed, look at this—it’s perfect.”

But he could not say the image in her delicate fingers was the epitome of fineness, for he had the real thing in his own hold.

“You’re pleased, then?” With his hands on her hips, Reed looked over her shoulder, hope pulling his lips to a tight lilt, and fondness leaving a little gleam in his eye.

“Every moment I’ve been in Edgewater,” Margaret promised, reaching back to touch his cheek once more.

have you started hiking due to the pandemic?

let’s talk about hiking etiquette...

I’d like to preface this by saying that I have been a naturalist for about 30 years. I have been a birdwatcher and native wildlife photographer for about 20 years. I volunteer with a number of CA based organizations. I photograph and educate people on local wildlife in the Southern California area.

That being said (all the Boogaras take a drink), in light of the recent pandemic, droves of people who ordinarily don't set foot in the wilderness (and probably shouldn’t) are now flocking to hiking trails to get some fresh air. Sans masks, of course. Because everyone knows that germs only live in urban areas.

And I have observed a number of behaviors among these people over the past 6 months. There’s not a whole lot I can do about it. I guess I am hoping that someone will read my words and pass them on and maybe someone else will glean something from it.

1. Do not feed the wildlife. 

Outside of using bait to catch a fish or hanging bird feeders on your patio, there is no reason for you to be feeding wild animals. In fact, there are even limits to how much you should be feeding birds. 

This rule does not exist to annoy you, or to ruin your fun plans, or to violate your personal freedom. It is a very important rule. I have seen local wildlife populations fluctuate enough to know what happens when wild animals are fed. They develop an expectation. They become aggressive. There’s overpopulation and, eventually, disease. Not just disease for you, but disease that can be transmitted to humans and other animals.

Don't feed the animals. Don't give bread or processed food to the ducks (because it's actually terrible for them). Don't feed the squirrels. Don't feed the deer, raccoons, rabbits or bears. If they dig through your trash, that’s on them. But don’t serve it up for them on a silver platter.

Today, I actually had a man tell me that since squirrels have never been aggressive towards him, he does not believe that feeding them is a problem. And besides, he's an animal person. Animals like him! I wish I had it on video, because he was standing right next to a sign that said do not feed the squirrels. 

Where I live, feeding the wildlife is a finable offense. Unfortunately, people rarely get caught doing it.

2. Cyclists, yield.

Earlier this year, I actually watched a middle aged man throw a tantrum because he had to swerve very slightly to avoid hitting me. I had my tripod set up on a paved jogging/bike trail. The trail is easily 9 feet wide. It was broad daylight and he could see me from 100 feet away. I wish I had THAT on video too.

Cyclists, please make absolutely sure that the trail is approved for bike traffic before you use it. And even if a trail is approved for bikes, that doesn’t make it safe for bikes. Conditions on a trail can change, seasonally. Sometimes there is a lot of vegetation. If a hiker has to step off the trail and into a potential rattlesnake area, just so that you can pass, it is not safe for you to use at that time. A trail is not safe for you to use if your using it might endanger hikers.

Hikers and pedestrians have the right-of-way. Always. Without exception. It’s actually the law. Do not ring your bell or yell “on your left!” as you are barrelling down the hill directly at us, and expect us to dive out of the way. 

I understand that cyclists want to be able to “enjoy” nature too. But if your enjoyment of something results in ruining it for someone else, you might need to reassess.

3. If you want to listen to music while hiking, wear earbuds. 

Please. I don’t care if it’s Bach. I don’t care if it’s Tom Hiddleston, reading my grocery list. Other people don’t go hiking to listen to your music. Why? Because it’s yours. You’re not in your car or in your room at home. Other people can hear it. It’s almost like you are but a single individual in a world full of other living things that have needs and desires entirely separate from yours.

I personally come out into wilderness to listen to wilderness sounds. Why? Because the sounds help me know where things are, so that I can take more pretty pictures. If I can't hear the wildlife because of your music, that's a problem.

It’s really easy, in 2020, to listen to music with earbuds. Countless devices are pocket sized. There is no excuse.

4. Dog owners, leash your dogs. 

First of all, you should always check first to make sure your dog is even allowed on a trail before using it. If I had a dollar for every dog I’d seen on a trail that said “no dogs” I could probably buy my own private trail somewhere. If a trail isn’t marked safe for dogs, do not bring them.

If you are hiking in a wilderness area with your dog, it must be on a leash. I don't care how nice or cute or old your dog is. You have no idea how it will react when confronted with any number of things that it might encounter out in the wilderness. Not to mention that some hikers have allergies to dogs, or anxiety, or might just startle easily when your pet comes running at them and tries to jump on them.

I can’t even count all the times I’ve been lining up a shot of some wild animal, only to have it frightened away by a dog...doing what dogs do. It’s totally reasonable for a dog to want to chase a rabbit or a bird. It’s a dog. Which is why dogs have owners, and why there are leash laws.

5. Dog owners, pick up after your dogs.

Pick up your dog’s poop. Do not leave it for other people to step in. Just because you are out in nature does not mean you don’t have to pick it up. Coyote poop is nature. Dog poop is not. I can easily tell the difference between the two. 

Do not put your dog’s poop in a bag, tell yourself that you’ll come back for it, and leave it there forever. I frequent the same trails often enough to recognize a bag and know how many days it’s been sitting there. You’re not fooling anyone. And don’t assume whoever “maintains” the trail will pick the poop bag up for you. Many trails are maintained irregularly by volunteers. And they should not have to pick up your dog’s poop.

6. Do not fuck with the animals.

Don’t interfere with any animal in any way that might alter its sleep cycle, its ability to eat, its likelihood of being eaten, its ability to mate, its access to shelter etc. Don’t harass animals. 

A few months ago, I had to stop a guy from throwing a stick at a rattlesnake that was blocking the trail. Snakes do not care about people. They want nothing to do with us. Give them wide berth. Do not harass them. You have no idea how they will react or what they will do to protect themselves.

A good start would be educating yourself on what animals are native to your area BEFORE going out into the wilderness. But that’s a lecture for another time.

7. Parents, be parents.

A wilderness area is not the same as a public playground. For one thing, it is far more dangerous. Thus, it is not a place where you can just let your kids run free and not bother to supervise them.

If you take your kids hiking, you are absolutely responsible for their behavior and their safety. When I see a kid screaming, throwing rocks, running off trail and chasing animals, I always look to see how their parents (assuming they are even nearby) are reacting to their behavior. Children are children. They are going to do these things. It is the parent’s job to say “no, that is not appropriate” and then to explain why it is not appropriate. Model appropriate behavior.

Parents with kids...while hiking, stay together. If your kid is out of your line of vision, they are too far away from you. Stay on the trail. More experienced hikers can scramble up boulders and down inclines. Your child probably shouldn’t. Do not throw rocks or sticks, or use sticks to hit anything. Do not throw things into water. Do not rip branches off of trees or move large stones. You might be interfering with an animal’s habitat.

Bonus complaint:  

If you go out into the wilderness to have alone time with your significant other, to film yourself doing intimate things, or to shoot portraits of any kind, assume that it’s possible you will be interrupted at some point. You are still in a public place. You didn’t pay to rent that area. You do not have a guarantee of privacy.

You may have noticed that all of these have something in common. 

Just like the refusal to wear a mask, these behaviors all demonstrate a failure to evolve beyond egocentricity. That means, they demonstrate a complete lack of awareness that one’s actions affect other people, and that we aren’t simply entitled to something because we want it.

Model empathy for your children. Teach them about ecosystems. Teach them that the world is made of up of living things that are all connected in some way. Teach them basic science. Lots and lots of science. Educate them on their local wildlife. Know what is dangerous and why. Familiarize yourself with laws that are relevant to you. Be teachable and open to input from more knowledgable or experienced parties.

rhosyn knows to keep on a brave face. it’s the only thing she’s known how to do for years, the only thing she’s had to do for years.

a bright smile at a wedding that wasn’t her’s. tentative, fake out kisses with a man she didn’t want to be her’s, a laugh on their lips instead of saliva. putting on a performance for those in the court, in the kingdom. giving them hope in the form of their hero becoming their queen. the grey wardens were still alive at the end of the blight. she wore the armor proudly, navy blue and the shine never really wearing off. the gowns come later, shades of pink she didn’t even know existed, a corset holding her neatly in the dainty little things. and yet, even with her lung capacity greatly reduced, she still smiles.

the policies confused her sometimes. sometimes neither monarch would understand but she put on a face that was one of regality instead of teenage loss. she passed on the few etiquette lessons she’d taken onto her now husband. they’d visit cities hit hard by the blight. little children without parents, wartorn families without children, mothers or fathers. she was expected to say hello, wave and look nice for the paintings. none expected her to stay and help in her trousers.

the balls were fun at the very least, her king spinning her around in the ballroom -- no air of tension, nothing romantic about it. they were two friends, genuinely enjoying each other’s company and the music that rose from the band. sometimes she’d listen in to conversation around, but she was more focused on who could keep up -- and who’d stumble and step on a toe first. then leliana would visit once everything died down, dressed casually but a grin on her face when she eventually saw her one and only love again, slipping through the door in the early evening and slipping back out again in the wee hours of the morning.

she believes, this is where she was meant to be. this is what she was always going to live up to. the crown rests gently in her fire red hair, golden and shimmering as the portrait is received. they glance at each other, wide grins on their faces. maybe this is what they fought for. and what they won, in the end.

but then, the years start to pass. one year becomes two. two becomes four. the crown grows heavier on her head as the pregnancy of a tense nation begins to grow. mages, templars, conspirators against her and alistair’s lives after anora’s claim to the throne was erased. her brave face is accompanied by a layer of makeup to cover the scars, lips impossibly red as she weaves in and out of social circles. spying, always listening. blackmail only a letter away to keep people from attempting a coup of her rule. they’ve decided so quickly their perfect queen is not all she seems. that the chantry is not her one true love -- and that she’s decided mages are people, just as anyone else in the court is. that concerns people.

and yet, she still smiles. she does not joke, she does not offer these same grins to the servants. a cold smirk, if that. every time the control feels like it is slipping from her grasp, she yanks harder on it. then she feels safe once again, until it inevitably falls once more.

alistair worries for her as she begins a slipping regime. it’s evident in his hesitant touches, the warmth he pours into every gaze, and she makes it worse by jumping. the trust had once been there, at one time she would’ve let him hug her as if they were siblings, but her paranoia is fraying the few ties she still has left. it’s been five years, rumors are beginning to circle that she’s infertile. that there will be no heir to speak of.

it takes a toll on her.

leliana’s visits are far and few in between those days. she begins to leave her bedroom door closed and locked, no sign of the bard following, knives hidden where she knows they are. she fends off one attempt in those four years, blood coloring the rug that had been imported from orlais when the body hits the floor. she shudders as the memories come rushing back from that fateful night in highever. blood soaking into her small clothes as she opens the door to call for guards. screams that aren’t there. a cry for help that lodges itself in her throat.

she does not accept alistair’s offer to stay with him in the following nights. she understands his intentions. she believes she trusts him. she thinks. things are so fuzzy these days. all she knows is that she needs to do something, needs to do anything. that one noble is cheating on another, that another is embezzling funds from a chantry. what support she could get if she plays her cards right, that’s all that matters to her. she discovers who sent the assassin. it does not matter that he is worried, she can fend this off herself.

everything, she can do herself. she does not need his assisstance, for she is not helpless.

