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monamourbladie-mb · 3 years

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19 Years Later... (Darth Vader x reader miniseries chapter 1)

19 years have passed since Y/n’s husband Anakin’s death, and she has become the leading General of the newly founded Rebellion alongside her past Jedi friend Obi-Wan Kenobi, now known as Ben Kenobi. When her children Luke and Leia Skywalker gets kidnapped by Darth Vader, the man who killed her husband; her and Obi-Wan Kenobi must come rescue her. But when she finds out who’s behind Darth Vader’s mask, the truth is something she never thought she had to prepare herself for.

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Index:

1. prologue

2. chapter 1

3. chapter 2 [Coming soon]

wc: 2.3k

warnings: cursing

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Being the leader of the new Rebellion against the evil Galactic Empire had its perks. One of the things that was not a perk, however, was hiding one’s actual name from their people, and past.

None of Y/n’s rebels knew of her past as a former Jedi Knight that fought in the Clone Wars. Though she fought like a cunning warrior, the thought had never once crossed their minds, seeing as all the Jedi were dead.

She had raised her children Luke and Leia with Obi-Wan’s guidance to be trained as Jedi, seeing as both of them were very Force-Sensitive.

Watching Luke wield his father’s lightsaber brought such bittersweet feelings to both old Jedi Knights. Anakin was such a big part of both of their lives, that it was almost painful to see this without him there.

Anakin would be beyond proud of his son and daughter, for sure.

Y/n recalled the first time he and Leia held their lightsabers. They were both 9, the same age their Father was when he was brought him by Qui-Gon Jyn from Tattooine.

Luke had rushed up to Obi’s old trunk excitedly, admiring the strange silver object with big eyes as Leia crowded behind him, “What’s that, Uncle Obi?”

“This is your father’s lightsaber, my dear. He would’ve wanted you to have it,” Obi replied, a sad smile on his face as he held onto the hilt, activating its stellar blue glow.

“This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster—“ Obi handed it to Luke and his eyes widened, waving it around gently so he didn’t break it. “—an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.”

“Is it mine?” Luke’s eyes beamed in excitement. Obi-Wan nodded, sitting down as he picked up Leia, putting her on his knee.

“For over a thousand generations, the Jedi were the guardians of peace and justice. The old republic. Before the Empire...” he trailed off, turning his head towards the window.

Y/n rushed into the room, hearing the lightsaber and fearing there was an intruder, “Obi-Wan! What’s going on, I’m—“ she ignited her brilliant (l/c) saber, holding it in a protective stance before she realized it was just Luke. She sighed heavily and disengaged her saber, attaching it back to her belt loop, “Obi, you didn’t tell me you were doing this now...” she crossed her arms.

“Mom! Obi-Wan told me this was Dad’s! Look!” he started swinging it gently, making sure it didn’t hit anyone since he knew how deadly they could be. She began to smile sadly as she remembered a young Anakin as a padawan, rushing in to show her his lightsaber he constructed the day he finally got one.

She smiled sadly, tears welling up in her eyes. “You look so much like your father, Luke,” she said sadly. Obi looked back at Luke, and for a split moment, he was reminded of the small slave his old master brought back with him. He smiled to himself remembering how he helped Anakin with his padawan braid.

“Princess, come here. I’ll let you hold my lightsaber, okay?” she handed Leia her saber gently, and she took gingerly from her hand. Leia took it and igniting it, the blade’s glow reflecting in her excited little eyes.

“Mom? How did dad die? You never answered me,” Luke asked. Y/n felt herself freeze in place, a large lump in her throat forming. “Luke, I...”

“I’ll tell them, Y/n,” Obi-Wan replied solemnly. “Your father was killed by a young Jedi named Darth Vader. He was a close friend of mine before he fell. He helped the Emperor hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father.” The room fell silent, until Luke asked another question, “So you and Uncle Obi are the last remaining Jedi?”

Obi-Wan shook his head no, “There are others, but sparse. To name a few, Master Yoda and Ahsoka Tano, your father’s Padawan learner. The last remaining Jedi are being hunted down by Vader, which is why we hide.”

Leia spoke up softly, “Is that why we don’t use our actual last name, mommy?”

“Yes, sweetheart. As long as Vader’s reign continues, we must hide our names. Darth Vader does not know about the two of you, so you are safe. For us, on the other hand...” she trailed off, and the kids understood.

“Mom... Mom,” Leia spoke loudly. Y/n blinked in confusion and turned back around, looking at her daughter, “Yeah, my love?”

“Are you okay mom?” Leia asked, frowning. “We need to look at the Death Star plans.”

“Right,” she sighed heavily, turning to face from the window out looking Yavin 4. “I’m fine, princess. I just... was remembering Anakin, that’s all.” Leia sighed and laid her hand on her mother’s back, rubbing it gently, “Dad would be proud of everything you’ve done, mom.” She began to tear up as she pulled Leia into a tight hug, “I hope so. It’s been about 20 years and it still doesn’t feel right,” silent tears fell down her cheeks into her daughter’s bunned hair.

“I’m proud of you, Leia. If you were to be trained within the Order now, you’d be the same age your father was when he became a Jedi Knight, and when he married me...” she sniffled, wiping her tears. Leia smiled softly, holding her mom’s hand, “Do you think he’d be proud of me, too?”

“I know he would,” she rubbed her fingertips against hers, “He would pull you into the tightest hug, spin you a little and say softly, ‘That’s my baby girl,’” she replied, her voice cracking slightly. Leia began to tear up as she hugged her back, “I wish I knew him...” she said softly. “I wish so too, babe, so bad...” Y/n sighed. But I won’t let his memory be in vain. Let’s go look at these plans and destroy that Death Star, yeah?”

Leia and Y/n walked to the main board room, seeing how the map was already up on display. “General Jonas, we’ve been examining the Death Star plans. They’re on screen now,” one of her commanding officers recited. “Good, thank you, officer. Have we discovered a weak point yet? Or at least some form of entry point?”

“No, ma’am. We haven’t studied long enough. There are many ways in, but all most likely heavily guarded. We will have to find a way to go under the radar without getting detected, somehow,” he replied. She nodded, walking closer to examine it. She closed her eyes and felt out through the Force for some answer. No surprise to her, she could barely feel anything at all but an empty void. Ever since Anakin had died, she had felt more distanced from the Force than ever. Maybe she and Anakin possessed a rare Dyad, or maybe she had simply lost touch with the Force; but no matter what she did, she was nowhere near as powerful in the Force as she used to be.

“Alert me if you find anything, Officer, I would love to have this Death Star in shambles by the end of the month,” Y/n left to walk out and to ask Obi-Wan on the matter. “Yes, ma’am,” he responded, turning back to his computer to get back to work.

Elsewhere, Leia was pacing in Luke’s room, grumbling to herself, “I know Obi-Wan has taught us to not let our emotions guide us, but I can’t when it comes to him. He killed our father, he should be dead!” Leia huffed in anger, collapsing down onto her twin’s bed.

Luke grunted in response, his mouth full of food still, “It’s not like you can take him on yourself. You’d die!” he said, or at least, sounded like he said. “I will not let the lives of those lost who got us the plans in the first place’s memories die. We wouldn’t be this close to planning an attack without their sacrifices. Moreover, Mom has had these plans for two days now, and she hasn’t done a single thing about it!” Leia responded quickly. Luke shrugged, “Leia. Be real. It’s not like we can steal a ship and fly to the Death Star, find it’s a weak point, and get back in time for dinner.”

Leia sat up, looking at Luke as if he had just committed mass murder. “...What?” Luke asked warily. Leia grinned, “That’s it! We’ll do just that, Luke! We’ll take one of mom’s ships, fly around the death star undetected and find weak entry points, and get back like we were never even gone!”

“Leia, you can not be serious right now!” Luke gasped, setting his food down, “We can’t do this, we could get in so much trouble! Or spotted!”

“Do you want to sit idly while our mother and uncle do nothing, whereas our Father’s murderer is out on the lose on that moon!” Leia snapped at him. He narrowed his eyes, “That’s no moon, Leia. Also, no, I don’t! But do we have a choice? No. We’re staying here.”

“No, we’re leaving. Whether I go alone is up to you entirely, but at this point, I just want the man who killed my father dead,” Leia said, glaring at him. Luke huffed, “You think I don’t want him dead, too? But we are children, we literally can’t do anything!”

“We are 19 years old and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to sit at home here and wait for Vader to kill more innocent people,” Leia frowned, crossing her arms. “I really need you with me, Luke. But I get it if you don’t go.” she stood up, grabbing her stuff to leave when Luke grumbled “Wait!” under his breath. “I’ll... go. Just to protect you. But this is a bad idea, and I don’t want to get caught,” he raised a brow to her. Leia grinned and hugged Luke tightly, ��Thank you, thank you! You won’t regret this! But bring your lightsaber maybe, just in case?”

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“What do you mean, YOU LET THEM GO?” Y/n snapped to C3-PO, enraged. Threepio raised his hands in defense, “I couldn’t stop them, mistress! I tried my best, I swear!”

“You let my children go confront Vader ALONE? You’re so lucky I don’t shut you down for that!” she growled, shoving past him with Obi-Wan following close behind her. “Oh, dear. I’m doomed,” Threepio whined.

“We have to go after them, we... I can’t... I can’t lose my kids,” Y/n said nervously, starting to pace once Obi got close. “Y/n, calm down sweetheart. I need you to breathe and think,” Obi said, holding onto her shoulders gently. “If we go, we have an equal chance of being caught since they’ll already be on high alert.”

She sighed heavily, shaking her head, “I hate you for being so levelheaded and smart, Obi,” she frowned. “That’s my specialty,” he winked. “Now, we need to stop and make sure that we can pull this rescue off without risking our lives, too.”

Meanwhile, at the Death Star, Vader was summoned by his leading captain because of an alert of an enemy ship flying nearby. “Bring them in, search them. They may know General Jonas.” “Yes, My Lord.”

Vader turned to leave the bridge towards the docking bay, to meet his guests personally. As he walked, his mind was filled with visions and memories from his dream the night before. Of her.

He sighed heavily, picking up speed as he neared the docking bay. Passing a group of stormtroopers, he pushed past them to be in front, crossing his arms. The door opened, and two stormtroopers walked out holding a young girl and boy, yelling at them to let go of them.

As soon as Vader looked at the two, he felt something... strange. A certain presence in the Force he had never felt before. What is this? Why do they feel familiar?

Vader dropped his arms, walking forward and raising his hand to stop the troopers, “Who are you? And why were you near my Death Star?”

His unmerciful, robotic voice rumbled through their chests, terrifying them. In all their years, they had never seen something so cold and unforgiving. “Don’t be petrified, answer me if you want to live,” Vader challenged, staring right at the boy.

“You killed our father,” Leia’s voice was cold, sad, and broken. She knew this was a bad idea, but it was too late now. “I wanted revenge.”

“You’ll have to forgive me, my princess, but I’ve killed many men. Your father was just another tick on my list, whoever he may be.”

“You son of a—!” Luke yelled, rushing to jump at him when the stormtroopers all turned their weapons on him, making him stop. Vader growled, “Insolent children. I don’t think you know who I am, truly. I’d crush you in a heartbeat, but seeing as you could have something of use to me... take them away, both of them,” Vader commanded. The two shouted in disagreement, and Vader simply stood and watched them struggle.

“You bitch! You’ll pay for what you did to our dad!” Luke yelled as he was taken away. Vader rolled his eyes from under the mask and walked back to his quarters. He knelt on the floor, taking his mask off as he called out to his Emperor through the force.

“What do you want, Lord Vader?” Palpatine growled, looking down at Vader’s hologram. “I felt something through the Force a few moments ago. My new hostages... they seem to be strong with it.”

“Really? Are you sure, my apprentice?”

“Yes, Master. More sure than anything.”

“Well, you know what you must do. Kill them. They could be Jedi if they tried opposing you,” Palpatine smirked. “They’re only children, which means they’re newer Jedi. Someone had to have trained them.”

“Children never stopped you before, don’t let it stop you now. Do it.”

“...Yes, my Master.” Vader ended the holomessage, sighing.

“Who are you two...?” he asked himself, reaching out through the Force and feeling they were still there.

Strange.

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it-begins-with-rain · 3 years

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Chinese Language TV Recommendations

For my Korean TV Recommendations, click here.

*Contains both Mainland-Chinese and Taiwanese programs.

** Updated 05/23/21 with “Miss The Dragon” & “Word of Honor”

A Love So Beautiful

Can the pure love of 17-year-olds endure through all the challenges of college and adulthood?

Chen Xiao Xi and Jiang Chen are high school friends and neighbors who grew up together. Xiao Xi is happy-go-lucky and doesn’t like to study much but she has a talent for drawing. Jiang Chen is popular for his good looks and high grades, but is cold and indifferent to other people.

Their friends include swimmer Wu Bo Song, who will do anything for XiaoXi, the dorky and over-confident gamer Lu Yang, and Lin Jing Xiao, the most beautiful girl in school (who Lu Yang is hopelessly in love with).