her fist comes down hard and fast. the estate is liquidated, they are stripped of their position, effective of that morning. he seems surprised she even knew it was him. she retorts that rhosyn cousland is not a fool, and no one would treat her like one either. he spits on her name, and she spits back. fearful eyes are turned downward once the man is taken out in chains, no one looks at her directly.

ice feels like it encases her. she feels more and more alone as her wife’s letters stop being as frequent. alistair is reaching, reaching for the young and bubbly woman he’d married as she runs further and further away from the throne. replaced by someone else, someone who didn’t care who lived or who died as long as it kept the fragile peace fereldan was in.

a storm whirls inside of her, torrents of rain when she can finally be alone. heart pounding as she cries and cries and cries where is the old me? where is the one who would’ve relished the feeling of someone’s arms around her? please, please, maker give her back to me. this isn’t me, i want her back. please, please. please, i beg of you.

then kirkwall. kirkwall had always been a mess, she’d heard, but the explosion of a chantry, the murder of grand cleric by a dissenting apostate? one that she’d conscripted into the grey wardens years prior? her position is questioned by her advisors, was it worth supporting people who were capable of that? she isn’t completely sure. but she doesn’t want to say otherwise. not to seem weak now, when people were already in an uproar in the court. she would have to see what the champion and now viscountess’ opinion of the events were, if she heard from the free marches.

the music continues to play. loud and fast and more chaotic as she focuses on the spiraling conversation of someone who disapproves of her. someone who mentions they have plans for her. another assassin then. she would remain prepared tonight, one of her sharper blades by her bed. she nearly catches the name before alistair spins her away, dress catching on her shoe. she’s frustrated, pressing her lips into a thin line. his concern etches into her soul, a brotherly worry for someone he’d watched fall apart for years. she doesn’t meet his eyes, the honey gold-brown eyes that would betray her true feelings to him.

she cracks, a fracture running along her stability. barely there, but enough to give her pause. she needs a drink, she pulls away into the crowd. words comfort her, cushioning her retreat. what did alistair know? she was pulling strings, and they were all the right ones. what mattered if she felt a little jaded sometimes?

they were still alive. most of that, unapologetically was because of her. because she managed to convince him to make the hard decisions.

she still wanted peace. even though it was more common she would choose a less savory way of reaching her goal.

that she’s afraid. afraid of losing control again. afraid of losing the safety of having a say in everything that occurs in her country, in her life. if she no longer has it, what happens? will people die again? will it be her fault?

she doesn’t want to think about seeing alistair, dead in the same position as the dozens of bodies she’d seen in highever all those years ago. she won’t let it. that is why she does this, if not to preserve her own life, then his.

then the song. the careful melody that never stops playing just inside her skull. she doesn’t know what it is at first. it’s annoying, nothing that’s played or said over it takes it away completely, like the ringing in her ears after a loud battle. except it isn’t, and she eventually cracks.

her blood runs cold when she discovers that it’s a faint calling. pulling her. the connection that she could never sever. alistair hears it, she does. they’re fearful, she’s fearful. this, she can not blackmail into quitting. this, she can not stab a blade or shoot an arrow through it’s heart. it is marching, marching, marching along with the beat of her heart.

she decides that her control will not end with this. that she has come this far, survived a massacre. that this could not be the end of her. that she would not submit to such a thing. determined, she packs her bags one afternoon. pulling on armor she didn’t think she’d don again. it’s fits snugly, tighter than she remembers. but a sense of familiarity floods her. pulling the heavy crown off her head is a relief, a loss of the pain of ruling leaves her for a moment before rushing back and receding again. red hair falls to her shoulders in the mirror, for a moment it shows the blue eyes shining like sapphires instead of icicles, soft, warm, inviting. kind.

happy.

then alistair is there in the doorway, her trusty dog by his side cocking his head as he trots inside. her illusion breaks as she sets her face. confused, terrified. why the armor, why is she leaving so suddenly? rhosyn, you didn’t even tell me.

she can not let their lives fall apart because of some stupid calling. the notes are playing louder as the blood rushes in her ears, throbbing on the sides of her head. he asks her quietly if she thinks she can really find a solution as she paces around the room (where is her bloody helmet? what had she done with it last?)  -- something people for centuries have simply accepted. she doesn’t know. maybe. but if there is one, she will. she has to.

he asks her if this is worth it -- leaving fereldan right after the mage rebellions have begun attempts to form properly. that sends a stake through her chest, leaving fereldan proper. her mabari whines at her side, nudging her knee as she finally looks into his eyes. golden brown, small wrinkles around the corners. caring, soft. worried about her, and finally not taking no as answer when he holds her hand in his firmly when she turns to pull away.

there is no anger. there is only a faint sadness. he knows he can’t turn her off this path, not now. so he won’t try.

she opens her mouth to start again, if only i had the time, i could do this and you and me would not have to worry, alistair, i am doing this for us and-

he hugs her, arms tight around her smaller form. at first she’s stunned. her eyes wide, panicking. no one had touched her in such a manner for some years now. she had expected some pushback, but instead she feels the ice thawing the longer she rests there, tears welling up in her eyes as she leans her head against his chest.

she’s not ready to die. she knows that she still has years but she doesn’t want to die. pretentious, maybe arrogant but she can’t. she can’t. not before she’s made a proper difference.

she was supposed to die in highever. she didn’t.

she was supposed to die in the blight. she didn’t.

if she were to die from a calling, one thing that she couldn’t control, couldn’t opt of, she isn’t sure what she’d do. she feels so out of control, spiralling as things fall apart around her. her own relationships, not having seen fergus in at least a year by now with no correspondance wishing for it. she misses leliana dearly, there has been no raven for sometime now. the politics are becoming too much, mages versus the templars always on everyone’s minds. her support of the arcane earning her more enemies than allies. she could only protect the circle so much before everything went to hell.

that she could not yank back into place. this had been many years coming now. she could not glue her and fergus’ relationship back together. she couldn’t force leliana to respond or to even find the woman anymore. it’d been a long time since a raven had been by properly.

but alistair -- he had always been by her side. even as she tried and tried and tried to distance herself from everyone. he kept gently tugging her back, chipping at the shields she’d set up around her heart.

and so she cries. hugging his form and clutching the back of his shirt, don’t let me go, not now.

rhosyn is good at brave faces. by then they’re an art form. but the hug that lingers when she steps out of the castle that evening, under the cover of darkness and a black cloak, it breaks her masks into shards. her face is free of the caked on makeup, her head is lighter without the crown and she can move nimbly once more without the petticoats and corsets underneath. her bow is dutifully on her back, her dog running after her.

but her brave face is long behind her. she no longer needs it. flames lick her insides again.

Cats and Dogs (kakayama soulmate drabble)

He couldn't say when they started. Honestly, he never paid all that much attention to his arms. Maybe, if his soulmate was less...enthusiastic then he never would have noticed. 

Alas, the universe is not so kind as to simply let him give up on any hope for some sort of meaningful bond. No, instead it decides to throw him a bone. Too late, he tried to convince himself, squash that spark of hope that had lit with the sight of the intricate but uniform roots  being sketched up and down his right arm. Part of him scrambled to force him to shove it out of mind, resign himself to long sleeves and getting dressed with no mirrors, but another part couldn't look away as flowers were added to the pattern. 

He wondered how long they'd been doing this, how long it had taken him to notice in between ANBU death-squad missions and deppressions lastings weeks at a time. He couldn't clearly recall the last time he looked in a mirror. For how long had he missed this?

Finally, with much effort, he ripped his eye away from his arm, forcing himself to move forward.  He had a mission, and could not afford to be distracted. His hope was bottled up and shoved even deeper then most other emotions, too dangerous to be allowed to resurface.  He shook his head, slipped on his ANBU mask, and abandoned all thoughts of roots and flowers and soulmates.

He had a mission.

--

They probably weren't supposed to know about Soulmates. It wasn't information Danzo had given them, so they probably weren't supposed to know. The thought that thy knew anyway filled them with a cocktail of shame and giddiness, But it's not like they could unlearn it. 

They had been on a mission, told to keep a perimeter and take guard position as their ROOT partner went to interrogate whoever Danzo sent them out to. Kinoe knew better then to question it. They leaned against a book stand, picked up a random book to look more at place, and started to actually read it when they had been waiting for hours. Patience was something they was still working on.

'Soulmates For Dummies!" The title proclaimed, catching Kinoe's interest, and it was all down hill from there. They tried not to appear distracted when their partner finished and they went back to ROOT HQ, and probably did well enough because no one questioned them, but they didn't sleep at all that night.

Soulmates. Almost everyone had one. It is someone who's soul matched your own, often with a matching or mirroring chakra signature to  your own. The skin served as a canvas that connected two people, though words could not be shared through it for reasons unknown. It is said that, if done right, knowing, dating, or even just being around your soulmate would make you feel more complete. It was everything Kinoe secretly wanted but knew better then to wish for, because it would interfere with Danzo's plans. Nothing, especially not Kinoe's personal interest, was worth compromising that.

Still, they couldn't help drawing on their arm. They doodled lines and smiles and cute things, but never got a reply form their soulmate. They almost gave up. It was possible that they didn't have a soulmate, or their soulmate was dead. It was possible that they did something to offend their soulmate and now their soulmate hated them; they didn't know enough about the sensibilities of others, mainly tried to mimic behavior. Maybe there was some unspoken Soulmate-drawing etiquette they were breaking, and now their soulmate hated them?

The thought made them feel a little hollow, and they couldn't tell if it was worse to think the other was dead, didn't exist, or just hated them. In the end they kept drawing, clinging to a desperate hope that they'd get a response. It was all they really had. They illustrated things they liked. Mostly plant life in a satisfyingly ordered fashion that plant life so rarely inhibited. 

Sometimes, though, they still drew cute things they saw, things that they hoped would make their soulmate smile or forgive them or respond. Things like that cute animal with claws and eyes that seemed to glow, fur sleek and tail in the air, white whiskers contrasting it's brown face. Things like-

--

"Cat." Kakashi said, deadpanned, in his dark apartment. His pack, huddled around and atop him, all snapped to attention at the word. Kakashi was staring at his arm with what looked like disinterest to most, but his pack could see the anger clearly in the slightest quirk of his eyebrow. "They drew a Cat. On my hand." He sighed, going for exasperated but ending up closer to fond.

Today, by some miracle, he was having one of his very rare almost-good days. He had eaten all three meals, taken a shower, brushed his teeth, even got nearly six hours of sleep last night. He was more then ready for a wonderful night in with the pack, watching his mesmerizing arm illustrate itself and snuggling up with the only constant good in his life.

Tonight was such an almost-good day, in fact, that he had even considered, for maybe the third time in however long it had been since he noticed (he was pretty bad at keeping track of time these days), responding to the doodles with one of his own. He had been about to talk himself out of the thought again, when he finally recognized what his soulmate was drawing. A cat. On his hand. For however long it took to wash off; he didn't know, he had never tried before. 

Bull growled, and Kakashi nodded. This simply could not stand. It was not something Kakashi could just leave be. It demanded action, more then anything else ever had.

Kakashi mumbled an order, an ink-soaked brush was placed in his waiting hand, and Kakashi started on the glorious portrait of a dog that looked almost exactly like a stick-figure Bull eating the realistic rendition of the disgusting feline.

He could feel Pakkun laughing at him, but Bull huffed in approval, so Pakkun could shove his critisism-

'Oh.' Kakashi realized with a start, watching his soulmate go crazy, using his shitty dog as an outline and improving the picture, 'Oh shit. I actually just. Did That.' He groaned, rubbing a hand to his face, smudging the ink.

Pakkun did not stop laughing until Bull tackled him, because Bull was actually loyal to Kakashi. Unlike, say, Shiba, who had stolen the ink well and was now  dabbing pawprints onto Kakashi's skin, or Bisuke, who had grabbed his brush brush with his mouths when Kakashi wasn't looking and was now scribbling up and down his arm like a toddler left with nothing but blank walls and markers.

After thinking on it, he really couldn't find the energy to freak out, or even unsummon his pack so they'd stop. Instead he decided it was a problem for later (or maybe never) as he laid his head on Akino, who had slept through the entire debacle, and fell asleep, ignoring the slight chill of ink as his mischievous and malicious pack took advantage of his exhaustion. Definitely a problem for later.

It doesn't get much better than this ca.1892-95 studio portrait by T. ENAMI showing some of the accouterments of a "Japanese Ancient Warrior" --- as Enami himself titled the image --- No.581 in his old Catalog of 2-D images.. And I must say, what a meek, mild-mannered, milk-toast sort of guy he appears to be. One photo-historian even remarked about old "Samurai Photos" that the subjects appeared to be women posing as men. My own three daughters (all born and raised in Okinawa) tell me that, with only some notable exceptions, Japanese men are the most effeminate men in the world --- an evaluation no different than that offered by Commodore Matthew C. Perry after dealing with the Japanese in 1854. So, what's up with that ? We'll get to it. But first...check out that great Fan he's holding. JAPANESE WAR FAN This Enami studio photo is undoubtedly the best 19th Century image of a Japanese War Fan. ".......Gunsen (軍扇) were folding fans used by the average warriors to cool themselves off. They were made of wood, bronze, brass or a similar metal for the inner spokes, and often used thin iron or other metals for the outer spokes or cover, making them lightweight but strong. Warriors would hang their fans from a variety of places, most typically from the belt or the breastplate, though the latter often impeded the use of a sword or a bow...... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_fan There are other close, classic Meiji-era views of Samurai --- taken by other famous photographers of the day --- that fall into the above class of fine portraiture. However, photographer T. ENAMI appears to have been the only one who gave prominent display to the War Fan. The above glass plate photo with its hand-applied colors is about 115 years old. It is highly possible that this is the same armor T. ENAMI used for his own self-portrait seen here : www.flickr.com/photos/24443965@N08/2383039735/ More about the Armor and the Photograph is mentioned farther below. But first, here's a bit of controversy to keep your history balanced and complete : QUESTION for HETEREOSEXUAL MALES : Can a gay guy kick your ass ? ANSWER : You're damn right ! Especially when he's a SAMURAI ! THE GAY LIFE in OLD JAPAN These days, when we talk about or visualize the Glorious Samurai, our mention of them is usually devoid of something important. The world's social and religious aversion to homosexuality has worked to separate and sweep under the rug this once-understood and accepted facet of the Samurai. In its place, we are left with a group of men who have been "cleansed and sanctified" in the minds of Westerners who have been raised in a nominally monotheistic religious culture, giving us a conservative republican Samurai Warrior with Western, Judeo-Christian family values, living with a so-called "honorable" code of ethics that makes for the stuff of macho dreams found in testosterone-fueled Hollywood movies. Time to set the record straight : CONSERVATIVE STATEMENT from the WEB : skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/13853/was-homosexual... Samurai --- Virile, Strong, Warriors among Men, and Fighters after the Spirit of Bushido --- The Last Samurai of Hollywood fiction --- ALSO CARRIED THE BANNER OF HOMOSEXUAL LOVE INTO BATTLE WITH THEM, AND PRACTICED HOMOSEXUAL LOVE AS AN HONORED AND TRADITIONAL WAY OF LIFE. Therefore, if you are a fan of "all things Samurai", you better not be anti-homosexual, and you better not be a GAY BASHER. The real Samurai held GAY LOVE in high esteem, and encouraged it. Gay love and relationships were considered beneficial for the youth, teaching him virtue, honesty and the appreciation of beauty. WIKIPEDIA ARTICLES on the WEB, CULLED FROM HISTORICAL SOURCES : "........Shudō is the Japanese tradition of age-structured homosexuality prevalent in samurai society from the medieval period until the end of the 19th century. The word is an abbreviation of wakashudō (若衆道), "the way of the young" or more precisely, "the way of young (若 waka) men (衆 sh��)". The "dō" (道) is related to the Chinese word tao, considered to be a structured discipline and body of knowledge, as well as a path to awakening. The older partner in the relationship was known as the nenja (念者), and the younger as the wakashū (若衆). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shudo PEDERASTY or BUST !!! The practice was held in high esteem, and was encouraged, especially within the samurai class. Their homosexual lifestyle was considered beneficial for the youth, teaching him virtue, honesty and the appreciation of beauty. Its value was contrasted with the love of women, which was blamed for feminizing men. With the rise in power and influence of the merchant class, aspects of the practice of shudo were adopted by the middle classes, and homoerotic expression in Japan began to be more closely associated with traveling kabuki actors known as tobiko ( 飛子) , "fly boys," who moonlighted as prostitutes......." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty MILITARY SAME SEX LOVE ".......From religious circles, same-sex love spread to the warrior (samurai) class, where it was customary for a boy in the wakashū age category to undergo training in the martial arts by apprenticing to a more experienced adult man. The man was permitted, if the boy agreed, to take the boy as his lover until he came of age; this relationship, often formalized in a "brotherhood contract", was expected to be exclusive, with both partners swearing to take no other (male) lovers. This practice, along with clerical pederasty, developed into the codified system of age-structured homosexuality known as shudō, abbreviated from wakashūdo, the "way (do) of wakashū". The older partner, in the role of nenja, would teach the wakashū martial skills, warrior etiquette, and the samurai code of honor, while his desire to be a good role model for his wakashū would lead him to behave more honorably himself; thus a shudō relationship was considered to have a "mutually ennobling effect". In addition, both parties were expected to be loyal unto death, and to assist the other both in feudal duties and in honor-driven obligations such as duels and vendettas. Although sex between the couple was expected to end when the boy came of age, the relationship would, ideally, develop into a life-long bond of friendship. At the same time, sexual activity with women was not barred (for either party), and once the boy came of age, both were free to seek other wakashū lovers. Like later Edo same-sex practices, samurai shudō was strictly role-defined; the nenja was seen as the active, desiring, penetrative partner, while the younger, sexually receptive wakashū was considered to submit to the nenja's attentions out of love, loyalty, and affection, rather than sexual desire. Among the samurai class, adult men were (by definition) not permitted to take the wakashū role; only preadult boys (or, later, lower-class men) were considered legitimate targets of homosexual desire. In some cases, shudō relationships arose between boys of similar ages, but the parties were still divided into nenja and wakashū roles......" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_Japan YES, THE SAMURAI COULD, AND DID MARRY --- In spite of the fact that PEDERASTY WAS THE RULE when the men were doing their soldering and war-mongering, they did marry women under carefully observed social rules. However, this was not for mutual love and family relationships as Westerners would normally define marriage between a male and female. For the Samurai, sexual relations with a woman was more along the lines of a "necessary evil" to procreate for the purpose of making more little Samurai to keep things going. WHY THE ANACHRONISTIC USE THE WORD "GAY" IN MY SAMURAI CAPTIONS ? Some will call these guys "BI-SEXUAL", but for the sake of this caption, I'm sticking to "GAY" --- a 20th Century transformation of the word that used to mean PARTY-TIME HAPPY --- an in "The Gay '90s" --- but is now used for men who have a sexual preference for other males. I am retroactively applying the modern "Gay" tag (in a performance sort of way) to liven up the discussion. If the Samurai were alive today, and "doing their thing", we would all be calling them "The Gay Military of Japan". Actually, it is almost as ridiculous as some goofy Westerners saying "....the RAINBOW symbolizes the LGBT community....", thus causing conservative Christians to scramble in an effort to remove all Biblical Rainbows from pictures of Noah's Ark. Any other appeal to "historical and cultural social context" to say these men were not homosexual (or that "Gay"and "Homosexual" are two different things) --- in spite of the Samurai's conditioned sexual preference for male intercourse --- is just a lame misdirect by modern-day Samurai lovers who are chagrined by the fact that their "warrior heroes" preferred the joy of porking other men instead of porking their wives. I say "pork", because in old Japan, sexual relations between men and women were not anything close to what we call "making love". So, even while "makin' babies" under the "stuff we don't really want to do" rule, the Samurai continued to hold the sexual love and bonding with males as the preferred and highest highest love, and the "necessary evils" of being "joined to a woman" as an obligatorily social headache. As we all know, there are plenty of Gay men living in many countries of the world today who, for various social reasons (including the threat of death), emotionally and sexually live in the same situation --- loving men, but setting up house with women --- some resolving the emotional predicament better than others. ****************************************** THE ARMOR and THE PHOTOGRAPH The man in the photo is not a Samurai --- at least not when this photo was taken. The Samurai were banned in the 1870s, and did not exist as a functioning social entity --- militarily, politically, or personally --- at the time Enami took this photo in his Yakohama studio in the 1890s. While he might be a male model or Enami's assistant, it is also possible that --- if he is in his 30s or 40s --- he could have been one of the last Samurai, or a Chugen before the ban came into effect, and he is now donning his old Armor and displaying the War Fan simply for this photograph. It is also possible that the model's father was a Samurai, and the armor belongs to his family. Such speculation about the man in the image is simply that --- speculation. There are many on flickr who know more than I do about the various parts and pieces of armor on display. Yet, even though I know basically nothing when it comes to these things, my uneducated eye can still appreciate what looks like a finely made arm guard (Leather and links?) and the contoured hand and knuckle guard seen wrapped around the back of his hand. As already mentioned, the War Fan is impressive --- the dark-red Rising Sun on a black-lacquered bamboo and iron fan. It is rarely seen in photographs, if at all. The skilled melding of function, form and art by patient craftsmen over the centuries is evident in everything from the unseen swords nestled in their sheaths, to the black curved line of the darkened helmet interior that mirrors the arc of the opened fan. As for that charging "lion dog" on top of his helmet, is it actually alive ??? When all else is pin sharp, why would only the golden lion have blurred ? Perhaps there is some Meiji-era magic at work here --- something lost with the passing of the last Samurai...... ******************************************************* ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER : www.t-enami.org/ TECHNICAL PHOTO COMMENTS : Like many of my T. ENAMI posts, this is taken directly from an original glass slide. The slide was placed on a small light box (5,000K), copied with a hand-held LUMIX camera (done right, no keystoning), cropped in PICASA, and bordered with MS PAINT. The bound slide is 3 1/4 inch square --- originally a French format, but used all over Europe during the Meiji and Taisho eras. The actual image area of the Samurai on the glass is about 2 inches by 2 1/2 inches, and colored by hand in Enami's studio by artists using magnifying glasses and fine brushes --- some as thin as a single hair. If you look at my other T. ENAMI SLIDE sets, you will notice that a majority of them have painted back drops. However, some of his earlier portrait work was done against a white back drop --- including full studio groups. The above background appears WHITE because Enami's slides are made with a silver-gelatin emulsion on glass, which gives pure whites in the highlights --- of course, this background on the slide is not white; it is clear glass. The "white" is actually the surface of my light box seen through the clear glass --- just as "white" on a movie screen is really the light from a white projector lamp shining through the clear portions of the movie film. However, when Enami printed his earlier portraits on paper, the emulsion was made from albumen (egg whites). Albumen prints have a tendency to yellow over time depending on how ell they were processed, or if they are subjected to less than ideal conditions over time. All things considered, the background of the above Samurai image is the "whitest" I have seen so far, and to be honest, part of me would have preferred some kind of patterned or natural background to the white emptiness. On the other hand, it is a slide, and it would have been "seen on black" (as we say here on flickr) in a room darkened for the purpose. I imagine that when this portrait appeared on the screen, it had an instant impact on the audience gathered to see the slides. Most slides of Japan in any show would have been filled to the frame with various objects, color, and shadow. Therefore, in a darkened room or hall, the sudden flood of white light coming from around this Samurai must have caught the attention of any on the verge of sleep or boredom. ! Certainly, this is an interesting image on many levels. For other examples of Enami's earlier studio work using a blank back drop under various intensities of sky light (consider both weather and processing that would result in various shades of "white to gray") compare all of the images on this page : www.flickr.com/search/?w=24443965@N08&q= In any case, a photo on glass will always be much hardier than a print on paper, helped along by a piece of cover glass that adds further protection to the image. Such is the above, still looking nice after over 110 years or so. All of my posted ENAMI sets are here : www.flickr.com/photos/24443965@N08/collections/7215761388... For more on Enami himself see : www.t-enami.com/ *************************************** PS. Last post for a few days. I've got a sore forearm that flickr member "numonous" says might be an over-used trigger finger on the mouse. Another flickr poster, "filippadevries" will probably beat me to death with a wet soba noodle if I don't go see a doctor about it ! ;-) So, I'll give it a rest for a few days. See you next week..... * * * RANDOM SOBA : www.flickriver.com/photos/24443965@N08/random/Tried this Pin?Add a photo to show how it went