How will the realities of life shape the friendships and love lives of these young adults?

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Ashes of Love // Heavy Sweetness, Ash-Like Frost

Jin Mi is the secret lovechild of the Flower Deity and the Water Immortal, conceived before the Flower Deity suffers a fatal wound.

The deity gives birth to a baby girl (Jin Mi) on her deathbed, and foresees the infant will face a terrible trial by her 10,000th year. To save her from her fate, the Flower Deity gives Jin Mi a pill that makes it impossible for her to ever feel romantic love. Upon her death, she forbids anyone in the Flower Kingdom from revealing the fact that she had a child.

Several thousand years later, Jin Mi is a bumbling little fairy trapped in The Water Mirror- a gilded prison where low-level fairies can live in peace. Jin Mi believes she is a small Grape Fairy, and lives a happy (if not dull) life within the Mirror with her friends.

When a charred bird falls from the heavens into the Water Mirror, Jin Mi decides to eat save the poor little ‘crow’– who in reality is Xu Feng, the mighty phoenix son of the Heavenly Emperor. Her decision to not eat save the Fire God will put them at the heart of plots and schemes, romances and adventures spanning the Flower Kingdom, Heavenly Realm, Demon Kingdom, and the Realm of Mortals.

**Trigger Warning: Contains reference to off-camera sexual assault.**

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Dance of the Phoenix

Feng Wu, a former genius girl in the Junwu Continent, was attacked by her old enemy Zuo Qingluan. In the attack, she lost not only her memories and abilities, but her “phoenix blood” which made her powerful.

In order to save Feng Wu her secret tutor, Master Mu Jiuzhou (a hero thought long dead whose soul is bound inside a ring Feng Wu wears around her neck), exhausted his vitality and fell into a deep coma.

The forces Master Mu Jiuzhou were trying to keep at bay are roiling again, readying for war unless Feng Wu can recover her memories, her power, and survive long enough to release him from the ring.

But if Feng Wu at full power couldn’t stop the evil Zhuo Qingluan’s attack and save herself, what chance does “normal person” Feng Wu have?

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Douluo Continent

Tang San is a hardworking and kind young man who was raised by his single father to be a blacksmith to a small village. His demanding father taught him secret techniques and cultivated unknown abilities while refusing to ever allow him to enter the world of the Soul Masters- heroes who use their inner power to defeat monstrous Soul Beasts and collect their power.

One day, Tang San is attacked in the woods by a fearsome Soul Spider and uses his special techniques to survive, drawing the eye of a nearby Soul Master. The man tests Tang San and discovers that while his Soul Spirit takes the utterly useless form of a common weed (as opposed to say a lion or a wolf), he harbors extreme untapped power and potential.

What only Tang San and his father know is that Tang San is a rare Twin-Soul, in possession of not one Soul Spirit- the Blue Grass- but a second extraordinarily rare weapon spirit capable of being wielded either against foes or in protection of innocents.

Unable to deny Tang San the ability to learn to control his power, his father allows him to leave the protection of the village and embark on a journey to develop his powers and perhaps learn the truth of his parentage.

On his journey Tang San will be joined by the mysterious and naïve Xiao Wu- a seemingly unstoppable and optimistic girl with a rabbit as her Soul Spirit and the ability to absorb the life force of Soul Beasts. They are led by a disgraced Soul Master in Training, Yu Xiao Gang, who was disregarded as a janitor all while studying Soul Masters and developing his own radical theories as to the nature of their power.

Tang San, Xiao Wu, Yu Xiao Gang, and the other friends they meet along the way will become a famous team of heroes known as the “Seven Devils of Shrek Academy”, and be drawn into an imperial struggle for power that threatens to consume their entire continent.

Tang San appears to the world as the master of the Silver Grass Spirit, but once that same world realizes the might of the Weapon Spirit he keeps hidden, he will have to fight with everything he has in order to protect what he holds dear.

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Fairyland Lovers

Bai Qi is a “spiritual doctor” who travels the world to rid spirits of their obsessions and stop them from becoming monsters. Eons ago he himself was at the threshold of becoming an Evil Spirit, and was saved by a Divine Warrior who helped him find a way to move past his darkness before tragically losing her life.

Isolated from the world and alone with a sprig of his lost love’s peach tree, Bai Qi meets the sunny but hapless actress Lin Xia. Not only does the tree come to life in her presence- and not only can she use the tools left behind by his lost lover- she also has the same face.

Curious, Bai Qi enters into a co-habitation agreement with Lin Xia and she helps him cleanse souls before they can turn into Evil Spirits. As their lives intersect, a memory that Bai Qi sealed away for over ten thousand years begins to surface.

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Guardian

Super-Detective Zhao Yunlan meets university professor (and powerful supernatural being) Shen Wei and the two men are instantly drawn together by a past one cannot forget and a future the other cannot guess. As they grow closer, they find themselves at the heart of a high-stakes supernatural battle between unknown enemies.

Will the heroic duo’s unique talents- and special bond- be enough to help them outwit the forces of darkness?

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Handsome Siblings (2020 Netflix Edition)

Hua Wuque is a pillar of righteousness and virtue, the only male disciple of the powerful Yihua Palace cultivation clan. An orphan, he was taken in by the clan leader and her sister and raised with only one goal in life: to find and kill Jiang Xiaoyu, a mighty villain and enemy of Yihua Palace.

So who is Jiang Xiaoyu? Also known as Xiaoyu’er, Jiang Xiaoyu is an orphan himself- the same age as Hua Wuque in fact- raised by the five most feared and hated villains in the world within the confines of the Wicked Canyon. Into Jiang Xiaoyu the villains poured their knowledge, tricks, and ruthlessness, seeking to create the ultimate villain. There is only one problem: As he was raised in the Wicked Canyon and surrounded by nothing but villains, Jiang Xiaoyu mostly uses his abilities to… harm villains and protect the weak.

When Jiang Xiaoyu comes of age and leaves the Wicked Canyon (or rather, becomes too much of a trickster for the villains to handle anymore), Hua Wuque is unleashed to venture from Yihua Palace and hunt down his enemy.

But how could someone kept confined in the Wicked Canyon for the first 18 years of his life be a threat to Yihua Palace? And why must Hua Wuque be the one to kill him (under direction that Jiang Xiaoyu cannot die naturally, be killed by someone else, or kill himself)?

There is a piece of the story Jiang Xiaoyu and Hua Wuque do not know: they are orphans of the same tragedy, in which the divine hero Jiang Feng spurned the love of both leaders of Yihua Palace for a beautiful servant named Hua Yuenu. Hua Yuenu was forced to commit suicide and Jiang Feng killed himself rather than submit to the Ladies of Yihua–

Leaving behind newborn (non-identical) twin sons.

Yihua Palace’s plot is a simple (if OTT) act of vengeance against Jiang Feng’s memory:: Force one brother to murder the other, then reveal to Hua Wuque the sin he has committed and let it drive the boy insane.

Will the truth come out before Wuque finds and kills Xiaoyu, or will the evil Ladies of Yihua Palace finally have the vengeance they have waited for for over 18 years? As Wuque and Xiaoyu’s paths cross more and more they strike up an unlikely friendship, even knowing there is no escaping their dark fate.

**Trigger Warning: Later episodes include off-camera sexual assault and on-camera depictions of near-rape.**

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Hi My Sweetheart

Xue Hai is a kindhearted (and extremely wealthy) but naïve man who has been sheltered by his big sisters his entire life. He decides to go to college in China- where no one knows him- under the name Da Lang and with the image of a poor scholarship student. There Xue Hai meets the dominant, friendless, and rebellious Bao Zhu. Naturally the two fall in love, but after 4 years together, just as he’s going to reveal his identity and propose, Bao Zhu viciously dumps him.

Fast forward three more years. Xue Hai has transformed himself into a handsome but ruthless playboy who treats women as nothing more than toys to be used and cast aside. When he chances across Bao Zhu once more, he decides to launch a campaign to destroy her heart as thoroughly and mercilessly as she did his.

Except Xue Hai is missing one important piece of their love story: Bao Zhu only left him to protect him from her domineering mother, and she has been searching for her beloved Da Lang ever since.

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The King’s Avatar

In the online multiplayer game Glory, Ye Xiu is well known as the undisputed master of professional sports- though no one outside of the professional teams actually knows what he looks like as he hides his face from media and fans. A player since he was a child- and raised largely in professional player training camps- Ye Xiu has no understanding of the outside world.

Halfway through the season, the money-hungry company behind his team, Excellency Era, forces him out and replaces him with an undisciplined hot-shot. Penniless and with nowhere to go, Ye Xiu crosses the street and enters the Happy Internet Cafe. The owner is a diehard fan of the mysterious Ye Xiu, and hires Ye Qiu as an IT manager not for his experience, but for his shared love of the game.

When Glory launches their tenth server, Ye Qiu throws himself into the game once more. Equipped with ten years of gaming experience, memories of an unfinished pledge to a dead friend, and an incomplete self-made weapon, Ye Qiu will rise from the ashes, forge a new team, and take back his crown.

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The Lost Tomb**

50 years ago, a group of Changsha grave robbers known as the “Mystic Nine” dug out manuscripts of the location of treasures from the Warring States period, but soon after almost the entire group was hunted down and slaughtered.

In the present, the young grandchild of the sole survivor, Wu Xie, discovers a secret within his grandfather’s notes as well as half of a silk manuscript that may reveal the location of the lost tomb. But there is one problem- the other half of the manuscript is held by a shady organization of tomb raiders eager to break in and steal whatever cultural relics are inside the tomb.

Wu Xie has a “National Treasure” moment and decides that in order to stop the objects in the tomb from vanishing into the black market he will break in first and recover whatever is inside (’I’m going to steal the Declaration of Independence…’).

Wu Xie is helped on his journey by his beloved “Third Uncle” Wu Sanxing, his uncle’s right hand man Panzi, and the mysterious Xiao Ge - a tomb raider who seems to know of traps before they are sprung and whose hand has been mutilated in a way not seen among tomb robbing families in over a century.

They expected to find a lost tomb, perhaps chase away some thieves, and learn about an exciting piece of lost history. What they did not expect was for the tomb to strike back, the dead to rise, and the past to fight and keep what secrets it holds.

Who exactly are this alternate group of tomb robbers? What are they searching for? What exactly is protecting the tomb? Whose side is Xiao Ge truly on? And- most crucially- can Wu Xie survive long enough to find the answers?

** This recommendation is part of a broader series of shows and movies, all adapted from “The Gravedigger’s Notebook” and its sequels::

The Lost Tomb (2015)

The Lost Tomb 2: Explore With the Note (2016)

Time Raiders (2016 movie)

The Mystic Nine (2016)

Tomb of the Sea (2018)

Reunion: The Sound of the Providence (which gets its own recommendation below; 2019-2020)

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Love O2O

** O = letter, not number

Wei-Wei has both beauty and brains. A computer goddess, she aspires to be an online game developer. In her spare time, she plays her favorite online game ‘A Chinese Ghost Story’- where she has made a name for herself as the top female player on the entire server.

After her online husband dumps her, she gets a message from legendary player Yixiao Naihe- asking to become her online husband (marriages in-game offer certain benefits and quest lines single players cannot achieve).

Little does Wei-Wei know that Yixiao Naihe is also her college senior and the most desired man on campus, Xiao Nai.

Will their online chemistry lead to a real-life romance? Yes. Of course it will. It’s in the title.

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Miss The Dragon

As a humble maid, Liu Ying never expected her life to be anything other than ordinary. Content with the world and her place in it, she spent her days tending to injured creatures and assisting her mistress Xia Hou Xue. But when Liu Ying finds an injured little snake and nurses it back to health, she has no idea how her life is about to change.

That little snake turns out to be a thousand year old Draong King named Yu Chi Long Yan. He falls in love with Liu Ying, and decides to repay her kindness by naming her as his queen.

And then Xia Hou Xue is captured by a wolf demon. Liu Ying flips the script- begging Yu Chi Long Yan to repay her kindness instead by rescuing her mistress and then keeping her safe for three lifetimes. Trapped by his word, Yu Chi Long Yan agrees to do so, though he secretly remains by Liu Ying’s side.

Now in her fourth lifetime, Liu Ying is reincarnated as Gu Qing Yan. She slowly becomes aware of his existence in her life- and her past lives as well. After waiting three lifetimes to be reunited with his lost love, Yu Chi Long Yan will fight with everything he has to keep her safe and get the Happily Ever After they should have had three thousand years ago.

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My Roommate is a Detective

Shanghai in 1925 is caught between gang leaders and the European powers colonizing China.

A resourceful young police officer named Qiao Chu Sheng is on the trail of a brutal but devious killer. Realizing that the police force will need some extra help with this difficult case, he decides to form an elite crime-busting detective team. He reaches out Lu Yao, a Cambridge graduate a slick con-man.