yoongi x reader // prince!yoongi // 11.3k words

(don’t read ahead if you hate unfinished fics!)

summary: a mere pawn in a cruel political game, that’s what you are. as a gifted concubine to an exiled prince, you don’t think either of you will last long in this game of thrones. fate however, has other plans.

“Give me time,” Yoongi begs, cradling your face in his palm. “I just need you to trust me Y/N, please.”

Life as a duke's daughter is grandeur, splendid. Unless of course you're the daughter to the duke of a county that's more often forgotten than talked about. Though you think that’s not really the reason for your less than wonderful life. It probably had more so to do with the fact that not only are you 8th in line, but you are merely an illegitimate child, only half a noble. Illegitimate in the sense that your mother was no longer in the service of the duke as punishment for her crimes. It's perhaps why you find yourself sitting in a carriage, being sent somewhere south.

Your father had presented you as a gift to the emperor, an addition to his harem perhaps but you would find out that you weren't even worthy of that. Your father had meant to gain the emperor's favour in exchange for you. Honestly, a small price to pay, in fact not a price at all in his opinion. Sending you away meant he had one less mouth to feed and obviously, that made the choice easy. He got a small upgrade from trading you in, honestly, it’s more than he thought you were worth because the emperor had expanded your family’s territory and now your father’s county is twice the size it previously was. He's long since forgotten about your existence, in fact you're quite sure he forgot about you the moment he put you into the carriage that was bound for the capital.

Your stay in the capital is short. You're only there two weeks or so but just like the coachman had told you while you were on the road, living in the grand palace is a dream. Of course, you only got to stay in one of the smaller palaces within the main grounds, but it was better than being locked up in that room your family had made you stay in. The clothes they gave you were soft and sleek, the baths you got to take were warm, the food you ate was never stale and the bed you slept in was surely an upgrade from the straw mattress you used to own. That dream of a life was short lived however because with no warning, you’re whisked away into a carriage again, sent off to another county. The servant tasked with accompanying you tells you that you're being given away to one of the princes as a concubine. It was like everyone was playing a game of hot potato with you and you wondered how long it would take before the prince would hand you off to perhaps some lowly duke.

On the road, you learn that you would soon be in the service of Prince Yoongi, who like you is an illegitimate child. A child born of an unrecognized concubine, a child who's resented by the queen, thus his exile from the grand palace. You wonder if he would show you pity, the two of you suffer the same plight after all.

"He will not," The servant laughs. "My lady, surely you must know that the act of someone like you being sent to the prince is meant to spite him."

"What? H-how so?"

"You are being sent there by the queen's request. It is a silent way to tell the prince that the grand palace thinks that he is not even worthy of a lady of a... better standing," He mumbles before he licks his lips nervously. "I hope you take no offense to my statement, my lady. You requested for me to be honest."

"No, no. I'm not offended in the slightest," You smile. "At least now I know what I am being thrown into."

You wonder if perhaps you should have tried harder to make a better impression at the grand palace. Maybe then you wouldn't be used as some pawn in a political game you did not wish to play. Still, you think you'd be able to get out of all of this unscathed. After all, you've had much practice in being easy to forget. From what you've heard, the prince's palace was no simple hut, it was a magnificent structure sat overlooking a lake with intimate carvings etched onto its pillars and art painstakingly painted along the beams and columns. With a place so large, with so many servants and lords bustling in and out, you think with time, you surely would slip from the prince's mind.

//

When you arrived, there was no grand welcome. In fact, the prince didn't even greet you. Apparently, he was away attending to diplomatic matters in some other county. You were in some way thankful for that. Maybe when he gets back, he'll forget you were even sent to him in the first place.

Back in the grand palace, the other concubines and attendants had given you a crash course on the royal family, because when you told them you knew absolutely nothing about the family apart from their names and faces, they all but gasped, horrified at your disinterest in your country’s leader. You meant to tell them that wasn’t the case. Truthfully, it was because you never received political or etiquette lessons like your other sisters did. All that you know about the royal family, you learnt or more so rather, deduced yourself. You merely saw their faces when you were allowed a rare trip to town, the royal family portrait sitting on the walls of almost every establishment.

The concubines had told you that Prince Yoongi was the black sheep of the family, sent away to a southern county when he was just 12. His mother had died only 2 years prior to that. They say she went to sleep and just never woke up, but the word on the street is that she was poisoned. Yoongi is said to be a bitter human being and with his luck, why wouldn't he be? They say if there was one prince they never want to meet, it would be him. You wondered why. Sure he looked... unfriendly in portraits, but so did everyone. Unfriendly? He was more than just unfriendly, they scoffed. They said he had a sinister air to him. He's cruel and unfair, ruthless and evil, earning himself the title of the Dark Prince. You laughed at the generic title, but it's a thing apparently. Giving people nicknames that is. It's a fact you'll come to know soon when you earn your very own one. One that’s much less… kind.

For someone nicknamed the Dark Prince, his palace surely did not reflect it. Sunlight gleamed through the hallways, life was teeming in the gardens and the servants though apprehensive, were friendly enough. Like in the grand palace, you were treated well here. It was odd. With all that you were told, you had expected to be confined to some dungeon-like wing of the palace, but you were given the freedom to roam. They gave you a free tour of the palace and the surrounding town to boot.

Though you had grown up in the North, you must say that you much preferred the weather here in the South. You liked the long flowy robes you were allowed to wear instead of the heavy fur lined outfits that you used to don. You liked the fact that the landscape didn't look barren half the time but most of all, you liked that food was not scarce, harvest simply bountiful with the amount of sunshine the land got.

To be fair, you did not see much of the North. You were confined to your room most of the time, your view only of that of what was within the walls of the estate. Maybe what you liked most about the South was the freedom. Back home, even your own estate was a mystery to you, you only had the chance to walk around in the dark night when you sneaked past the sleeping guards outside your door. Here, you walked through the halls freely, already knowing every corner and room of the palace in just a week. Of course certain places were off limits, but you had no interest in them. You spent most of your time in the palace's gardens anyway, walking through the hedge maze, picking a stray flower or two when you saunter past the flower beds and down to the edge of the lake.

//

In just two weeks, you had befriended basically everyone. Maids, servants, chefs, gardeners, stablemen, you knew them all. You were a curious soul, asking question after question, otherwise often offering your help to them. In fact you would insist on helping with chores because when you ask, they often tell you it's no job for a lady. Maybe you should've told them that this was your first time you got to do... well, anything at all. You're rather persuasive and so they relent. They let you help with the bread-making, the horse caring and the weed pulling. You're a very odd lady, they tell you but you had a feeling that they were warming up to you regardless.

By week three, you were on first name basis with the store owners in town. You took care to replace your silk robes for cotton garments whenever you left the palace. The servants and guards had pleaded with you to let them escort you to town but... you much prefer doing things on your own. Your weeks of exploring the palace grounds meant you knew when the guards would switch positions, therefore you knew just the right time to scale past wall and into the forest that surrounds the palace. Aside from the magnificent gardens within the palace walls, you loved your short little walks through the forest. You enjoyed the rustling of the leaves, the chirps of the birds, the low hum of the insects. They were all sounds that reminded how far away from home you were, how far away you were from your previous life and how free you are here.

The town always seemed so full of life. There were people on the streets, chatting, eating, drinking. There were all sorts of things for sale. Fruits and vegetables you had never seen before, noodles and meat cooked in ways you never knew existed. Your face would light up every time you took a stroll through the busy market. You could never buy anything, no. You had absolutely nothing to your name, not a single coin. Regardless, you always took the time to make conversation with the locals, learning more about the region with each time. They jest with you, making fun of your Northern accent but they were kind people, always offering you some food before you go.

For a town ruled by someone rumoured to be the most cruel prince, they seemed to be rather happy people. It was something that really bothered you. Was it because he was away? Was this all temporary celebration before his return? It seemed unlikely. Hand-painted portraits or drawings of him were hung in almost every store and it's only by week 4 that you ask the question that's been burning at the back of your mind since your arrival.

"So, Prince Yoongi... he... does he ever come around?"

"Sometimes," Mr. Lee, a merchant hums before he slurps at his noodles.

"That's his favourite spot!" The owner of the noodle store shouts, beaming as he points to a table in the corner.

"Oh," You murmur. "That's... interesting."

"How so?"

"Well, don't nobility... not frequent places like this?"

Mr. Lee simply shrugs, a smile on his lips.

"Our prince is different."

And different he is. Everyone you talked to had something nice to say about him. Some were critical of some of his policies but they never spoke about him with contempt or disgust, both of which are the usual emotions tied to those that belong to nobility, be that the royal family or the dukes and earls. You've seen it multiple times now and it really shouldn't shock you anymore but you're always in awe with how the people didn't cower away in fear whenever they saw the royal guards roaming the streets, instead they would step aside to bow at them. To you, it felt like you were in some sort of dystopia. It looked like the people not only respected the prince and by extension those who work for him. Instead, it looked like they loved him.

Love is not an emotion most people have for the royal family. They are known to be unscrupulous people, stealing from the poor through taxes only to line their own pockets as well as those of the noblemen. They claim it is to pay for better infrastructure, to pay for the warriors to help keep them safe and yet, the roads are the same as they always were and when war comes, the noblemen sit back at camp, comfy in their tents while the people drafted for the war are on the front line, putting their lives on the line for a kingdom that could care less about them.

You remember the way your people would sneer at your family in secret, their eyes full of hatred as you and your family paraded down the streets of your county. It always made you shiver. Yet, here it was different. They seem to light up at the chance to speak about the prince, almost as if they've been brainwashed. They all had on the same warm smile, but they all had different stories about his good deeds, his kindness, his willingness to listen to his people. However, it all seemed too good to be true and perhaps that's why when you're called to the entrance to greet the prince upon his return, you trembled in fear as you lowered your head down to bow. Rise, he ordered, voice sounding rather unamused as he walked by all of you lined up in rows. He barely spared you a glance, not even one look before he disappeared somewhere to his quarters. So this was the beloved prince? You scoffed because you knew it was too good to be true. He seemed more like the dark prince you've been told about.

//

Despite it being more than a week since his return to the palace, you have yet to see the prince, let alone meet him. You are told that he has many matters to attend to and again, you are if anything glad that you do not have to meet him. If you could keep this up for say, a few more... years, that would be great. While you were at it, how about till your death... or his, whichever came first. If you never had to meet him at all, now that would really be all you could hope for.

In the first few days of his return, you were cautious around the palace, never venturing far from your room but as days to turn to weeks, you slowly returned to your usual antics. The palace staff have long gotten used to your quirky self. The gardeners would barely bat an eye when you quite literally skipped around the garden. You would often stop midway to help them water the plants, so they had no complaints about your presence. Once you were done with that, you would be off to the kitchen, helping yourself to a steamed bun or two... or maybe five as you stopped to chat with the ladies in there. The head chef claims you're a nuisance but you know that's a lie because one of the maids had informed you that he had asked where you had gone off to when you were busy hiding in your room two weeks ago.

With the prince now back in the castle, it meant that the guards were on patrol thrice as frequently as they used to. That meant your beloved pastime of sneaking out was no longer a possibility. You were starting to grow anxious, bored because no matter how many times you watched the guards rotate, you couldn't find a lull long enough for you to be able to scale past the wall undetected. You needed something new to keep you occupied and when you see the resident artist in the palace painting beautiful scenes on long scrolls, you guess you've found a new hobby.

Mr. Han, the resident palace artist is perhaps hovering somewhere around his seventies but his hands are steady as ever, his brush strokes so precise that you can't help but marvel out loud at how good he is. He does not appreciate your company and has made it known after he had caught you staring one too many times. You still admire him and his work but at a much further distance, behind a pillar as per his request. Eventually, he got fed up and called you over to help him add glue to the pigments so he could paint without doing the set-up. You did so diligently, only daring to move when he allowed it.

It turned out that Mr Han is actually quite the talker because he gave you free history lessons as he painted the chronicles of Yoongi's reign so far. Sure he started his stories halfway through Yoongi’s reign instead of giving you his full backstory but you eventually pluck up enough courage to ask him to start from the beginning. He only sighed and glared at you before doing as you ask. You listened with intent as you mixed the glue in with the pigment, watching as Mr. Han drew effortlessly across the paper, starting with the outlines in black before he filled it in with colour. It was like magic to you and sometimes when he was in a good mood, he would let you add a few strokes to his painting. Honestly, it was just him letting you hold the brush while he forcefully guided your hand but nonetheless, you were honoured. After all, by merely holding a brush, you were committing a crime.

Sometimes during the silent lulls, you read the calligraphy accompanying the paintings. Depending on the piece Mr. Han was working on, it could range from beautiful poetry to just explanatory notes. You loved reading them all the same, often trying to commit them to your memory. With each painting, you see why the people of the county love Yoongi so much. There were stories of him opening up the royal food reserves to the people in times of the drought, stories of him placing sandbags along the banks of the river that ran through the town as heavy rain threatened to flood it and even stories of him celebrating the harvest with his subjects. Basically, it was story after story about how he built the county up from a wasteland to the flourishing state that it is today. Yet, you're still skeptical. You wonder if this was somehow just some propaganda to get the people to like him. Perhaps pretty paintings and beautiful calligraphy is how he brainwashes them. God knows you're only another pretty painting away from believing it.

//

Though you love spending time with Mr. Han, you never forget to stick to your routine. Your days must consist of frolicking in the garden and stealing steamed buns from the kitchen before you sat down with Mr. Han. Though he grumbles about your tardiness, you know he likes it when you bring along a steamed bun for him too. Like any other day, that's what you do. You hand him a steamed bun before you plop yourself down on the chair, ready to mix glue into another pot of pigment. Only this time, Mr. Han places a brush in your hand.

"Bright moonlight before my bed, I suppose there is frost—," Mr. Han pauses as you stare up at him. He simply glares at you before he speaks. "Are you not going to write?" He questions, more so scolds and now the brush trembles in your hand.

"I-I do not know how to write,” You mumble, eyes downcast.

Mr. Han laughs, taking a bite from his steamed bun, chewing slowly before he swallows.

"Bright moonlight before my bed," He repeats, disregarding you. "Write. Now." He demands, as he directs your attention to the paper with only the tilt of his head.

"M-master, I... I cannot write," You murmur, setting down the brush.

"Now that there is actual work to be done, you cannot do it?" He queries, his bun now set aside. "You cannot or will not write? Deliberate your answer carefully."

You swallow, unsure what to say. Was this a test? Surely Mr. Han knows that it is a crime for a lady of your stature to know how to write, read or even paint. Ladies who were not of full nobility were meant to only know how to weave or embroider. Sure, you know how to read and write but that is only through your own effort, through stolen books from your family's library. That too came at an expense because every time you got caught, you earned yourself a few lashes on the back.

You hesitate for a few more seconds before Mr. Han pins you with a stern look, one that demanded an answer.

"I... cannot write?" You answer nervously, as if asking if your answer had been the correct one.

"Then can you read?" Mr. Han asks, as he pulls out a short blade, one that's usually sheathed and tucked to the side of his robe. He's seen you read. Many times. You would mouth the words to yourself, head tilting whenever you saw a character you didn't quite recognize. You eye the blade cautiously as he brings it out into view. He lets it glint in the sunlight, twisting it in his hand. You scoot away further but his other hand pins you in your place.

"Answer the question," He demands, the knife now peculiarly close to your neck. 

Yes or no? You didn't know which to say. Which one guaranteed your safety?

"N-no?"

You could feel the cold metal on your skin now.

"Try again."

"Yes?" You offer, this time hopeful.

"Good answer," He smiles but the blade still sits on your skin. "You must know that I hate liars because liars more often than not, turn out to be hiding something. More often than not, they turn out to be the enemy to this region's crown. Is that what you are?"

"No, I... I have no reason to b-be," You stutter as you feel the knife prick at your skin slightly.

"You were sent here under the Queen's orders and you are not the first puppet she's sent here. There is every reason for me to believe that you are."

"I-I have not spoken to the Queen once! I have not even seen her!" You exclaim, pure unadulterated fear on your face. "I'm— I'm not even quite sure why I'm here at all," You mumble, your voice quivering.

"Then why lie?"

"It's a crime to know how to read and write, m-master,” You stutter. “I'm not really a noble lady," You whisper or more so whimper.

Mr. Han snorts, smiling before he laughs, slowly drawing the blade away from you.

"Is that what the barbarians had imposed on you?" He queries. "Such silly rules."

You didn't know what he meant by barbarians. Had he meant the North exclusively or the royal court? It had been the emperor's decree that non-noblewomen should not be allowed to be educated. Considering that you were born of an unrecognized concubine, you were not exactly nobility. Though you were by name, but in terms of technicalities, you were not.

"Are the rules different here?" You manage to ask, peeking a glance at Mr. Han

"My lady, rest assured that you will not be punished for knowing to write when you are with me," He grins, but his smile soon disappears. "You will however, be punished if you delay this any further. I will only repeat myself one more time and there will be no mistakes, understood?"

You only nod, scrambling to grab the brush again before you dip it in ink. Mr. Han dictates fast and though you wish he would slow down, you barely have the courage to yawn let alone speak. So, you write his poem with shaky hands... not once, no. He makes you write it over and over, until your hands are sore, until the 4-line poem rings in your head long after you've put down the brush. He's still not satisfied with your work by the time the sun sets and, in the end, he writes the poem himself. You wonder why he had gone through all that trouble, why he had made you suffer if he was going to do it on his own in the end?

//

"You've lost your touch," Yoongi remarks, holding up a piece of paper. The characters drawn on it are not in a straight line and the order of the strokes have been completely disregarded.

"Your highness," Mr. Han greets, rising from his seat to bow before he makes himself comfortable again. He eyes the paper in the prince's hand with disgust before he sighs. "That abomination is not mine."

"Then who's might it be?"

"Lady Y/N," He grumbles. "That must've been her 50th try. Can you believe it? I gave her 50 chances and she still produced... that," He shudders, not even wishing to look at the paper again.

Ah, yes... Lady Y/N, the lady his stepmother had gifted to him. You are one of the many ladies that she has sent over the years. She's sent them over with many purposes. To gain intel, to injure, to spread rumours and a host of many other despicable acts. Yoongi wonders how she still has the energy to be so conniving, so cruel.

There had been nothing but silence from the Queen for about a year and Yoongi had thought that she had finally outgrew the silly little mind games that she loved to play but then came a letter informing him of your arrival to his palace and at that he only shook his head. It was meant to be a practical jokes of sorts, a way to make those in the nobility sphere understand just how lowly she thought of him. An illegitimate lady who was 8th in line in her own family... in political talk, it was the equivalent of sending him soggy leftovers.

If anything, Yoongi felt sad for you. You surely hadn't asked to be part of this and yet, you were thrust into all of this against your will. However, Yoongi could be wrong. Your status may be true, but you could still be her little puppet. He wouldn't put it past the Queen to do something like that.

"She's the smartest imbecile I've ever met," Mr. Han hums as if he'd been reading Yoongi's thoughts. "The Queen has surely gotten better at choosing her little rats."

"She hasn't attempted to get my attention though," Yoongi mumbles, noting how he's never actually seen you around at all. If he remembers correctly, the only time he's seen you was when he had returned from his travels. It was rather unusual behaviour for one of the Queen’s puppet to not try to garner his favour.

"Oh because see she's smarter than the other ones that have been sent over before. She has the whole palace staff under her pinky," He sighs, adding the last stroke to his painting. "She's even befriended the townspeople."

"So... you've just let her do all of this while I was away?"

"It's been a little boring around here," He shrugs. "She keeps me on my toes, more so than any of the others have."

"What if she outsmarts you?"

"Oh she won't," He smiles.

"How are you so sure?" Yoongi queries.

"Because I have eyes on her. Always."

"Is that so? So where is she now?"

"Right there," He points to a faraway wall, skirting the ends of the palace grounds and there you are, pumping your fist in the air as you manage to throw a rope over a high sturdy branch. "It took her two weeks while it only took me a day to realize that Namjoon takes longer than most guards to reach his station during the rotation."

"Why doesn't she just ask to be escorted to town?" Yoongi questions as he watches you struggle to climb up the stone wall, feet slipping every so often.

"She doesn't want anyone listening in on her conversations, obviously," He grumbles, shaking his head. How is it that the Prince is so smart yet so dumb?

"She's been asking about you, you know?" Mr. Han continues. "Prodding the townspeople for details about you, asking me about the history of this county. This one has tenacity," He smiles as he watches you from a distance.

"So, this is a game to you, huh?"

"Hasn't it always been?" Mr. Han smirks lazily. "This time, the Queen has finally sent a worthy pawn."