Qiao Chu Sheng has learned that Lu Yao has remarkable powers of deduction and a brilliant mind – and believes he can help crack this difficult case. To round off the team, he enlists the help of Bai You Ning, a focused young female reporter for a daily newspaper. A free-thinking, independent young woman, she has a strong sense of justice – and pledges to help catch the killer.

The trio form a small detective squad that specializes in solving strange and unsettling murder mysteries.

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Oh My Emperor

Fei-Fei, a young doctor, is wounded in an accident and finds herself trapped in the ancient and mystical nation of Huang Dao. The people of Huang Dao are ruled by a king born of the stars- the physical embodiment of one of the twelve zodiac constellations. To keep discord from arising among the people, the Twelve Zodiac Masters govern together to keep the peace.

But a thirteenth sign has been forcibly subjugated, it’s Lord executed, and its people scattered to the wind. The lost sign- Ophiuchus- is rising once more- and Fei-Fei is its (unwilling) Master.

It only complicates matters slightly that Fei-Fei finds herself between the handsome and charming Master of Aquarius and his nephew- the cold Master of Capricorn (who is also the Emperor). Can Fei-Fei keep her identity secret long enough to solve the mystery of the Ophiuchus purge- or is Huang Dao doomed to destruction?

**This drama is a showpiece for members of the Chinese pop group X-Nine, do not judge it by the same standards as a traditional drama. Showpiece dramas tend to be a bit silly.

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Reunion: The Sound of the Providence**

Wu Xie, “Fatty” Wang Pangzi, and the quasi-immortal tomb raider Xiao Ge (AKA Zheng Qiling, Kylin, and “Poker Face”) have faced many dangerous tombs together over the past twelve years.

Now, it is time for them to go on their last great adventure as the so-called “Iron Triangle” before Wu Xie sets off on the journey all must eventually make: death. He always thought his end would come in a dangerous tomb, but instead it will be lung cancer that claims his life. With only 3-4 months left to live, Wu Xie hides the truth of his illness from his friends and family, revealing the truth only to Xiao Ge.

Once upon a time, Wu Xie was told that when a man meets his death he must do so with a clear conscience. But something has been weighing on Wu Xie- his Third Uncle’s disappearance at the end of their first adventure. Right on time, a message from his long lost uncle appears, setting Wu Xie on a desperate mission to find him before the cancer eating away at his body destroys him at last.

This will most likely be Wu Xie’s final journey, but he will do anything in his power to make sure his friends and family will be safe long after his time is up. In the final 3-4 months of Wu Xie’s life he will seek to unravel the mystery of the “Thunder City”- starting with the most dangerous tomb he’s ever explored, The South Sea King’s Tomb.

The sound of thunder hides a secret men have killed for, but is there really a way to hear the words of gods within it? Someone clearly thought so, but who? Is Uncle Sanxing still alive, or is someone in the shadows guiding Wu Xie to them?

Wu Xie’s enemies thought he was dangerous before, but now he is a dying man with a mission. There is no telling what lengths he will go to in order to achieve his goals. He might just manage to die in a tomb after all…

** This recommendation is just the latest installment in an entire series of stories adapted from “The Gravedigger’s Notebook” and related novels::

The Lost Tomb (2015)

The Lost Tomb 2: Explore With the Note (2016)

Time Raiders (2016 movie)

The Mystic Nine (2016)

Tomb of the Sea (2018)

Reunion: The Sound of the Providence (2019-2020)

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The Romance of Tiger and Rose

Chen Xiao Qian has dedicated her life to making her dream of becoming a well-respected screenwriter come true. Standing on the production set of sweeping dramas she penned through endless blood, sweat, and tears, Xiao Qian can hardly believe what she is seeing: her work, come to life!

Except it isn’t a set. And her work truly has come to life.

Her script is a simple one: the heirs of two rival cities who seek to destroy one another enter into a doomed romance that will lead to endless betrayals and a war that will kill the male lead, Han Shuo.

There is just one problem- Xiao Qian wakes in the body of Han Shuo’s first wife on the day he will murder her! The only way for Xiao Qian to return to this world is to survive the story, but in keeping herself alive longer the script begins to change, and Han Shuo begins to fall in love with the wrong person.

At first it is easy for Xiao Qian to keep herself alive- just go along with the script! But the story wants to return to the original plot, which means characters who should be friends become enemies, enemies become friends, and Xiao Qian might not live long enough to find her way home.

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The Untamed

On the cliffs of the Nightless City, upon defeating his enemies in a bloody slaughter, the cruel and vicious Yiling Patriarch- Wei Wuxian- threw himself to his death.

Sixteen years later, he is resurrected by a madman and given a second chance to right what went so terribly wrong long ago. Wei Wuxian reunites with the honorable, righteous, and stern Lan Wangji- his confidant, soulmate, and best friend.

How can someone as upstanding as Lan Wangji befriend the monstrous and hated Yiling Patriarch? What turned the happy and popular Wei Wuxian into the man who slaughtered thousands at Nightless by weaponizing the souls of the dead?

And what terrible secret was Wuxian resurrected to unearth?

The past is not always what it seems, and there is no clean line between right and wrong.

**Don’t worry if you’re lost when the show starts, that is by design. Near the end of episode 2 the show will enter a 30 episode long flashback sequence to answer all questions.

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Well Intended Love (Season 1: Drama Version)

Seasons 1 and 2 of “Well Intended Love” feature the same stars playing the same characters, but the storylines are alternate-universes of one another telling the story from a different genre. Each season is wholly independent of one another.

A third-rate actress with leukemia becomes entangled with the handsome but cold CEO Ling.

In order to receive a bone marrow transplant and contniue her career as an actress, Xia Lin enters into a secret marriage with Ling Yi Zhou. Despite the conspiracies and misunderstandings they encounter, the two begin to find true love.

But one question nags at Xia Lin’s mind:: Why did the cold, controlling, and distant Ling YiZhou need her to play the role of wife?

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Well Intended Love (Season 2: Rom-Com Version)

Rising TV superstar Xia Lin finds herself embroiled in scandal after a run-in with business mogul Ling Yizhou at a party. To clear up any misunderstandings the two prepare a joint press conference– where Xia Lin is stunned by Ling Yizhou’s statement that the two are- in fact- an engaged couple.

Ling Yizhou convinces Xia Lin to play fiancee for a period of one year, after which they can go their separate ways. To save face in front of her fans, Xia Lin agrees. She gradually begins to fall for the lovable and doting Ling Yizhou.

Someone works in the shadows to destroy everything Ling Yizhou holds dear- and the closer he gets to the heart of the conspiracy, the more he realizes Xia Lin may have a target on her back as well.

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Word of Honor // Faraway Wanderers

Zhou Zi Shu has served as the leader of Heaven’s Window for much of his life. A once righteous and honorable sect who acted as an elite Secret Service for the royal family, a corrupt prince has turned them into his personal assassin’s guild. With their oaths to Heaven’s Window as nooses around their throats, most of Zhou Zi Shu’s elders and friends have chosen death over continued service.

Wholly disillusioned, Zhou Zi Shu only wants to atone for the crimes he was forced to commit under his oaths to the prince. He endures the slow execution of Heaven’s Window- a process that sees seven nails inserted into the victim and ushers in a slow and painful death that takes three years to play out.

By gaming the system he helped create, Zhou Zi Shu manages to buy himself an extra year and a half of life to wander the world and wipe some of the blood from his slate.

In his wanderings, he is pulled into a conspiracy surrounding a young boy and meets a strange young man named Wen Ke Xing who sticks to him like glue. Zhou Zi Shu and Wen Ke Xing grow closer and closer throughout their journey to find a mysterious treasure that is rumored to give its owner unlimited power.

But just who is Wen Ke Xing? What is he really after? And most importantly of all- can Zhou Zi Shu really trust his new companion?

#tv recommendations #tv recommendation #recommendations #recommendation #cdrama recommendations #cdrama recommendation #mine #cdrama #c drama

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poormeowmeowcollector · 3 years

Text

Let me give you my life

Pairing: Loki x Tesseract

Warnings: Major Character Death, Mourning, delusions, mental illness, alcohol, Original Character Death, Odin, fantastic racism

Summary: After Frigga's funeral, Loki starts hearing a voice. It changes their life completely.

Chapter 4: Bridge and Chorus

Chapter summary: the aftermath

Chapter warnings: Odin, Major Character Death, suicide

Chapter note: this chapter is dedicated to @lucywrites02 because she pretended to be a bad bitch yesterday.

Previous chapter AO3

No masters or kings when the ritual begins

The shackles sing as Loki walks towards the throne, fighting back a grin. Odin, on the other hand, sits on his high quality chair, believing to be intimidating.

"You have committed a grave crime against the-" Odin tries to speak, but Loki chuckles.

"I know what I have done, Odin. No need to repeat yourself," they interrupt, using a voice they've been hiding in their throat since they learned how to speak.

And it has so much to say…

"Has your mother taught you no respect for your king?" They yell, their favourite way of speaking to Loki. In all these years, Loki cowarded away at this voice, scared of a physical expression of the anger. This time, he laughs at it.

"Not my mother, and I have no king but myself," they smile, watching a new wave of anger flashing in the old charlatan's face.

"Silence! You never knew how to shut this mouth of yours!" Odin raises his voice, hoping to see the now natural cowering of Loki. The only answer is another laugh.

"Do you really want me to start speaking, Odin? To see who is truly guilty, with all these good dicks and whores listening?" Loki asks, a glow in his eyes as he gestures around as wide as the shackles allow. The harshness of their tongue makes the nobles who watch the "trial" gasp.

"Who taught you this language?" The old man spits, narrowing one eye.

"Apart from your anger? And that old warrior you ordered to teach Thor and me how to survive in a forest? And there are the guards, I can name a few but stitching is a worse crime than murder…" he mutters, acting if like he's chatting with a cup of tea other than being on a trial for murder.

There's no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin

"Enough with your games! Why did you murder Lord Gæirasson in cold blood?" Odin asks the "big question", as if the right answer will lift the charges from Loki's name.

"Because… one, because he was a racist and offended me, to which the punishment is death. Two, because he started a war-"

"You started a war, Loki," Thor interrupts, taking Odin's side, like every time.

"A war had been started. Let's not blame people, Thor. Now where were I? Oh, yeah, at how Gæirasson started a war. Also, he refused to pay his taxes and you know how seriously I took my responsibility of being in charge of the palace's finances. Did war crimes against my people, father would be proud the son of a bitch is dead. And lastly, but definitely not least, a dreadful sense of fashion. Have you seen what his grooms wear? I think I threw up in my mouth when I saw it…" they finish with the rumbling, not even thinking of answering seriously. Odin will execute him anyways, would some fun be so bad?

"I said, enough with the games!" Odin basically screeches, their face going red.

In the madness and soil of that sad earthly scene

"For the murder of a lord, cause of a war and disrespect towards the throne, I Odin Allfather sentence you to a life in the dungeons," he decides.

"Dungeons? Not axe? Did Frigga's ghost or this moron talk you out of killing me?" Loki questions, taking their turn to narrow their eyes.

"If you keep talking, I might change my mind," Odin sighs, rubbing his temple.

"And get rid of this perfect pawn to hold King Laufey from the balls? A shame, really," Loki poutes and shrugs, pretending awfully that he cares.

"I will not stand your disrespect any longer! I had granted you your life, Loki, more than once! You will learn to respect me for it! Take them to the dungeons!" Odin speaks the final order. Four guards grab the chains that lead to Loki's shackles and push him away, forcing him to walk with them

Only then I am human / only then I am free

On the way to the dungeons, Thor stops the guards and demands to speak to Loki.

"Just tell me why, brother. Please. What didn't we give you to make you care so little?" they ask, grabbing Loki's shoulder, just like they always used to do.

"A family. That's what you didn't give me. And that's what I've earned," Loki answers, staring right into his no-brother's eyes, the blue in them and the pale lines that resemble his lightning. They know they won't see Thor from this close ever again, and they deserve a proper last memory.

"Then, I'm sorry. It's late, I know, but remember this, please… I shall visit, whenever I can, Loki. I swear. You shouldn't be in prison all alone," Thor promises. Loki gives only a nod, enough to make Thor dismiss the guards and let them keep walking Loki to his future and last chamber.

The only sign of emotions they allow themselves to show is a sigh, only out of sympathy.

For he knows that his freedom just begins.

Take me to church / I'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies

The moment the guards put Loki back into the white vacant cell and take their eyes off them, they cast an illusion of them settling on the floor and staring at nothing. The real Loki is walking up and down the room, waiting for the Tesseract to speak.

"Now?" he asks, feeling it close.

"Now, you need to learn who your family is. Not Odin, not Laufey, your true family, Entropy," they answer.

"What with this name? After all this, can't you call me by my name?" Loki groans.

"I am. You have many names. Entropy, the Chaos Stone, the Death Stone, the Knot… the last one, actually, is the name you're most familiar with, translated to Old Jötunn tongue," they speak, all matter-of-factly.

"You're lying, the Chaos stone is a myth," Loki brushes off the answer.

"It does exist. A black gem, created by billions of ropes, strings and threads tangled together. The hardest one to wield and command and impossible to find. The Jötnar had found it and worshipped it. And when Laufey found out that his son is nothing but a dead baby, he sacrificed the infant for the infant. And Odin found the baby crying in the altar, the gem gone,"

"So I own my life to an imaginary stone, apart from an old piece of shit. What a surprise…" Loki throws their hands in the air.

"No. You are the imaginary stone. In order to give life, the Chaos gem entered your body and never left. You are the flesh of a corpse and the mind of an infinity stone. And it's time to leave the corpse and join us,"

The aimless walking stops, and Loki's heart skips a beat

I'll tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife

"You made me kill a man, for this?" he asks, glaring at nothing. They don't answer.

"You made me kill a man! Just so I could die!" boiling hot tears streaming down their eyes and slither into their shirt as burning red eyes stare at the empty room for something. "I trusted you! You promised me a family!" he yells between his sobs.

Their feet cannot support them, and they kneel down, turned into a crying sobbing and yelling mess. A hand, created by mist, grabs his shoulder, trying to provide comfort.

"I hate you," they spit, flaring their nose drills as they stare into the blue eyes of the illusion they use to pretend they're close to them.

"I'm sorry, hurting you was… if I could prevent it…" the stone says and gives him a small squeeze. And they mean it. If there was a way to do it without any pain, they would. But it's too late, Loki is already hurt…

Offer me that deathless death

Loki throws themselves into the tightest embrace they ever had, weeping like a baby. "I don't want to die. Please, I don't wanna die. Anything but this, anything, please!" he whispers, diving his head into their shoulder without a thought of holding back the tears.

"Shhhh, you won't die. Not truly. Your mind is the stone, as long as it exists you exist. And the body will stay intact until you need it again. You will be fine, I promise," they whisper, hoping of making them feel better.

"I'm scared, Tessie. I'm so scared, I can't," for a prince, Loki sounds so small, almost like the small child they used to be. Tessie starts playing with his hair, hoping to calm him down, even for a bit.

"It's alright. Everything will be fine, no matter if you do it or not," they shush them.

"If I do it or not?" Loki repeats, sniffing quietly and breaking the hug only to look at the misty blue eyes of Tessie.

"I… you're in so much pain… if you decide that you had enough, you'll be left alone," they explain. Loki nods, still quivering from the crying, but determined.

"No. We got so far. I-I-I'm not giving up," he lets his voice get louder, and then stands up. "What do I do?" they ask, collected once again.

"Get comfortable in a position. And once you're ready, make the ropes appear and let them wash over you," Tessie explains, holding this sympathetic voice. Loki nods and sits back down against the white wall, moving to get comfortable.

Then, with just a thought, the ropes appear and fill him with this calming sensation. Tessie walks closer and cups their cheeks. "See you on the other side, Loki," they smile and kiss their forehead before vanishing.

Loki takes a deep breath, and looks around the cage. He remembers a field day he had when little, a good day. Odin was sleeping on a bench and Frigga was yelling at them and Thor to not get into trouble as Thor dragged Loki, who was just above six, on an expiration of the forest around a castle in Vanaheim. Of course, they returned after the sun was down, with scraped up knees and dirty clothes and Loki had traces of tears in his cheeks because a bug scared him. But it had been, and still is, the best time they ever had with Thor.

He holds tight into the memory as he lets the ropes cover him and closes his eyes.

Good God, let me give you my life

The guards don't know how this happened. One moment, Loki was gazing at nothing and the next…

How does one say this to the Allfather?

The healers walk out of the cage when Thor storms in the dungeons, on the verge of panicking. "Is he alive?" It's all they ask.

The healers won't answer, it's enough to know.

Thor walks in and sits beside what used to be Loki, holding their cold and deformed hand and letting tears run down his face.

Loki doesn't respond, how could he?

He's a statue, as if made from black stone, and his hands covered in stone black ropes, with a faint glow where his heart should be being the only sign that there was once life there.

Loki's face doesn't have the signature smirk, and there's no gleam in their closed eyes. But he does wear a peaceful smile. A smile Thor regrets he had to see this body in order to know that his brother knows finally peace.

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halo-jpeg · 4 years

Note

Ok so you baby post ..... magnificent gorgeous tasteful fantastic I lobed it so so so so much !!❤️ is it possible that you could do a similar thing but the slashers take in a young teenager (idk like 13 or something) I’m interested to see if whether or not there thoughts on taking in the child would be different or not xx

I got another ask for something similar, but asking if the reader heard voices and saw ghosts as well. I hope you don’t mind that I mixed the two!

Slashers (who live together) adopting a Teenage Daughter who sees Ghosts and hears Voices

Michael is still as fond of you as ever. You’re like a niece to him! As you grow, he’s there by your side to teach you everything you need to defend yourself. He loves your sass, and is happy to know he helped to teach you not to take shit from anyone. When he starts to catch on to your odd glances and the way you seemingly talk to yourself, he’s curious- he doesn’t hesitate to ask, and it’s so cool that you hear voices because he does too! You can talk to the ghosts and voices around him without judgement.

Jason loves how you turned out! You grew up to be kind yet feisty, and you have such a wonderful personality! He’s still always afraid for your week being since he’s heard high school can be scary and new. His reaction to the voices and ghosts you see and hear is perfectly normal. Voices? Cool, can you see Pam by any chance?? He’s unphased by the oddity, and thinks it makes you fit in even better than ever.

Danny, one of your main father figures, loves how you are almost identical to him. Your fierceness and silliness is so cool! Not once did he ever regret taking you in, and he’d die for you if you had to. When he finds out you hear and see things, he’s curious rather than concerned. He’ll ask for details, and he’ll end up thinking you’re even cooler than before. Also, he will want you to say ‘i see dead people’ every once and a while.

Billy & Stu have been through high school, and they’re excited for you to go through it too. Both Billy and Stu will give you advice, the most common being ‘High school is more fun if you’re a murderer. Give it a shot!’ They think that your hearing voices makes you just like them, so why wouldn’t you be a killer?

Brahms will always love you like you’re really his daughter. He’s taught you how to cook almost anything, and you always help with dinner. He will always be a little bit sad to see you growing up, playing Hide and Seek with him less and less, but he’s proud of you for growing up nonetheless. He is completely unphased by your hearing voices and seeing ghosts, and actually thinks its super cool!

Norman watched you grow through teary eyes, and he will always miss when you were younger, but now that you’ve grown into a wonderful young woman he couldn’t be more proud! He still spoils you rotten, buying you anything and everything you ask for. When you confess that you hear voices and see ghosts, he’s mildly concerned, but he comes to terms with it over time and now he’s proud that you have an oddity like your Slasher family does!

Vincent’s favourite thing ever is watching you grow in your art skill. Your rapid progression is heartwarming, and he’s never been more proud of anyone- even his own brothers- to see how skilled you’ve become. He’s still protective of you, and he always will be, so hearing that you see ghosts or hear odd voices makes him worry. He checks up on you daily, asking if the voices are doing anything bad to your mental health.

Bo is still the most protective of you. He always asks you about your day at school, making sure you know you can talk to him if kids at school are ever bothering you. He promises that he can take care of them if anyone is bullying you. He also doesn’t like the voices and ghosts, afraid that they’ll scare you or hurt you.

Lester still has so much to teach you about animals and taxidermy! You and him have a rather large collection of cool bones, feathers, etc. that you’ve collected in your day to day lives. He thinks the ghosts you see would be cool, and he wants to meet them!

To Thomas, chainsaw-wielding lessons are still a must, but you’re closer than ever to becoming a master. He’s still unsure of how to talk to you, but he really does try his best. Luda Mae and Hoyt have met you once or twice and are proud of the child Thomas helped to raise. Thomas will never be completely okay with you seeing ghosts or hearing voices, and he feels more okay with the idea of it if you keep him updated on what they say or do.

Bubba is still the Mother Extraordinaire! He still makes you clothes, and teaches you to use makeup when you want to learn. He’ll also teach you to do your hair! When prom time comes he will SCREAM if you ask him to help dress you up! He’s secretly afraid of the voices and ghosts, but he tries to act normal about it so he doesn’t scare you!

Billy Lenz and you are best friends now. In the winter, you watch Christmas movies with hot chocolate, building snowmen and doing every other Christmas activity you could think of. You don’t remind him of Agnes anymore, now that you’re older, so he’s much more comfortable around you. He hears voices, too, so he knows he can confide in you when his voices are being mean.

Leslie is still like a mentor to you. Now, he lets you watch and teaches you all about his work in the Slasher field, hoping that you follow in his footsteps. The voices and ghosts you see give you perfect motivation and a wicked backstory to be a slasher, too! Raised by the most famous, you slowly went insane, and the voices made you kill- it’s perfect!

Pyramid Head will always, always be afraid for your wellbeing. Whenever you do so much as scrape a knee he’s running for you with the first aid kit in hand, treating you like glass. He doesn’t want you to get hurt! When he finds out you hear things and see things, he’s amazed and intrigued, wanting you to tell him everything you know.

Amanda is the only girl in the house, and therefore the only one you can talk to about feminine hygiene. She also helps you learn makeup, and will totally talk to you about boys or girls you like. Voices and Ghosts don’t bother her, and she thinks it makes you even more unique. Awesome!

Freddy is still your alcohol dealer and fellow mischief maker- you pull some wicked pranks together, and get yelled at by the others quite a lot. He makes sure you know you can confide in him about the voices and ghosts, and tells you that he won’t let anything bad happen to you!

Herbert actually adores you now. When you were younger, before he got to know you, he was annoyed by your distracting presence. Now, he teaches you everything he knows so you’re like his little apprentice. He has tried to contact the ghosts you see, and has gotten through once or twice- they’re friendly, for the most part, and the two of you speak to their invisible presences as if they’re actually there.

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nanoland · 3 years

Text

title: Compass Rose

series: Lucifer (TV)

pairings: Mazikeen/Eve

summary: In which Mazikeen exercises her renowned patience.

warnings: Lucifer is kind of a dick in this. Not intentionally; he’s just young and colossally self-centered.

Also on Ao3!

“You. Demon. What’s your name?” asks the Morningstar, looking bored and depressed, as usual.

She straightens up, brimming with nerves and excitement, feeling her acidic blood bubble happily because he’s so handsome! And he’s talking to her! Her siblings will shriek with jealousy when they hear of this. “Mazikeen, my liege.”

“Mazikeen,” he repeats, mispronouncing it. “Great. Maze, do something about… all that, would you? It’s dreadfully grating.”

He gestures to the sea of damned, miserable human souls milling around the base of his throne, calling up to him for help or mercy.

“Yes, my liege,” she says, her bright mind already hard at work planning the next few millennia of punishment.

“Maze, is there a letter from Amenadiel?”

Mazikeen is now four hundred years old and in all that time, not a single letter has arrived in Hell, from Amenadiel or anyone else. Regardless, her handsome king asks every week.

It’s fine. She’s far too mature and cunning to feel even the slightest scrap of envy towards some pompous old angel she’s never even met, regardless of how obviously Lucifer loves him.

Regardless of how obvious it is that he loves no one in Hell half as much.

“No, my liege.”

“Hmm. Fine. Whatever. Fuck him, then. Brothers – who needs ‘em?”

She nods. She herself has many, many brothers, and sisters, and siblings who are neither or both, and she certainly doesn’t need them.

(Sometimes she longs for them, especially when she’s weary from the years and years dedicated to building and securing Lucifer’s kingdom, but she never needs. Needing is for the weak.)

It occurs to her that that king might be cheered by stories of Tradiusis, her most treasured and most useless brother, who is prone to chatting with the damned and asking them about all the silly human indulgences they enjoyed in life, like movies and theme parks and hot dogs. Fool that he is, the mere thought of him always brings a smile to her face.

But she decides against it, suspecting that if she were to begin telling Lucifer about her family, he’d get that same dull, faintly irritated expression she sees every time she reads him a report about the number of new arrivals and how various parts of Hell will need to be restructured to accommodate them all.

(She wonders what will happen when Hell is full – does he have a plan? Is she expected to have a plan?)

(How long, exactly, are they supposed to keep doing this?)

(Surely this can’t be all they were made for?)

“Maze, get me a drink, would you?”

Mazikeen is Lucifer’s right hand, his bodyguard, the highest-ranked demon in Hell, named the Lady of Pain, the Whirlwind, and the Blood Dancer by her peers and underlings.

Pouring drinks is… new to her.

But this is what he wants; this club, this loud music, these inebriated humans constantly demanding attention and entertainment, constantly needing to be managed. And he’s her king.

She pours him his drink and listens to him play the piano, until some wretch attempts to grope her and loses two fingers.

Running a nightclub is, it turns out, complicated.

There are all sorts of rules and regulations regarding what can and cannot be done inside it.