Yoongi waits days, weeks, wondering when it is you'll finally make your move, but if he honestly thought about it, you seem to avoid him like the plague. Mr. Han thinks you're some genius mastermind set out to destroy Yoongi's legacy and if true, you genuinely had some really odd methods in place. Though you've been doing everything in your power to stay hidden from the prince, Yoongi has been getting live updates on your whereabouts for days now. If you're as devious as Mr. Han thinks you to be then why is it that you spend an hour or so of your day doing nothing but talking to the horses in the stable? Why do you tap at the flowers in the garden and skip rocks on the lake instead of scheming and carrying out your master plan? Why do you make steamed buns in the kitchen in your free time with the maids instead of befriending the court people whom he trusts? Things just weren't adding up.

It made Yoongi's head hurt, trying to think of what exactly it was you were planning. Mr. Han tells him it must be an elaborate one, perhaps something like a coup d’état since you were trying to get chummy with everyone that held no social status. It honestly didn't seem that way to the prince. You looked so unassuming, so carefree... almost like it wasn't in your nature to be so sly. Yet, Mr. Han is adamant and so when a royal request comes in asking for Mr. Han to travel to the capital to paint a few royal portraits of the emperor, he's in the carriage before Yoongi could count to ten. He would come back with more details about the Queen's plan, he promises.

//

With Mr. Han away, the palace seems so quiet. You genuinely miss him even if all he does is grumble about how you could never do anything right. You make yourself comfortable at his desk, looking out the window that had the perfect view of the garden. It was much too hot this time of the day to be out there, so you settle for looking at it from the inside. Your fingers tap at the desk, hand itching to move. You know it's wrong and Mr. Han would probably strangle you with his bare hands if he found you here, smoothing out a piece of paper and yet, you do it anyway. You peek behind you, making sure no one is in sight before you grab the brush, dipping it in ink softly.

You've watched Mr. Han paint numerous times now and much to your disappointment, you find that painting isn't as easy as it looks. His lines were soft and sharp while yours heavy and unsightly. Perhaps you should've picked an easier subject to paint but with the garden right in front of you and the great expanse of water looking back at you, how could you have picked anything else? Your eyebrows are furrowed in concentration, hands moving across the paper in long, calculated strokes. You're so focused you sometimes forget to breathe.

"Interesting."

Your hand stops dead in its tracks when you hear that. Your eyes shift from side to side because you didn't know what to do. If it was a guard, maybe you could talk your way out of it, give him some story about how Mr. Han had requested you to paint this piece while he was away. You turn back with a smile on your face, ready to deliver your spiel but your grin quickly disappears when you see the prince smiling back at you.

You turn back to crush the paper in your hand, quickly rising to your feet to bow. You're trembling, eyes screwed shut as you await some form of punishment.

"Rise," He orders and you hesitate for a second before you do. The prince eyes you from head to toe and you shuffle in your spot, hiding your hands behind your back while you kept your eyes trained on the ground.

"Mr. Han will not be happy to find you in here without his permission," He hums as he steps closer to the table, cleaning up the mess you made when you had hastily attempted to greet him.

You drop to your knees, pressing your forehead to the floor before you sit back on your heels, hands sitting meekly in your lap.

"Your highness, please accept my humblest apologies," You murmur, the crumpled paper still in your hands. "I have committed a grave crime and deserve any punishment you see fit."

Yoongi only stares at you, unsure of what to make of the situation. You are almost in tears, lips quivering in fear. You surely were quite the dramatic one.

"Leave the paper and go."

"S-sorry?"

"The paper in your hand," He points. "Leave it."

"Y-yes, Your Highness," You nod, placing the paper in his hand as you rise to your feet.

You stand there dumbly, blinking as you looked at him.

"You're not leaving?"

"O-oh, yes... I-I will be leaving now," You murmur, before tripping over your own feet as you attempt to exit. God, you're embarrassing. "You are a merciful prince and I am forever at your service," You mumble before you bow one last time and scamper out of the room.

Yoongi stands there, staring at the doorway, eyebrows furrowed in confusion before he sighs, turning away to smoothen out the paper in his hand. He nods to himself, as he admires your painting. It was almost as if he was surprised. Your work is not the best but it's definitely good. He loves how detailed the painting is. He loves how you had painted a variety of small different flowers, how you had added tiny waves to the water in the lake, how you had even painted in the gardeners that tended to the hedges. Each time he looked over the painting, there was a new detail to uncover. It's a shame that some of it is smudged now. His eyes skim across the painting one last time, ensuring he's caught every last detail before it settles on the writing in the top hand corner and he tilts his head, trying to make sense of it.

Your characters are large and clunky, most of them missing a stroke or two. For someone Mr. Han believes to be trained by the masters at the grand palace, your skills were surely not up to par. After a few more reads, Yoongi finally manages to decipher some of the characters that you had managed to butcher.

Hell is far from home

Hell is not where I belong

In hell a paradise I have grown

In hell again I am—

Born. He thinks you were about to write the word born before he had so rudely interrupted you. Now he wishes he had waited just a few seconds longer before making his presence known to you.

Paradise. That's what you had titled the poem. Yoongi reads it over and over, as if reading it numerous times could produce answers to the questions swirling in his mind. He assumes the poem is about the palace, but he wonders why you call it hell. As far as he knows, the palace staff have been nothing but nice to you. But if you thought it to be hell initially, then when did you start thinking of it as paradise and why? He sits there staring out open the garden, hoping that some answer would come to him but the fact of the matter is that he barely knew you. He could sit here guessing all day and would get nowhere.

In hell again I am born.

He wonders if that's because after you accomplish what you set out to do here, you would have your phoenix moment. Is that what the Queen had promised you? That you would rise from the ashes, that you would no longer be nothing but the forgotten daughter of your family? You should know that the Queen is a devious little minx. She would do anything to stay ahead. She would lie, cheat, kill. Her promises are nothing but empty. Yoongi should know. He experienced that first hand.

//

Since your run in with the prince, you try your best to remain unseen. You spend your days hidden in your newfound spot, the library. There are many scrolls and books to learn from and though you do not understand most of them, you flip through them if only to pass time. As you read, your fingers paint imaginary scenes on the floor as if to help you picture the stories. You think having spent your time with Mr. Han is both a blessing and a curse. Perhaps if you did not know how to draw, your hands wouldn't long to hold a brush so much.

You do a good job of avoiding a prince, though you think that is mostly because he is busy. He reviews documents and consults with his trusted advisers all throughout the week. You on the other hand continue on with your daily routine, hopping between the kitchen, garden and the library. You wonder if this was what life was like for your sisters. You wonder if this is what they did while you spent your days locked in your room.

It's been a whole two weeks since your last trip to town and you light up when you finally see Namjoon on patrol. See Namjoon was lackadaisical and care-free, which made him a great friend and an even better guard. Of course, by a better guard, you mean only for you because he takes much too long to get to his next post when the guards change positions. You sit silently, waiting for the previous guard to move towards his next post. Once he’s out of sight, you dash to the bushes close to the east wall. Quietly, you fit yourself between the bushes and the wall, crouching down as you crawl to your spot, abandoning your silk robes for your cotton outfit that was underneath. You were keeping time in your head as you pulled the rope that you always kept hidden, from under one of the bushes. Standing up, you took one glance at the branch that stood a feet above the wall before you swung the rope, throwing it upwards. You’ve done this numerous times before and it never took you any more than two tries to get it over the branch and this time would be no different except—

"What are you doing?" You hear someone ask, ever so nonchalantly, as if you weren’t committing a crime at this very second.

By now, you recognise his voice and you waste no time in turning around to bow, not even flinching when the heavy rope that you had thrown comes crashing down onto you.

"Rise," Yoongi orders and you lift your head but still make no attempt to meet his gaze.

"What are you doing, Lady Y/N?"

"I-I'm inspecting the walls, Your Highness."

"Yeah? And how do they look?" He asks.

"Sturdy, Your Highness."

Yoongi simply laughs, nodding as he looks up at the wall.

"So what's this? Your inspection outfit?" He gestures towards you, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"Y-yes, Your Highness."

"Where did you find such clothes in the palace?"

"It belongs to me, Your Highness," You murmur. "These were all I had before I was sent to the grand palace."

Your hands toy with the rope and you stand there, debating what to say as the prince eyes you up and down.

"Get changed," Yoongi hums. "Your belongings have been packed. We will leave when you are ready."

"Y-your Highness?" You look up at him wide-eyed before you jump over the low bush, immediately sinking to your knees as you bowed your head. "This lady has angered the prince and may only offer her apologies. This lady a-asks for his mercy."

This must be about what had happened in the drawing room the other day. You knew you should not have entered the room while Mr. Han was away, let alone attempt to paint anything. The prince was going to send you away now, perhaps even sell you to a brothel. You didn't want that. You couldn’t have that.

“Y-you were looking for me, Your Highness?” Namjoon appears, interrupting the scene, panting heavily before he stands at attention, spear shaking in his hand.

“Yes,” Yoongi huffs, shifting his gaze between Namjoon and then back to you. He chuckles when he sees you with your head still hanging low. “Rise, Lady Y/N.”

You stand up quickly, only lifting your head once to glance over at Namjoon who’s quite visibly trembling.

“The two of you are accompanying me on my visit to the river delta,” Yoongi begins, before he points at you. “You will be documenting what you see on the scrolls, while Namjoon, you will be guarding her. I expect to see the both of you at the entrance in an hour’s time.”

“Noted, Your Highness,” Namjoon bows, before he stands at attention, only daring to move once the prince waves him away. When he finally does, Namjoon scampers off to the guard quarters, racing to pack his belongings for the trip. Meanwhile you stand there, hands tucked behind your back as Yoongi eyes you from head to toe, as if he was trying to discern what exactly it was you were trying to do at this palace.

“I hope that you will change into your regular outfit before we depart. I don’t want my people to think that I’ve been mistreating my—” He hesitates, unsure exactly what you were to him. A gifted concubine, yes, but he wasn’t entirely comfortable with saying that out loud. “—my guest,” He finally hums, completing his sentence. He assumes guest is an appropriate term. After all, like the many ladies the Queen has sent before, they never really do last long at his palace, only ever staying as long as a regular guest would. If anything, in your case, he was hoping to fast track the process. If you had any ill intent, he assumed you would take your chance during this trip. Out on the road, he was exposed, less guarded. If you tried anything remotely suspicious, he could easily have your head off in a second. He had no time to waste, and no interest in playing his stepmother’s games. The faster you were out of his life, the better. Of course, he would milk you for all you were worth first. He needed someone to document his trip to the delta and with Mr. Han away at the royal palace for his portrait duties, you were the next best choice.

//

The carriage you’re riding in is grander than the ones you have previously been in. This one had plush cushions and beautiful carvings etched into the panels. That however, is a sheer reminder of how out of place you felt. This wasn’t normal. Sharing the same carriage as royalty is basically unheard of, but it seems like no one around you seems to share the same thought, none of them batting an eye at the fact that you, someone who is neither essential nor worthy, is a mere hand’s width away from him.

You watch on as Yoongi and his aide, Hoseok, who were both sat across from you, discuss the details of the visit. They plan on visiting the rice farmers and checking on the rice storehouses. They’ve only addressed you once despite being on the road for what must’ve been 3 hours now. All they had told you was that they wanted you to accurately depict the river delta landscape as well as chronicle the scenes from the journey for archival purposes. You had only nodded your head at that.

For most of the trip, you and Namjoon share glances, as if to ask each other why exactly either of you had been chosen to go for this trip. You finally get to ask him the question once the carriages stops for a break to let the horses rest temporarily and drink some water.

“You know, I’m pretty sure we’re here because of you,” Namjoon mumbles as the two of you take refuge from the heat under the shade of a large tree.

“What did I do?” You frown, as you squat down to pluck a few blades of grass.

“I’m pretty sure this is punishment for both you and me. You for always trying to escape the palace to go into town, and me for always letting you do so.”

“Well, maybe you should just be better at your job then. It’s not my fault you’re always late to your post,” You roll your eyes before you throw the grass in your hand towards him.

“I have a small bladder, okay?” He grumbles, dusting out the grass from his hair. “I would be on time if I didn’t have to head to the outhouse every time to do my business, but Gardener Lee will give me a hard time if I decide to pee in his gardens.”

“You heathen,” You gasp. “I can’t believe you would even consider doing your business in the gardens.”

The two of you stay there bickering until Hoseok finally calls for both of you as the coachmen signal that they were ready to keep going. Yoongi watches on as he sees the two of you laugh and grumble at each other until Namjoon notices him staring. At that, the guard elbows your side, causing you to fall silent when you realize just who was watching. Silently, the two of you climb into the carriage, head hung low in embarrassment.

//

They tell you that the river delta is only another hour’s ride away and at this point, you take the time to glance out the window, watching the river meander through the lands. The rice paddy fields come into view not long after, and you watch as the farmers who are shin-deep in water, take the time to bow as they watch the royal carriage pass by. The sight is still odd to you. Even this far away from the palace, the people revere the prince. He surely is beloved by his people, you think to yourself. You wonder if the hate that the people hold for nobility is simply a concept reserved for those in the North.

By the time you reach the small town that services the needs of the farmers and their families, the sun is beginning to set. You are told that the official visit out to the fields will begin tomorrow and that all of you would be staying at the inn in town for the week, simply taking day trips to visit the fields and storehouses in the outskirts. To your surprise, it seems your room in the inn is a shared space with commoners and your bed is merely a space on the floor just long enough for you to sleep in. Perhaps Namjoon was right. Maybe this trip was a form of punishment.

As it draws closer to night time, you find yourself at the teahouse just across the street. Of course, Namjoon comes along. After all, he has been ordered to be at your side at all times possible. You bring along your scrolls and brushes and the guard doesn’t say much as he watches you paint the scenes from today’s travel. You find it suffocating to paint under his intense gaze, but considering that the aide, Hoseok, had given you a gentle reminder earlier that you were to paint every single scene, you waste no time in painting every single detail you remember. That included the way the farmers had bowed, to the tall weeds that grew by the roadside, you spared no detail. Of course you do not forget to paint in a few pieces of the Prince greeting the townspeople and also tending to the horses shortly after the arrival to the town. That too was something that surprised you. He seemed to be rather independent. Not even one servant was brought along on this trip. Which contrasted the way your father had done official visits. He would often bring along at least three for himself.

//

After watching you paint for what must be hours, you hear Namjoon speak for the first time since the two of you sat down.

“Let’s take a break,” He hums, hastily placing away all your scrolls and brushes onto the empty table next to you. He doesn’t even let you finish the piece you were currently working on. “It was interesting the first few times you did it, but now it’s getting old,” He grumbles as he wipes at the table with a rag.

“It’s not like I’m doing this for fun,” You chuckle. “In case you forgot, this is what I am supposed to do.”

“I know, I know,” He groans. “But, I’m sure you’ve done more than enough for today.”

“No, you don’t understand. They’re watching,” You whisper, before you point discreetly to a corner on the upper floor of the teahouse. Most of the upper floor is empty except for two people, and they are none other than Hoseok and Prince Yoongi himself.

“Yes, and so if they’re watching, they can clearly see that you’ve done your job for today.” Namjoon laughs, waving away your concern. From a burlap sack, he removes a wooden board along with two wooden containers. “I’m sure they’ll be fine with you taking a break.”

“Go?” You ask, as your hand moves across the wooden board. It’s been quite a while since you’ve played a game of Go. This game was your favourite. You typically played in the dark of the night, the board illuminated with the lantern that your favourite guard would bring along with him. He had introduced you to the game when you were 6, and ever since then, you had loved it.

The game consisted of a wooden board with a 19x19 grid, and black and white wooden pieces that are often called stones. All one had to do in the game was make sure that their stones surrounded more territory than their opponents. If one of your stones was entirely surrounded by an opponent, they get to capture them, further reducing your score. It was simple in theory, but the game required more thinking than one would assume. You’re practically beaming when Namjoon looks up after finally putting away the burlap sack.

“So I take it you’re good at the game?” He asks, as he gestures for you to choose between the black and white stones. Instinctively you move for the white ones. It’s the one you always played with. Odd, Namjoon thinks. Most would go with black since black always starts first. “Noblewomen like you, aren’t all of you masters of the scholarly arts?”

Qínqíshūhuà. The four scholarly arts were what nobility were meant to master.

Qín referred to knowing how to play the guqin, a beautiful string instrument. Being able to play it was something a nobleperson could do with no hesitation. With just 7 strings, one could play tunes that could entertain or in some cases ease another. The movements of one’s fingers had to be graceful and poised, almost like it was effortless.

Qí was another name for the game of Go. Often times, noblemen would play Go together when they would visit each other’s territory. In some ways, a family’s dignity lied in how well they could play Go. After all, it was a reflection of one’s skills in strategical thinking. Thus, being able to play the game well was essential.

Shū, otherwise known as calligraphy, was an art that allowed the complexities of one’s mind to be expressed and understood by others. Both knowing how to read and write, is a measure of one’s intelligence and was indicative of their ability to carry themselves well in their social circle.

Huà, also known as art, has a special place in the upper echelons of society. A painting is worth a thousand words and could be understood across all lands and social classes. History was told by both calligraphy and art. It was universal. A good artist is one that could in a sense, show the power of how a few calculated strokes could tell a story.

You stay silent, and though it may look like it’s because you’re deliberating Namjoon’s first move, truthfully, you’re just trying to think of a response to his previous question. You? A master of the scholarly arts? That was impossible. It seems like unlike the North, not many here in the South understood your circumstances.

Though you are a noble by name, all your life, you had not been treated like one. The four scholarly arts were forbidden to you. Your status as an illegitimate child meant that your family never wanted you to be able to have a claim to their fortune. If you stayed uneducated, it meant that you could never overthrow any of your siblings. It always seemed like your family was just one step away from selling you off as a slave, and you guess what you were doing now was in a way akin to some form of upper-class slavery.

The only thing that forced anyone around you to treat you with respect here in the South, was the fact that you were a daughter of a duke. Sure, he wasn’t the most powerful one around, but his name still carried some weight. To admit that you are nothing but a throwaway child for the family would simply give everyone else the upper hand. It meant that there would be no repercussions to killing you, in fact, they would be doing your family a favour even. After all, they’ve already collected the boon from ‘gifting’ you away.

Perhaps there and then is when you decide to commit to an act you’re not entirely sure you could pull off. You are a noblewoman, and you had to play the part. The question is how? You didn’t entirely know what it entailed, but you guess you would have to figure it out along the way.

“I wouldn’t say I’m a master at the scholarly arts as per se,” You mumble, finally putting your piece on the board. He places a piece in return almost instantaneously. “Perhaps in hindsight, regularly skipping my lessons was not a bright idea… but I guess we live and learn,” You smile, wondering where exactly your brain had found the words that are currently slipping out of your mouth.

“Definitely shouldn’t have skipped out on your Go lessons,” Namjoon laughs, shaking his head as he watches you put a piece in the most ridiculous place. “This game is going to be over before it has even started.”

Namjoon would live to regret the fact that he had said that sentence. His fists slamming down on the table in disappointment after a long drawn 3-hour long game of Go.

//

“I demand a rematch!” Namjoon whines as the two of you finish up counting. “Come on, I was only 2 points short!”

“A win by a narrow margin is still a win,” You shrug, enjoying how Namjoon looked entirely downtrodden.

“It’s just that move you made in the beginning really threw the game off course,” He grumbles. “Who even does that?”

“Well, me obviously because did I or did I not ultimately win with that move?”

“You did, but that’s just not normal,” He frowns, fingers fiddling with the small Go pieces. He sighs and passes you a silver coin, the price he has to pay for losing. You hadn’t even asked but you were not going to say no to money. You pocket the coin, marveling at the fact that it had been quite a while since you last had anything as valuable in your possession.

“You don’t win by thinking like everyone does,” You laugh.

“Alright, so, rematch?” Namjoon presses on, as he gives the board a quick dust.

“That game took almost 3 hours,” You chuckle. “And, we have to be up early in the morning.”

“I promise I can beat you in under an hour,” He beams, and at that you laugh.

“We have a whole week out here,” You smile, stretching your arms. “So, you can try to do that tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that because I promise you if you’re going to beat me at Go, it’ll take more than an hour.”

“Wow, confident,” He smirks. “That’s surprising from someone who admitted that they often skipped their lessons.”

“What can I say?” You laugh. “Perhaps I’m just a fast learner when it comes to Go.”

As you listen to Namjoon’s whining, you think maybe you should’ve held back. Namjoon seemed to be very proud of his Go skills and he should be. He hails from a noble family, which to be honest is a little surprising. He seemed ditzy, but from the moves he had played, you can tell that he was anything but that. Over the course of the game, the two of you talked. You did more of the asking while he did the answering. You liked it like that. Though you deduce that he was a smart man, he came from a family of well-respected warriors, thus he was meant to follow the same route. He’s been trying to work his way up the ranks, but he tells you it’s a gruelling task and he isn’t quite sure what awaits him back home if his father finds out that he had failed to make it into the elite warrior taskforce yet again.

Yoongi watches from atop as both you and Namjoon continue to bicker. It seems like that was all the two of you really did. Mr. Han did say that both you and Namjoon were close but he hadn’t quite expected this. Typically, noblewomen, especially one that belonged to a ducal family, would not even bother to humour a guard. You however, seemed entirely comfortable with that fact, even choosing to play a game of Go with him. Sure, Yoongi himself was lax with the unwritten rules of interaction between the social classes, but he hadn’t quite reached your level of casualness. One might argue that letting anyone other than his aide to ride in the royal carriage was close to that, but there was something else about you that Yoongi couldn’t quite put his finger on. It seemed like you had absolutely no care in the world for noble etiquette. In fact, he had expected you to come running to Hoseok to complain about the sleeping arrangement in the inn, but his aide says he hadn’t heard so much as a peep from you. He was beginning to think that perhaps Mr. Han’s impression of you isn’t quite right.

//

You wipe away the sweat that’s dripping down your face but you have resigned to the fact that it is of no use. Fixing the bamboo hat that the villagers had loaned you, you take another long look at the never-ending paddy fields. You watch as those in the field occasionally stop to stare at the prince who’s sat under the shade, deep in conversation with a handful of men. Wading in the shallow waters, you see young children helping their parents with the rice planting. In the distance, there is a buffalo ploughing the fields. You’re stood there, taking it all in for you’ve never seen anything quite like it before. Namjoon laughs at the way that your eyes are filled with child-like wonder.

The children seemed enamoured with the prince, but none of them dare approach him. Instead, they crowd around you and Namjoon. They rarely see such lavish silk robes like the one you’re wearing, and so you let them touch and tug at it. Namjoon for the most part tries to be patient, but you hear him growl a low warning when the children try to touch the sheathed sword that rests at his hip. Instead he let’s them hold onto the shaft of his spear, all of them marvelling at the fact that they were touching a weapon of a guard from the royal palace.

The children pull you towards the paddy fields, imploring you to join them.