At one point, Lucifer decides it would be fun to have white tigers roaming the dance floor. After a few days spent looking into that option, she has to explain that they may to have settle for waitresses dressed as tigers. He pouts like it’s her fault and goes back to the piano.

She’s also not allowed to kill anyone, which is, honestly, ridiculous. Mazikeen is an ancient being, a warrior nigh unparalleled, with centuries of experience contending with the worst the human race has to offer, and every single night she endures treatment from at least one of Lucifer’s guests that, even to her vast, reasonable, and patient mind, clearly warrants swift annihilation.

If murder is, indeed, illegal, how do all the mortal women in this city who serve drinks cope?

“You block it out, I guess,” says Suzy, a waitress with thick red hair and tired eyes, after Mazikeen has had to save her yet again from a patron with wandering hands (and now broken hands). “You know, just… don’t let it get to you. Grow a thick skin.”

Mazikeen considers the half of her body that has no skin whatsoever and snickers inappropriately. Then she gifts Suzy one of her knives.

Chloe gasps. “Maze! No! Absolutely not!”

“Why?” she asks, annoyed but also genuinely curious.

“I can’t just torture a suspect to get information, Maze. It’s wrong.”

Mazikeen considers saying: You already torture people. You lock them up in tiny boxes until their minds break and their lives are utterly ruined. How is that different? I don’t understand.

Mazikeen considers saying: You let Lucifer violate peoples’ innermost selves to obtain information. How is that better? I don’t understand.

Mazikeen considers saying: I don’t want to be good. I don’t care about being good. So why do I seem to put so much more thought into how to be good than you do? I don’t understand, I don’t, I don’t.

Instead, Mazikeen rolls her eyes and says nothing.

“Maze! No! What were you thinking?” cries Linda, rushing over to the cradle. “You can’t give that to a baby!”

She snatches away Mazikeen’s present; a blade, small and silver, just right for tiny hands, the same blade Mazikeen herself received from her favourite sister on her fourth birthday. It has tasted the blood of over a hundred enemies.

Charlie starts to cry and Linda puts the blade aside so she can pick him up and comfort him.

“Children need to be able to protect themselves,” Mazikeen insists.

“No, Maze. Children need to be protected.”

“No one protected me.”

Linda doesn’t say: Exactly. Why would I want my son to be anything like you?

Because Linda is kind.

But Mazikeen is perceptive and she sees it in her friend’s eyes all the same.

“So then, then it turns out that Jon Snow is actually Daenarys Targaryen’s cousin, right, which makes him – oh no! – a rival contender for the Iron Throne, and…”

“Ugh,” Mazikeen groans, cutting Ella off. “I thought this was a show about dragons! Why does it waste so much time on people either fucking or killing their relatives?”

She laughs at Mazikeen’s exaggerated annoyance. “It’s not just about dragons. There’s a lot of stuff about politics and war and, yeah, fucked-up family dynamics. Honestly, that’s one of the reasons it grips me so much. My own family’s always got a ton of drama going on, too. I mean – no incest. Not that I’m aware of. But you know all about my brothers.”

Mazikeen is about to ask what the dragons look like – whether the show’s version bears any resemblance to the beasts she’s ridden into battle – when Ella tilts her head sideways and squints at her. “Huh. Now that I think about it… I’ve told you all about my brothers but I’ve never asked anything about your family. That was shitty of me! Can I ask now? Or is it, like, one of those things you don’t talk about? Like where you’re from and how you met Lucifer?”

Fiddling with a lock of her hair – it’s straight and black today – Mazikeen says, “I don’t mind talking about it. Just… most people don’t care.”

Ella frowns, briefly (cutely, curse her). “Well, I wanna know! You got any brothers?”

“Yeah.”

“How many?”

“A lot. I’m not actually sure exactly how many there are now.”

“Oh, right. Gotcha. Are you close to any of them?”

“Not these days. But when we were young, we were pretty tight-knit. Didn’t really have anyone besides each other.”

Ella asks her more questions and though she has to keep her answers extremely vague, Mazikeen finds that she likes talking about her home and her childhood. Prolonged exposure to the human world has begun to make her feel insubstantial; a tool, a disguise, a thing without roots or history. Lucifer’s been no help with that, for he’s only ever known her as his servant (and, sometimes, when he’s in a good mood, his friend, by virtue of the fact that friendship with someone who works for you – who can do nothing but work for you – requires no tedious emotional labour whatsoever).

It’s nice to remember that she has, in fact, been other things. That she could, perhaps, be other things in the future.

“So,” Dan slurs, hunched over his beer. “You got whores… hordes… horns? Thought demons had horns.”

She’s busy applying a fresh coat of candy-pink lipstick to match her powder-blue bob. “Some do. I don’t.”

“Well, that sucks. That’s not fair! You deserve horns. You’re cool, Maze.”

Because that provokes a twinge of genuine affection, she says, “Wanna see what I have got?”

“Hell, yeah!”

He grins drunkenly.

“You need to promise not to scream.”

“Oh – oh, man, is it scary? Is it gross?”

She shows him her true face.

After a moment of owlish blinking, he shrugs and returns to his beer. “Eh. S’not that gross. Lucifer’s grosser. Wanna play pool?”

Amenadiel presents her with a beautiful black sheath. “I crafted it from my own feathers. It will keep the blade contained until he’s old enough to wield it safely.”

She slides Charlie’s knife into it. “Someone will need to teach him.”

“Who taught you?”

“Me? No one. They just threw us at one another and clapped for whoever survived. But… well. He’s not like me, is he?”

The angel places the sheathed blade down beside Charlie’s stuffed rabbit and plastic truck. “Maybe not now. With any luck, that will change.”

“Ma-aaze,” Lucifer groans, flopping back in his armchair with his long legs artfully folded and his hand over his eyes. “I’ve had such a tiresome morning. Pour me a drink, would you?”

“Pour it your damn self,” she suggests, standing on his penthouse’s balcony and admiring the view. His throne in Hell was about as tall as this building. From up here, all the little people down below look exactly the same.

He pouts and fetches a glass – and, to her surprise, one for her as well.

Mazikeen brings an abrupt, efficient end to the bar fight by slamming her palm into an assailant’s solar plexus.

He drops like a ton of bricks, joining the pile of groaning men, broken furniture, and smashed bottles. (Shit; it’s going to take ages to clean all this up. If Lucifer didn’t have infinite money, Lux would have gone bankrupt eight times by now.)

She turns to see Eve staring at her, beautiful mouth hanging open, and braces herself for the “Maze! No!”.

“That was so cool,” Eve breathes, and rushes over to leap into Mazikeen’s arms, only to draw back at the last second. “Oh no! You’re hurt!”

There is, indeed, a small cut on Mazikeen’s left hand.

“Don’t care, doesn’t matter,” says Mazikeen, reaching for her, wanting badly to be kissed.

But Eve drags her into a quiet back room where she applies disinfectant and bandaids with cartoon cats on them.

“I really wanna learn how you did that thing with your elbow,” she chatters, wiping away a few spots of blood with a white handkerchief. “The way his nose just went crunch! – man, it was fantastic.”

“I can teach you. If you like.”

Eve’s dark eyes are fond. “You’re always offering to do something for me – to teach me how to fight, or to carry something, or to protect me. It’s… like, I love it. But you know you don’t have to, right?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“I wanna do stuff for you sometimes. Oh! That reminds me. Lucifer was going to take Chloe to a wrestling match but then they had another fight and he’s back to being sad, sooo I stole the tickets out of his jacket. Wanna go?”

“I love you,” says Mazikeen, even though she’s said it five times today. She likes the way it sounds in her mouth. She likes the way it makes Eve’s whole face sparkle.

“I love you too, babe.”

#mazikeen #lucifer #lucifer morningstar #eve #chloe decker #dan espinoza #linda martin #ella lopez #my fic

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 3 years

Text

Dearest

Lucina and Robin have a conversation about the future; Lucina knows more than she wants to tell her mother.

----

The sea rocks their ships like a mother would a cradle. Lucina thinks of the palace in Ylisstol where there’s a baby who must have been laid down by this time of night, who should have been rocked to sleep by her mother. Instead Robin is here, on this swaying ship, with her daughter the interloper from another time, instead of the baby that is truly hers.

Their Plegian ship floats at the head of their Ylissean-Feroxi fleet, a fleet made of half as many ships as it was this morning. The water, full of ash and wood and bone, scrapes past the hull; hundreds of dead lie beneath the waves, damned there by one woman. Robin’s tactics are genius and unhinged and devastating for anyone who stands against her. Lucina learned the sword from her father, knew his skill and his potential from watching him, but she never could conceive of her mother’s tactical talent until now.

How many of the battles that she has led her friends through could have been won with more ease if she had her mother’s steady hand and level head guiding her? How many people could she have saved with her mother at her side? With both her parents?

Can she find out? In this time, she can find out, if she can save them.

(But if she must save only one—)

She is not their daughter, not really, and she should have stayed a distant ally but she clings to every moment she spends with them. Every word to her, every smile, even every stern glance, she commits to memory to refresh and supplement the oldest hazy recollections that she has been terrified to lose. She could not pry herself away now.

“Sweetheart? Can I have a word?”

Her mother’s hand on her shoulder; Lucina would carve that gentle touch into her heart. She would never again forget how her mother has never used a nickname or pet name for anyone but Lucina; she calls everyone else she knows and loves by their given name but Lucina alone is only Lucina in the heat of battle. Did she stop with Lucy and dear and the like before Lucina was old enough to remember? Or is this something new, her mother slightly different in a slightly different time.

“Of course, Mother,” Lucina says, and her mother takes a seat next to her on the deck, looking out across the dark water and the starry sky. The ocean is vast and unfamiliar; Lucina is not sure if she likes this new experience of sailing. She looks at her mother instead, searches for some familiar feature shared between them, a curve of the cheek or slope of the jaw. Lucina knows she most resembles her father, and her father’s face was not so lost to time and faded in memory as her mother’s, because Lucina could see him in herself. She wants to see them both in her bearing, carry them both close to her heart and in her every action.

(Even if—)

“What you said earlier, before the battle, when your father asked you about his death - you don’t know anything more than that about what happened?”

Robin speaks of it with an even tone, one Lucina does not know how she manages - but when she looks closer she can see the tightness at the corners of her mouth and the slight crease on her forehead. Robin wears a mask, not as obviously as her little Lady Marth did, but there is a sort of one over her face nonetheless.

“No,” Lucina says, and she presses her own lips together and tries not to think too hard about the memories behind what she is saying. When the Shepherds, what could even remain of the Shepherds without Chrom and Robin, came home with the Fire Emblem and Falchion and not the man who wielded them. The one memory that could never fade with time, that still burns fiercer than anything else she has ever known, is what it was like for Lucina’s own heart to break.

“Nobody - no one wanted me or Morgan to hear more than we had to.” And for good reason, if the pieces that Lucina knows fit together the way she fears they might and prays they don’t. “There were just whispers I wasn’t supposed to hear and then - then everyone who knew all that happened was - then they were gone too.”

The remaining Shepherds never spoke of that day, and they fell by ones and twos and left no one who could even talk about it. They left only orphans, just like Lucina.

She discarded her mask long ago but for a moment she wishes for it. She turns her head away and lets her hair fall between them, a curtain to hide behind. “Oh, darling, I’m sorry,” Robin says, and she reaches out and sweeps Lucina’s hair back out of her face. “I don’t want to make you think more about it, but I had to ask. I’m sorry.”

“What did you want to know?” Lucina asks. She won’t have the answer that Robin wants but she wants to understand even a part of how her mother’s mind works. She wants a glimpse into the thought process of a woman who can set the seas aflame.

(If she can better understand her mother then maybe she can finally grasp why she—)

“If you knew who the name of who it was that betrayed him.” Robin hooks Lucina’s hair back behind her ear, and her hand lingers on her cheek. “There would be no point to telling your father, of course. He’d never believe a one of us capable of such a thing, even if our own Lady Marth told him.” The smile on her face is fond and wistful and sad. Lucina deeply admires her father’s faith in people; she has never been able to muster the same. “But I thought… if you knew, I couldn’t let you shoulder it alone. Anything I can do to help, I will. For your sake. For your father’s sake.”

It takes all of Lucina’s strength to not break into tears. How much Robin loves Chrom - how could Lucina ever suspect her of doing the unthinkable? And how could she not, when there is no one that Chrom loves more in return? Betrayed and murdered by his closest friend - who could that be but the woman sitting beside Lucina, swearing to do her utmost to save Chrom from betrayal and death?

“What would you do, if you knew?” Lucina asks. “I don’t know what I would do, if I knew, and I’ve come all this way but I still don’t - I’m not a great tactician. I can’t - I can’t do what you can.”

“What I would do is nothing,” Robin says curtly, before Lucina can admonish herself any more, “because sometimes it’s better to assess, not act. If I first knew who, then I could try to understand why. And once you know why, you can glean from that the best course of action.”

Why, why, Lucina has laid awake so many nights across time wondering why. Why would a bond such as theirs break? How could this be their destiny after so long at each other’s sides? How long had they known each other when they fought together against Emmeryn’s assassins in Ylisstol, when Lucina saw not just her parents but two seamless halves of one great warrior? How long had it taken them to reach the point that Chrom could duck and Robin cast lightning over his head, through the space where moments ago he had stood, to strike the opponent in front of them; how long for Chrom to learn to not even glance back, trusting that Robin would not hit him? How long for Robin to learn to not bother looking over her shoulder when she sprinted ahead, trusting that Chrom would be right behind her?

Before she was his wife and mother to his children, she was his tactician, and they loved each other as much then as they do now. Lucina saw that clearer than anything else.

Tears are more and more difficult to hold back. “There was so much I wanted to learn from you,” Lucina says. She presses the back of her hand against her mouth. “Your magic - you promised me that once I had mastered all the basics with Falchion that you would teach me magic - and Father would show Morgan the basics of swordplay - he was supposed to learn the sword from Father, not from me—”

So much was supposed to happen. Morgan was supposed to be taught properly, not lean on his magic in battle because his knowledge of the sword is pieced together from imitating Lucina. Lucina was supposed to learn magic instead of sticking to her one sole strength. Lucina was supposed to be strong, and stay strong, for the sake of everyone she has to save; Lucina isn’t supposed to be crying on her mother’s shoulder in the middle of the ocean, aboard a vessel given to them by the kingdom responsible for all of Lucina’s nightmares and the end of the world.

“I’m so sorry we couldn’t keep our promises,” Robin said, her voice somewhere above Lucina’s head. “Oh, Lucy, I’m so sorry. Tell me whatever you want to learn from me and I’ll make the time for you. Your brother already harangues me at odd hours for tactical guidance, you know. Ask him to bring you next time.”

Lucina chokes on her laugh and it transforms into another sob. Of course he does. She wants to remember - gods, does she want to remember - every moment she had with her parents long ago, stolen in between their duties and their battles. Morgan has forgotten, and so he does not crumple under the grief of remembering promises broken by two people who wanted nothing more than to keep them. But someone has to remember the future if it is to be changed. To lose all of that pain would mean losing her foreknowledge, and if she forgets how her father died then how can she save him?

In her mother’s arms it would still be so easy to forget what she knows of her father’s murder. Lucina sits back and wipes her eyes.

“How old were you when we died?” Robin asks, like Lucina has ever mentioned her death. There is so much about her in Chrom’s dying days that Lucina does not understand, but Robin speaks of Chrom’s death as though it is a given that Robin died there too. As if they could never have a separate fate.

And if Lucina could forget what she heard whispered when she was not supposed to listen, then she would believe without hesitation the same: that Robin would die before she left Chrom’s side, for whatever good or ill that would do. She would believe that her clever, clever mother could lose her level head and any sense of living to fight another day if she saw Chrom fall before her.

(So how could she also believe that—)

“How long do we have to prepare? It must have been - well, obviously Morgan was born by then, for one thing. How much older than him are you?”

“I - I don’t remember.” How long ago her parents died, or how old her brother is, or how old she is, or how many years between them. “It was like time stopped, and - and sped up so much more. It feels like it’s been an eternity since then but it was also maybe yesterday.”

She feels like a fool saying such but her mother nods solemnly. “It’s always felt like that for me, too, in times of crisis. The war against Plegia lasted either a week or a thousand years - I know for sure it was one or the other, but I still can’t say which.”

All that Lucina could answer is that it was a shorter war than expected, and its end was bittersweet; she skirted through the streets of Ylisstol and found them full of crowds celebrating Plegia’s defeat and mourning their Exalt in the same breath. Lucina saved Emmeryn only for her to die weeks later, but it was her death that caused the bulk of Plegia’s soldiers to lay down their arms. Lucina saved her father from the dire injuries that plagued him through all of her memory, so that he could personally lead the armies of Ylisse and Ferox to victory over Gangrel, claiming the Mad King’s life and with it, justice for his sister.

“That war with Plegia lasted many years longer in my time,” Lucina says.

A deadlock, with two rulers too hellbent on taking the other’s head. Gangrel would never offer peace and Chrom would never accept it unless it came with Gangrel’s heart on a platter; Chrom would never offer peace unless he already had that platter while Gangrel would never accept because his conception of peace was the death of all Ylisseans. And the arrival of Valmese ships on the shores of Ferox and Plegia merely created new fronts for each nation to fight on; they never ceased hostilities to unite against the threat from across the sea.

“Father always wanted to lead from the front lines, but sometimes his injuries prevented him.”

Some of her earliest memories are of watching him train while she tried to mirror his movements with a wooden sword, but so often he was forced to stop sooner than he wanted because of the strain on something that did not properly heal. Lucina learned quickly the importance of staying in top condition, of never taking a bad blow; if one injury slowed her down, that left her open to take others. Her father’s scars were not just from the assassins that fateful night in Ylisstol. His wounds compounded each other time and again.

“And you were always reluctant to leave him.”

She hadn’t realized how inseparable her parents were until she arrived in this time and found they weren’t. Was that because of Chrom’s injuries, too? They had been together, Chrom and Robin, on the palace grounds when both Lucina and the assassins found them. In the time that only the assassins found them, when Robin must have seen Chrom nearly killed right in front of her eyes, was she always fearful that she would lose him if she weren’t ever-vigilant?

“All of my childhood, the two of you traveled back and forth. From the palace with me, to the battlefield, and back again.”

She has piled so much upon her mother that she doesn’t know what to expect her to respond to first. “Years,” Robin breathes. “The war with Plegia lasted years - gods, I can’t imagine.”

“You were gone the longest when you went to Valm,” Lucina says. “And when you finally came home—”

But some of them didn’t, brave Basilio’s life lost facing down the cruel conqueror. Lucina set foot in the arena in Regna Ferox praying that the events she set in motion would end with Basilio still living, but Emmeryn is dead and they are sailing to Valm and she is terrified still.

She takes a steadying breath. “When you finally came home, I got it in my head somehow that you wouldn’t leave again. For a while you didn’t, because it was quiet on the Plegian front. But that was just a farce, masking their true intentions, but we were all so tired of war that you hoped…”

“We didn’t have you to warn us,” Robin says.

They didn’t have Lucina, a prophet bringing them foreknowledge while trying to be a hero like Marth; they had Lucina, a child whose favorite pastime was getting to go down to the training yard with her brother and her parents, who didn’t realize how her world, balanced at the edge of a precipice, could so easily fall and shatter.

“You shouldn’t have had to warn us,” Robin adds, before Lucina can muster any words. “It shouldn’t be a daughter’s job to protect her parents. It should be the other way around.”

Robin’s tactics have kept Lucina by her side every battle that they have fought together when Lucina has been Lucina and not Marth. “She has already seen that I am more than capable, hasn’t she?” Lucina said to Chrom, after the second skirmish with Risen, surer then of her place with her father than with her mother. “You know that I can fight.”

“You are our daughter,” Chrom told her firmly, a hand on her shoulder, “and we will always want to protect you. Give her time - give us time. We committed to this war hoping to create a world where our daughter would not have to fight, and here she is now, already on the battlefield. Right now I can only turn my back on you because I know that your mother won’t.”

“You did your best,” Lucina says. “You always have.”

“I’m sorry it wasn’t enough.”

Lucina closes her eyes. She remembers Ylisstol, burning.

“When you finally got wind of what they were planning, you and Father took the Shepherds and an army to put a stop to it. So that they couldn’t resurrect Grima and keep the war going.”

Her voice breaks.

“And we couldn’t,” Robin finishes, “and they did.”

“Yes. You were too late to stop the Fell Dragon’s return.” Lucina inhales deeply. Too many winding paths of possible futures lay before them, each battle a new branch. How many of them are scorched and dead at the end? “And even now that we know what is coming, if the Grimleal find out that we know what they’re doing, then they may hasten their own plans. Grima might awaken at any time. We cannot trust that we will have a year, or five years, or a decade.”

“I could not live a decade in Ylisstol with your future hanging over us and do nothing,” Robin says. “When the war in Valm is over we must take the fight to them.”

“You did. You went there and - and you never came back.”

Lucina wore the Hero-King’s name like a mask, praying for his strength; now she seeks the strength of her parents. All of her armor still encases a little girl waiting all this time for her father to come home. He wasn’t done teaching her to wield a sword.

Something must show on her face, because Robin reaches out and lays her hand over Lucina’s, squeezing it. “We have you with us now, my dear. We’ll all make it back home to Ylisse, together.”

Can Lucina believe that? Why must she distrust reassurance from her own mother? Why must she in every battle both fear for her mother and fear her mother on her father’s behalf?

“It was Frederick who came to us with the news,” she says. “Aunt Lissa was still too much in shock to speak. She started sobbing every time she saw us. But Frederick brought Falchion and I realized, just - just a moment before Morgan asked where Dad was, why didn’t he have Falchion with him?”

Morgan’s memory is haze, everything but the past few weeks of the here-and-now made of faint impressions and distant visions. Lucina is the one who remember. She has to remember. She remembers the nights when Morgan crawled into bed next to her, wrapped in their mother’s old dark coat, both of them too tired to cry and too tired to sleep, and Falchion propped against the wall, its silver blade reflecting the moonlight.

“Frederick told us that Father was as brave as ever and fought for us until the end. The things you tell children. But I - one night I remember hiding in the hall listening to Frederick and Phila talk, that they thought they’d failed to protect them both now.”

“Phila?” Robin repeats, and Lucina is about to ask how she cannot recall the captain of her own pegasus knights, but she realizes at the same time that Robin does. “Of course - she died in Plegia, when we went to rescue Emm. But if, without your warning, Emm died in Ylisstol, then Phila might still have…”

Emm pierces Lucina’s heart like a spear. That is how Chrom always referred to his long-passed sister; she has no recollection of Robin doing the same, but when did Robin ever speak of her? How long had they known each other, Robin and Exalt Emmeryn? Does Robin even notice what she’s said, or is this an unconscious habit adopted from Chrom, another mark of their closeness?

“Phila asked him how this was possible, what could have happened,” Lucina continues. “How Chrom could have left with his most loyal Shepherds who would have all died for him and - and they all returned alive when he didn’t. And Frederick said that there was a betrayal. That Chrom was betrayed and murdered by his dearest friend.”

The math is easy, when she looks at it with a clear eye and level head. Chrom died, betrayed by someone dear to him. The Shepherds were his closest companions. Robin was the only other Shepherd who did not come home.

Robin is her mother, so Lucina finds it very hard to maintain a clear eye and a level head.

“If your father didn’t make friends as easily as he breathes, that would be a bigger hint than it is,” Robin says.

And a part of Lucina would scream until her throat is raw, go hoarse spitting blood, demanding her mother to stop pretending to be obtuse, stop pretending that she does not realize. It is you, it has always been you! That will not change in a year, or five, or ten! It could only ever be you! You must know that it is you! You killed my father and damned the world!

And a part of her would cry until her eyes are sore like she is the child she was when she last sat beside her mother too long ago. Of course her mother cannot realize. Robin would not think herself Chrom’s closest friend if that person is responsible for killing him. Lucina could not think her that person either, had she not been orphaned and heard for herself those hushed words. And even now - even after everything - a part of her thinks that she still must somehow be wrong. How could Robin do such a thing to her dearest friend, her husband and father of her children, her commander and her prince?

She wouldn’t - she couldn’t. Lucina sees that clearly. But Lucina has also stood in the midst of Ylisstol burning and seen the Fell Dragon’s gleaming eyes. These are two incompatible truths to the world. Robin would never betray Chrom, and Robin betrayed Chrom anyway.

Chrom was the one Lucina knew she could always rely on, her safe harbor in a storm. Nothing of him was a mystery - her father is a good man, kind and noble, who passed down to her the Brand in her eye and her ability to wield Falchion. Everyone who knew him loved him, and spoke of him with that love made evident. Robin was the unknown, the one who Lucina has been terrified to love again. But she does. She always has. She wanted to learn magic from her.

A few days ago, Robin handed her a Levin sword, and she smiled warmly and showed Lucina the best way to arc the lightning from a distance when she admitted to never having wielded one before.

“Are you all right, dearest?”

“Yes,” Lucina says. “I - yes, I’m fine.”

Robin raises her eyebrows, obviously doubtful, but she acquiesces and says, “It’s been a long day and we’ve had a great deal to talk about, besides. It might be best if we head in for some rest before anyone comes looking for us. Just, please remember,” she adds, squeezing Lucina’s hand, “anything you need from me, ask and I will.”

Anything. She doesn’t know what she offers by saying anything. Your life? Would you give me your life, for Father’s, if I asked?

“Yes,” Lucina says. “Of course.”

She prays she won’t have to ask. She prays it will never come to that. She doesn’t understand how it could. But it did once already, and carving a new riverbed for the path of time to flow down is harder than she anticipated.