“Children, the fields are no place for someone like Lady Y/N,” Namjoon informs, as they continue to lead you. “You all should—”

His sentence dies halfway as he watches you willingly wade through the paddy fields with the children. You’re careful to hold your silk robes up. After all, they were given to you by the palace and you must take care not to soil them. As you follow the children, you feel your feet sink into the muddy ground. You squeal when a fish swims by your ankle and at that the children laugh.

“Lady Y/N!” Namjoon shouts, worried. “Let me help—”

“It’s quite alright,” You chuckle, smiling. “The fishes are friendly, they say.”

The guard is hesitating at the edge of the field, stealing quick glances back to where Hoseok and Yoongi are watching in bewilderment as you continue to walk through the fields, nodding as the children tell you about the rice paddies.

“That’s not why I uhh I—” He stutters as he looks back again at the prince. He merely gives him a simple wave, as if to say he could let you be. At that, Namjoon nods, simply standing by as he watches you warily.

The children lead you further in, showing you how they weed the fields, and take care of the crop. They even let you touch the buffalo that’s busy ploughing the fields. You’ve never felt so free, so intrigued and you—

“My Lady! Forgive the children’s insolence, they don’t know any better,” A man begs, bowing down at you.

“Oh no, please, don’t— I-It’s really quite alright,” You say, using one hand to usher him back to stand upright. You’re stunned, shocked. You aren’t quite sure what he is apologizing for. It is perhaps one of the very few times anyone has ever bowed at you in apology.

“Do forgive the children,” He mumbles. “Truly, I am sorry for the trouble. A-and it’s not much, but I can take you back with that,” He points at the bullock cart not far from where you are. The expression you wear is not one he expects. Instead of distaste, you’re practically beaming.

“Can we really?” You ask, as you walk out of the paddy field, hurrying towards the cart.

“Of course, My Lady,” He chuckles as he notes your excitement.

Honestly, the walk back isn’t quite far but you’ve never been able to ride a bullock cart before. Mostly because they are meant for transporting goods but also partly because you’ve never seen one up close before.

“Can the children come along too?” You question, as you see them with their head hanging low, looking guilty. What for, you’re not quite sure. You should ask Namjoon later on. Perhaps there are some customs you aren’t quite aware of. “After all, I was the one who asked them to show me the fields.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but you deduce that he thinks the children had forced you to wade through the fields with them.

“Of course they can come along,” He nods as he takes off his shirt and places it on the cart and invites you to sit. “It’s— uhh, not much but I didn’t have anything to—”

“Oh, no, please! You don’t have to!” You answer, rushing to pick up his shirt and return it to him.

“No, please! I insist,” He argues, placing the shirt back. “We can’t have you dirtying your robes.”

“Ah, th—thank you,” You smile, bowing slightly at him. It seemed like he wasn’t going to back down so you resign to sitting on his shirt instead.

The children seem rather solemn as they ride the cart with you, but a few questions from you and they are back to their jolly selves, answering every query you have. They’ve never met a noble quite as nice and friendly as you and perhaps they want whatever this is to last a little longer. They cling onto you, reveling in the attention you shower them with. Most nobles that they’ve met want one thing, and one thing only. They were often travelling merchants who were trying to hoodwink them, asking them to sell their rice at low prices. Sometimes, they would resort to violence to get them to agree. Perhaps that was what the elders were discussing about with the prince. Either way, most nobles had no interest in the fields, or their lives. You however, had willingly walked through the shallow water with them, watched on as they showed you how to catch the fishes and even played around with them.

As you get off the cart, the children climb out with you, quickly bowing in apology as their elder demands. You wave it away hurriedly, sternly insisting that the children were only acting based on your demands. If you had known this would cause such a commotion, you would have stayed put. Maybe that’s what Namjoon was trying to save you from when he tried to coax you out of the fields earlier on.

The commotion is pretty much forgotten as you and the royal entourage move to look at the storehouses where the rice is stockpiled. You’re kept busy as the farmers explain how they go from bushels to the final grains that are stored in the storehouses. Namjoon is visibly alert this time around, not willing to let you get into trouble again. After all, his life was on the line too.

As the sun begins to set, the entourage returns to the town centre. As soon as the prince is out of earshot, Namjoon tells you to meet him at the teahouse as soon as possible. Simply by the tone of his voice, it sounded like he was going to give you a stern scolding.

//

“The fields are meant for peasants,” Namjoon explains, pausing to take a sip out of his cup. “It is no place for someone like you.”

“I-I see. Well, I— umm, I knew that of course,” You murmur, lying. “But how else am I supposed to accurately depict the scene if I do not actually go into the fields?”

“You are still a noblewomen, and you shouldn’t be in such lowly places,” He mumbles. “What will the nobles say if they saw you out in the fields? What would they have said about the prince?”

Oh. You understand now. It wasn’t just your image that was at stake, it was the prince’s too. Now, you’re worried.

“D-do you think he’s angry?” You query, nervous. “I mean, I was just doing it for the job after all,” You mumble, pointing at your current painting. Perhaps you should work extra hard, paint in all the details so he would forgive you.

“The prince isn’t very expressive, so it’s hard to say but... I would warn you to be more cautious,” Namjoon hums. He had seen one too many concubines have their heads cut off, and for actions less preposterous than yours. It would be a shame to see you go.

LAYLA’S MENTALITY: WHERE DOES IT STEM FROM ?

topic: layla’s mindset mentions: hospitals, bullying, religious discrimination, biphobia, hostage situations word count: 1,387

raised under the scrutiny of her parents, layla was expected to be flawless — perfect. even as young as a toddler, she believed this was the way to her parents’ non-existent hearts. for the first few years of her life, the princess caused no problems, aside from interrupting her parents in their study every so often. interruption wasn’t a concept she understood then, all she wanted was their attention — their affection. still, each time her little legs carried her into their room, she was shooed away, told to go play in her own room. she wasn’t without toys and coloring books, but dolls couldn’t hug you back nor tuck you in at night.

when layla was hospitalized at age four for a severe allergic reaction, she thought her parents would be by her side until she was discharged. she was wrong. dazed and confused when she came to, the only people she recognized were her nanny and bodyguard. if a child could feel heartbreak, that was it. she cried — screamed — for her mother and father, only to be reminded repeatedly that they were busy and she needed to quiet down. ‘my parents are not here because i am not perfect’ was the first thought to cross her mind, followed by ‘my allergy is a defect.’ this experience instilled layla’s avoidance of hospitals and doctors, they would only find things wrong with her and nothing could be wrong if she wanted her parents’ love. her fears weren’t allayed when she returned to the palace, layla now eating completely different meals than her family whenever they opted for meat-based dinners. her beliefs only pushed her to work harder towards the unattainable perfection, this was her normal.

her formal education began not long after that, and she was thrilled to get out of the palace and make friends. she wanted to befriend everyone and certainly tried to do so. a few peers responded well to her kindness while others were miniature copycats of their parents, repeating the skepticism felt toward the monarchy to the princess herself. a copt sat as queen consort and some people couldn’t wrap their minds around the multi-religious family. she would return home often upset, lasting only a few years in a formal school before transitioning to private instruction in the palace. yet another hit at her strive for perfection, she couldn’t even manage school. the few friends she made early on remained true, at least for most of their young adult lives.

scandal struck when layla was sixteen — early morning on the thirtieth of july, the king, queen, and press secretary barged into her room, startling her awake. various newspapers were tossed onto her bed but they all declared the same thing: “PRINCESS LAYLA CAUGHT WITH GIRLFRIEND.” the article spared no detail, photos accompanying and all. flashback to the prior afternoon that saw layla out with her best friend, qitarah. well, best friend and secret girlfriend. the two agreed to test the waters a few weeks earlier, not even telling their other two friends. only after asking qitarah did layla entrust her secret with amon and, for safety purposes, her bodyguard. none of that mattered when paparazzi learned to hide, their cameras capturing the first and last public kiss shared between the two. they were in a corner booth, layla reasoned, they made sure no one was around. 

tables turned and layla was public enemy number one — qitarah’s parents going as far as to blame the princess for the entire afternoon’s events. none of her friends were allowed to see her anymore, the monarchy looking more corrupt than ever. layla felt like a disappointment, a disgrace, far beyond having an allergy or requiring a private tutor. her guard had been let go after being questioned, admitting that he knew of layla’s secret. while protecting her all the same, his action was deemed disloyal to the reigning monarchs. once calmed a bit, claimed they only reacted as such because they weren’t prepared, because they didn’t have a press statement on hand in case layla chose to go public. but she knew they wouldn’t have wanted her to be so open with her sexuality, the press statement was damage control. layla control. 

a few days after the initial news article, layla’s bags were packed for her and she was sent to live with her godfather in an entirely different country — a different continent. the public wounds were still fresh and the egyptian monarchs needed layla away so they could get a clear grasp on the outcry. she wasn’t even given a timeframe for her return, maybe she wouldn’t get to come home. while layla was easily welcomed with open arms into her second home, she spent the first week off and on crying in her room; the only time she left the privacy was to get a meal after the family had already eaten. layla tried calling her parents daily, wanting to know when she could fly back, but the calls never got that far before her parents were hanging up. she spent four months away from egypt, layla only believing her parents called for her return because the winter holidays were coming up and they needed to take portraits. the scandal wasn’t mentioned by her parents nor the staff when she returned to cairo, and frankly, she felt like an outsider. not to mention, her new bodyguard was a stranger. 

layla’s remaining teenage years didn’t brighten much, the girl now friendless (aside from other royals) and finding political work to busy herself with and prove to the king and queen that she could do something right. she didn’t date much either, only finding a short-lived fling with the younger glücksburg prince. she’d already overheard her parents discussing arrangements, so she knew her options were running thin once that relationship ended. layla didn’t resist the arranged marriage news once her parents finally made up their minds — if she couldn’t hold down a partner, they’d find one for her. she needed to redeem herself, after all, and on her twenty-first birthday, they began their search.

when the princess was submitted into the protection program, she acted as though her parents had eyes and ears everywhere. her guard certainly wouldn’t let her bend her parents’ rules, not after the last one was fired. she called home daily, either talking to amon or her parents, though amon was usually more willing to chat and keep her caught up. her calls became less frequent, layla coming to terms with the fact that if her parents really wanted to speak to her, they’d call on their own. and the less calls she made, the less she wanted to go back to egypt altogether. 

layla spent more time with the royal friends she had, letting go of some of the ‘proper etiquette’ she had been made to learn and trying to come into her own — a puppet cutting its strings and falling to the ground. knowing her parents would disapprove, layla changed her wardrobe, pierced her nose, and inked her arm with all the teenage rebellion anyone could ask for at age twenty-four. even with all the changes, nothing felt right. nothing felt like her. 

the invasion of two-thousand eighteen was another low point in layla’s life. being forcefully taken from her room and held hostage, she truly thought that was the end for all of them. and after holding back her feelings for over a year, layla came clean to olivier with the small glimmer of hope and optimism that he might feel the same way — he didn’t. that moment changed her, for better or worse is still to be determined, but she wasn’t going to be pushed around anymore.

layla is still trying to figure out who she is and where she belongs. while she never means to oppose her friends, her newfound, impulsive attitude slips out every now and then. she’ll bottle everything up until someone pushes the wrong button, something she doesn’t necessarily realize she’s doing. 

if you have read all this, congratulations on getting through this mess and finding out why layla is the emotional mess that she is. i’m probably forgetting stuff but this is a lot as is.