A voice echoes across the deck. “Robin? Are you out—”

Chrom emerges from the gloom, his brow furrowed but relaxing when he catches sight of Lucina and Robin. “Isn’t it a bit late for you lovely ladies to still be up?” he asks with an easy smile, one that has always been able to calm Lucina’s heart, the one she missed most. “Robin, I do recall a conversation we had just the other day about getting enough rest and not overworking yourself.”

“I’m not sure how you think time spent with our daughter would constitute work,” Robin replies, and the expression on her face as she glances from Lucina to Chrom and back is full of such obvious fondness that it makes Lucina’s heart ache. How could this end the way it did?

Chrom is waiting, looking expectantly to Lucina, and as she stands she realizes that he is asking her to confirm or reject Robin’s explanation of events. “We only spoke of tactics for a little bit,” Lucina says.

Of his death - of his murderer - but she does not wish to mention that. They can pretend it was for any other battle ahead or passed. “Of course you were,” Chrom says with a slight shake of his head, but his smile is the same, full of affection. “Lucina, would you like to know just how soon after your birth your mother tried to get up and go back to work?”

“Chrom!” Robin scolds. “You don’t need to keep dredging that up!”

Lucina could already have guessed that the answer is too soon, and despite herself, despite the weight on her shoulders, she giggles. Chrom laughs too, and Robin, stifling a grin, smacks his arm with the back of her hand. In battle, they almost seem to function as one unit, so keenly aware of and comfortable with how the other fights. But in these moments, in the quiet, the way they speak to each other, act around each other, is filled with that same comfort and ease. It is a warmth Lucina is happy to linger at the edge of, as she follows them belowdecks and bids them good night.

She missed them both so much. How is her heart to survive it, if she is to lose them again?

But she cannot keep stopping to grieve when she has not yet lost them again. Better to find every way to save them from that fate. Hitching her shoulders up, she tells herself to set these thoughts aside for the night. The conqueror’s war is the most immediate threat to her parents’ welfare. That day in Plegia is still yet to come; she cannot know when, but it will not be tomorrow. They may make landfall in Valm tomorrow.

Morgan found a tiny room probably meant for a few supplies and claimed it as sleeping quarters for himself and his sister. Lucina eases the door open, hoping she can slip inside without disturbing her brother, but immediately she is blinded by the firelight that immediately engulfs the room. The light fades out as her eyes adjust; Morgan, sitting straight upright, wide-eyed, slowly dims the flame he conjured in his hand.

He always slept with a tome beneath his pillow the way Lucina and some of the others kept a blade. The chance of accidentally harming himself with it was much lower, but the threshold for consequences if he did was much higher. Lucina doesn’t know enough about magic to know how much can be done just with a tome nearby, without conscious will. She never learned to wield magic. She never asked.

“Oh,” he says, sinking back down but still holding the light up for Lucina. “Just you. Where were you?”

“I was talking with Mother,” she replies, checking to see that Falchion still rests propped in the corner. “She had some questions about - about the future.”

“Oh,” Morgan says again. He is quiet, dark eyes flickering about everywhere but Lucina, and then he adds, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For not remembering. Everything Mother told me about your future was awful, and that was just secondhand. You lived it all. Except I was there too, we lived it all, but you can’t even talk to me about it.”

Morgan’s coat - the coat that was once Robin’s, haunting eyes embroidered down the sleeves, scorching at the cuffs from magic cast by mother and son both - lays over his legs. Lucina has Falchion; Morgan has an old coat. He adores their mother. Even in that nightmare time, long before Morgan forgot everything, she never told him what she heard about their father’s death. Orphans, both of them, and he the little brother who she promised to protect - how could she take their mother from him again?

“It’s okay,” Lucina says. “It’s probably better for you not to, anyway.”

Morgan is quiet. Lucina isn’t sure she sounded at all convincing. But he does not have those specific griefs as she does, and since she does remember them, it is fine for Morgan not to. She just prays that she won’t have to take their mother from him in this time. She’s not sure he would ever forgive her.

The more she thinks about it - she told herself not to, not now, but laying in the dark with her brother breathing softly nearby she cannot help but think about the first time they lost their parents and what she learned of it—

The more she thinks about it, she wonders if Chrom would ever forgive her, either, if to keep him alive she had to take Robin’s life.

Anything you need from me, ask and I will.

If she truly meant that, then maybe the person most likely to forgive Lucina, should she be forced to kill Robin, is Robin.

The rocking of the ship, the huge hollow cradle taking them closer to war and unkind destinies, does not help lull Lucina to sleep. And when she does she dreams of flames on the sea, and on Ylisstol, and on the training grounds cast from her mother’s hands, the magic she promised to but never could teach Lucina.

#roddy fanfics #yes i am still letting chrom and robin destroy my life why do you ask! i still think about their family A Lot!

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capricornus-rex · 4 years

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Stronger Than Blood (7)

Chapter 7: Unlikely Prize | Cal Kestis x Reader

Requested by Anon

Summary: Meeting another Force-sensitive was one thing, but having them related to one of the most formidable known duelers was a whole other story to tell. While being stranded in another planet after barely escaping the Haxion Brood, Cal crosses paths with someone who’s at a crossroads with their own identity and lineage.

Also tagging @ayamenimthiriel

Also posted in AO3

Tags: Force-User! Reader, Force-Sensitive Reader, Sith-Related! Reader

Chapters: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 | Previous: Part 6 | Next: Part 8 | Masterlist

7 of ?

Cal charted a course back to Zeffo.

“Why’d you wanna go back there?”

“Well, I didn’t exactly have a good look of the place,” Cal shifts in his seat as he reasons out, sneaking a side glance at Greez to watch out for his reaction. “Because I blacked out after being caught into a stasis detonator.”

“Oh…” Greez moaned with guilt in stringing along his words.

You made yourself comfortable while the newly-patched up ship zooms through hyperspace. From the couch at the holotable, you watch the crew busy themselves with their dashboards and computers, while you’re stuck to staring at the planet’s map projection, though you didn’t mind—it felt nice to have everything staying still and quiet for a change.

The silence, the engine hum, and the faint chirps of the dashboard computers—altogether, it was nostalgic.

You were so used to the sparks of welding guns and blaster fire that the silence was completely foreign yet comforting. You allowed your back to slump against the smooth leather cushion, the engine hum lulled you to sleep like a lullaby, and the blue light glared back at your eyes, making it feel heavier by the second.

However, the latter was immediately cut off by Cal stepping into the room with you.

“Hey, how you holding up?”

“I’m okay, just exhausted from all of… this.” you gestured at everything, referring to the skirmish back at Nalima and even repairing the Mantis did a number on your strength.

Cal sat down next to you, but he didn’t initiate a conversation. Unmoving, you examined his features: his freckles gave him a certain charm, your eyes trailed along the waving locks of his hair—the blue glow oddly mixed well with his ginger head—but what really catches you is the awkward motions he does with himself such as slouching against the couch, shaking his knee, or fiddling with the chipping of his glove.

Both of you know perfectly well that there is that one topic that’s been crawling at the back of your minds. Either of you were just waiting for the other to bring it up. Cal was too shy to bring it up. As for you, the topic was an odd conversation starter—especially if you’ve only known the guy for only a few hours.

“Back at Melgu’s place,” Cal finally started. “He called you a Serennian.”

“Yeah, I am one,”

“How’d you end up in Nalima?”

“It’s long a story,” you sighed, lightly combing your scalp with your fingers, staring at the holotable with blank eyes to avoid looking back into Cal.

Sensing that it was a bit of a hard topic for you to open up. He decided on another question.

“Were you…” he trailed off, that was enough to draw your attention back to him. “Were you ever a Jedi?”

You shake your head, “No, but… they tell me that I’m strong with the Force. I’ve only known so little about it that I honestly don’t grasp the concept in full, really.”

“Who taught you about it?”

“My mother, but she wasn’t like me. I was told that I was more sensitive, for some reason that I don’t know or can’t explain or don’t understand at all. I only knew one other person who was like me… but I don’t want to be associated with him.”

The voices, the exchanges, the words—they all rang back into your head. The conversations of your parents that you overheard, they were mostly about politics—a subject you couldn’t comprehend for your age that time.

“Apparently, that one person who is like me is a Separatist leader,” you scoffed, resenting him. Fully remembering his name from the hushed, private whispers of your mother; never has she said his first name, only his title in full—with the original family name—or simply the title alone. “And he’s no ordinary Separatist leader. He wielded a weapon like yours. A lightsaber, as you call it.”

In an instant, he put two and two together.

Cal reminisces way back to the Clone Wars, he had heard of the name from various conferences where he tagged along with his master back in the Jedi Temple. Although he and Master Tapal never had the opportunity to face him whether in combat or in a diplomatic negotiation, this particular lightsaber-wielding Separatist leader often found himself the talk of the town amongst the Senate and Jedi Council alike.

The mere recitation of his name stoked the embers of hate and anger that you have always carried for him. Your conviction that he was the one behind the murder of your mother remained unwavering all these years—her death may not be by his blade, but her blood spilled into his hands anyway.

“All my life, the only name I knew and carried was [Y/N] Moorken. I believed it to be my family’s name, but when he said our name was altered, I realized that my mother was dissociating us—my father and I—from him. I remember her telling him that I was better off never knowing him at all. I’ve heard everything—what he’s done, especially back in the Clone Wars, and I promised myself that I won’t turn out like him.”

You pull your legs to your chest, hugging your shins with your arms and resting your chin over your knees; you couldn’t maintain eye contact with Cal, your mind dwelled on the memories of those heated exchanges, the spitting of words, until it reached to the point where the sight of the shuttle exploding—with your mother in it and perhaps the assassin as well—forced you to conclude your flashbacks.

Cal noticed your flinching, but both of you sat in silence. For one, he was relieved that you had told him sooner; you had your reasons—one of them being that you sensed Cal that he was trustworthy enough, it was a combination of intuition and the Force trying to guide you in baby steps.

“Does this change anything on how you think of me?”

Your straightforwardness took Cal aback. It took a lot of guts from you to speak so bluntly like that, despite it being quite a heavy topic for you to disclose. He couldn’t imagine why you would think that he—or any of the crew—would shun you for who you are… or were, at least.

That was the only time you looked back into his eyes, playing into a turquoise to teal hue from the illumination of the holotable. You hate yourself for bringing up more detail, although you couldn’t help it; you have been looking for an outlet—such as someone to open up to—and you simply let loose. A sigh concluded your piece, half-expecting Cal to react and the other half expecting him to say nothing.

He shakes his head, “No, it doesn’t. Though, it just… rather adds up to my perspective of you.”

“Right…”

The two of you remained in your seats, a quake that signaled the Mantis’s landing, it prompted the two of you to stride towards the door. The entry ramp opened and a cold gust of wind greeted you. A few droplets of the rain carried by the clouds riddled your cheeks, as if that’s the planet’s way of kissing you welcome. Goosebumps pelted your skin due to the abrupt change of temperature—from Nalima’s warm and temperate climate to the gusty windstorm of Zeffo.

“I’ll be away in a few minutes, this shouldn’t take long,”

“Where will you go?”

Cal points to his north.

“I won’t be long there, unless of course I end up winding into the wrong way,”

You chuckle, “I doubt it.”

“Are you coming with?”

You stammered at the beginning, “I just might take a look around this part. I wouldn’t wanna end up too far away.”

Cal ended the exchange with a curt “Alright then” and headed off. When he was gone, you had the space of the hangar to yourself. You walk to the west part of the platform and you had a full view of the waterfalls cascading with one another, their water black yet their foam white as clouds—as if the night sky had become the floor of this planet until the true evening falls.

Your shoulders jumped when a roaring TIE Fighter zooms past the horizon above the waterfall plateau. You watched it come and go like a comet in the gray skies until it disappeared into the mountain’s backside.

“Huh, no surprise there,” you thought out loud.

You turned around and sprinted towards the derelict hangar. It was devoid of life, but for a scavenger this may as well have been a gold mine! Crates upon crates towered over your height, some were flimsily blanketed with tarps that weren’t long enough to fully conceal them, exposing the Empire’s sigil tattooed in white paint on the boxes’ faces beside the label of its contents.

Using the hem of a tarp to wipe off the dust that’s collected on one side of a crate, you reveal the white Aurebesh label beneath the grime, the label reads: PROJECT AUGUR – RESOURCES.

The first two words were intriguing. You pulled away the tarp that covers its lid, you opened to find a medley of parts that were of great variety. Picking each one up to examine them and then returning them when they didn’t attract you that much, you went on rummaging through the crates for something that you could use. After all, it’s not like the Stormtroopers will notice.

“Do they even keep a track list of these stuff?” you scoffed, examining an odd-looking part that somehow resembled a piston but you knew full well that it wasn’t.

You didn’t notice the rust-colored blast door at the other end of the hangar until it resounded loud enough for its echoes to bounce across the natural stone walls. You jolted in response. The feeling of the unknown behind that door made your heart wild.

Out of the blue, it would’ve appeared that the wind had gained a voice—an incoherent yet audible sound fluttered with the stale wind. The air hummed—hollow and foreboding—but something about that door gravitated you to it, luring you closer until your fingertips touch the controls. The pads of your first two fingers rested on the button, you hesitate, that is until the air whispered to you again—you could’ve sworn you heard your name.

“Darling…? My darling [y/n]?”

You abruptly twirled to your back, eyes wide and frantic as they search the empty hangar. The voice uttered your name again, this time you turned to the door, hoping to find the face of that voice.

“Mom?”

You pawed the blast door, hoping that she’d call again; you finally pressed the button, the door whizzes open but you’re met with an empty corridor. Unbeknownst to you, the path and hallway laid out to you was not the real one. It was the Force testing your senses and perhaps your mental willpower.

“Darling, where are you?” Jezria’s melodic voice sounded almost too ghostly, but you didn’t notice. You’re too caught up with the idea of reuniting with your mother—even if she had been dead for years.

The illusion was so surreal, too enticing even, that you lost track of things—perhaps even your senses as well—in the expense of seeing your mother another time. You spot her, but she continued to go ahead of you, a gaping distance divided mother and child.

“Wait! Mom, wait for me!” you cracked. Chasing her through the long hallway that doesn’t seem to cease in length.

Jezria, of the shell of her anyway, kept on walking. Her back to you as she continued forward.

“I’m almost there!” you announced, though unsure whether you’re announcing it for your mother or coaxing yourself to keep on.

You came upon another door, thankfully the end of the tunnel, but as you opened the second door, the next place that you reached made your small yet eager smile dissolve.

You stand in the midst of a manor’s hallway. In a single glance, you easily identified that the architecture was of Serennian make. The gray marble floors, the finely embroidered drapes along the tall windows, and the expensive-looking deep purple wallpaper with light wooden paneling that was glossy to the touch. You know this interior even with your eyes closed.

It’s your house.

“Home?” your eyebrows furrowed so much that your forehead wrinkled. You surveyed the area, and then behind your back, the same rust-colored door remained. “I don’t get it…”

Nevertheless, you strode through the hallway, following your mother’s trail.

“Foolish child…” a faceless voice hummed along the walls.

“Who’s there?!” you violently spun.

“What weak resolve,” it continued.

“Where are you!?”

“Like mother… like daughter,”

You clenched your jaw and fists, slowly turning around while surveying the entirety of the hallway.

“Show yourself!” you snarled.

“Had you been surrendered to me, then things would have been significantly different. Your mother and father would still be alive. You’d have so much power in your hands that—not even in your current age—could fathom its real meaning down to its last fiber.”

“No, you’re wrong!”

A figure appeared from the curb around the end of the hallway. It was him.

“Count Dooku.”

Even for an apparition, he seemed satisfied to hear you utter his name. He took it as a greeting and bowed curtly with a smile making his white beard more angular.

“So, you finally decided to speak my name. No matter how many times my idiot sister tried to eradicate my very existence from your life.”

You reached for your staff and immediately drew it out to its full length. Count Dooku’s apparition chuckled, amused by your naïve courage.

“Oh, child, you do not understand what is right in front of you, don’t you?”

“Does it matter? I’ll destroy you either way. You had my mother killed!”

“Puh!” Dooku harrumphed, the aristocratic air loomed around him that it’s basically his aura. “Jezria was weak. Always trying to put a façade that she can never hold up! Incapable of protecting herself and ultimately her own daughter!”

“Stop it! Shut up! You don’t know anything about her—neither do you know anything about me!”

“I don’t need to. Once the Emperor has you in his grasp, with my mission complete, I have granted him a prize: my own niece, strong and powerful in the Dark Side of the Force!”

“I am nothing like you!” you roared. “I WILL NEVER BE LIKE YOU!!!”

——————————————————–

In the middle of his roaming, something piqued within Cal enough to stop him in his tracks. From the cliffside, the cold gale muffled out the abrupt, rhythmic thunder of the pulverizers, but that windstorm didn’t do much to stunt Cal’s senses with the Force. Peering over the black waterfalls below, he tried to reach out, albeit briefly, just so he could pinpoint whatever’s troubling him.

“Bee-chirp?”

“Yeah, I’m okay, just… had a feeling. Got worried for a second,”

Cal continued his way to the Imperial headquarters, upon his entry, all of the Stormtropers had their backs turned to him—whether facing the way ahead or keeping their noses stuck to their computers. He slipped into the elevator and slammed the up button. He got to the upper level, he prowled through the ventilation shafts. The Stormtrooper’s idle banter revolved around the subject of complaining that they got nothing to do in the planet and wanted to be assigned to another, where there ought to be action.

“Did you hear that?”

Both Stormtroopers’ heads panned across the room, searching for the source of the sound—which was Cal landing on the balls of his feet against the metal grates.

“Probably just those typical exhaust bursts from the fans,”

“Shouldn’t we report that? I mean, won’t that blow up?”

“Nah.”

Cal continued to stalk in the shadows, away from the enemies’ sight, just when he had his chance to strike, their hands immediately jerked up and pressed against the ear area of their helmets. He thought he had been spotted, but he stood corrected.

“Still, it’s better if we—wait, I’m getting a radio call here!”

“Me too! What the… Jedi?!”

The young redhead’s eyes widened upon hearing the words. He knew whom they’re talking about.

“She doesn’t have a saber though!”

“So, she isn’t Jedi?! Then what?”

“It’s the fugitive from Nalima! But we’re being called as reinforcements at the caves,”

“Ugh hate that place!”

Cal watched the enemies depart via elevator, en route to the ice caves.

“[y/n]…!” he exclaimed under his breath.

Luckily for him, Cal knew the shortcut—he just needed to pass through that Purge Trooper with a rifle.

Meanwhile you were facing off the swarms of Stormtroopers coming wave after wave on you. Thanks to that delusion, you didn’t realize that you’ve wandered off into the abandoned village. But your outburst at the end has caused another energy wave exploding out of you, disorienting and alarming the stationed Stormtroopers in that very area.

So far, you were able to fare quite well against them even with just your techstaff; with the adrenaline of the outburst, you felt like you could do this all day, not once did you feel tired. The voice of Dooku in your head—as much as you hated it to hear him—coaxed you with every move, distortedly affirming and encouraging your every attack.

“That anger is your best weapon. Show no mercy! Let the Dark Side of the Force give you the power you so deserve!”

“Get out of my head!” you snarled as you fought, not caring whether or not the Stormtroopers heard you.

As for those troopers with blasters, you evaded them—utilizing both the self-defense skills you’ve learned through the years, amplified by the Force with which you couldn’t harmoniously bend to your will yet.

Eventually, the soldiers in white armor have stopped pouring in, but their horde was replaced by a singular Purge Trooper wielding twin batons. This enemy’s body may be lithe, but here was a lethality that he imposed upon the way he projects himself to his victim.

“Well,” he snarled. “You’re no Jedi, but you are a prize for the Emperor!”

You didn’t exactly grasp what he meant by that, though it didn’t matter—your survival did.

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vivienna-vivid · 4 years

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The masters of Red have no personalities so I made them up.

Feend vor Sembren

Ah yes, Nasuverse!Edgeworth

Strict AF college professor who actually cares about his students. They affectionately call him “Professor Fiend”.

W O R K A H O L I C

A total romantic who loves his wife and son. If only he made a habit of actually coming home…

Did you know this man is 52??? Did you know his son Fezgram is 24???

The only one here who knows how to be a functional member of society.

Pretty heavy smoker, so he has a raspy voice.

Surprisingly, Feenie’s a connoisseur of wine. Kayneth introduced him to a lotta high-end alchohol in their college days.

Yes, he knew Kayneth. They were good friends before Kayneth bit the dust.

I dare you to make vore jokes in front of him. I dare you. You’ll die but at least it’ll be fun.

Listens to a lot of 70s-80s bands. In case you’re wondering, he’s a big fan of Queen and Fleetwood Mac.

Pretty technologically advanced for a mage. His pragmatism towards technology was inspired by a certain gun-wielding magus killer.

Was married into the Vor Sembren family. Since he was born a poor boy, he’s always trying to prove himself.

His parents were Chinese Singaporeans, so he’s fluent in Mandarin.

Feenie’s magecraft focuses on transmutation. With select materials, he can transmute one thing into another. He mainly uses his magecraft to heal wounds and create pseudo organs and flesh.

Has at one point intimidated a person by showing them a transmuted heart and lying that it’s theirs.

His wish for the Grail is… Well, he plans to give the Grail to the Association, so he doesn’t particularly care about the Grail.

It’s to run away from mage society with his family

Rottweil Berzinsky

OH BOY LOOK AT THIS DISASTER.

Australian. Because of that, he has a noice Australian accent.

S H A R P T E E F S

Man’s been in too much explosions

His Crowley-esque shades hides his lizard eyes.

“If I’m gonna do horrible things, at least I can make them FUN”

Think: Steve Irwin but borderline psychopath.

Is surprisingly good with kids! Rott’s the kinda guy who’d chastise a child for being mean and/or rude, but would teach them how to stab assholes. “Y’see a weird man offering candy from his van. Wha’dya do? Shank ‘im!”

Man’s a natural prankster. He’ll prank E V E R Y O N E and A N Y T H I N G.

Likes: Sunbathing. Hates: Cold weather and winter.

Thinks Gene Rum is a cooooooooooooold bitch with a stick up her arse.

Gene and Rott has some history. Both tend to be employed by the same people.

Rott may be a murderer, but he has standards! No killing children, no harming children, if employer does anything to children he will kill them.

Has killed more employers than actual hit targets.

In the manga, Rott can change into silver lizard form. He doesn’t like changing his form since the more he uses that ability, the more monstrous and mindless he becomes.

Rott is indeed a Chimera, a mage who is able to turn into an animal to some degree. He didn’t become a Chimera from his own volition, so that’s also a reason why he rarely uses his ability.

As a Chimera, he’s gained some lizard perks even in his human form. For starters, his saliva is toxic and has lizard eyes. He also can shed his skin to heal certain wounds. In Chimera form, he’s covered in nigh-indestructible scales.

Rott was an orphan who was adopted by a mage named Zagreus Berzinsky. The man wanted to create mythical beast of yore by forcefully fusing children with all kinds of beasts. Rott was one of those children.

Rott was able to escape with a few kids. Eventually, they made their way to the Clocktower. While he himself never went to school, he 100% made sure his “younger siblings” are enrolled in the Clocktower. It’s for their safety.

His wish for the Grail is for an antidote for Chimeratization. Oh! And to kill off Zagreus too!

Gene (Jean?) Rum

Gene, short for Genevieve. (Or Jean, short for Jeanette)

Straight-laced lipstick lesbian.

Likes books because, unlike people, they’re actually engaging. Nah she’s just a bit awkward and self-conscious.

Grew up reading Shakespeare, Arabian Nights, and Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

Since she’s broken into Ivan the Terrible’s library at least once, I can tell you that she’s a professional lock-picker. Wizard who took a level in Rogue.

Fluent in many languages due to her time abroad.

Favorite Genre: Russian Literature

HAS PUBLISHED HER OWN POETRY BOOK!! Though, it’s under a pseudonym and bringing it up will make her really embarrassed.

Thinks Rottweil is a bITCH-ASS MOTHERFUCKER.

Gene doesn’t care much about the morality of her employers. As long as she gets paid, she won’t stick her nose in her employer’s business.

You’d think she’d have Mystic Eyes what with her chilling side-eye.

Loves puns but you’d be hard-pressed to get her to laugh at one in public.

Finished her education in the Clocktower but chose to lead a life of a mercenary. Her family was… pretty miffed.

Never attends family meetups.

Org Rum is her little brother and his presence turns on her latent Cain instincts.

Do you have your rival family’s documents? Do you want to ruin them by exposing these documents but they’re encrypted? HIRE GENE RUM TODAY!

Gene’s magecraft focuses of aeromancy, the control of wind.

Her most famous technique is the ability to make thread-thin tornado chakrams. Anyone who touches these tordano-wheels will get sliced. If she focuses a bit harder, she can imbue her chakrams with lightning.

She makes those storm-threads with a small buckler-sized spinning wheel she bring along. It’s her mystic code and she’s very protective of it.

Cabik Pentel

The current patriarch of the Pentel Clan, a family of esoteric assassins/mercenary group.

Hardly ever emotes so it’s hard to tell what he’s thinking.

But he’s usually very honest and won’t sugar nor exaggerate his words.

The only reason he’s can understand other people (to a degree) is because his brother is such a good person.

Yeah, Cabik loves his brother very much. And as such, he loves his brother’s twin daughters. He’s somewhat of a cool uncle to them.

Doesn’t quite know how he feels about being patriarch since the clan is awful as all hell. He’s good at being an assassin, so he’ll continue the work in the meantime.

BOY ONLY KNOWS HOW TO KILL PEOPLE HE DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO HUMAN, BLESS HIM.

Proud father of houseplants and a cat

Q: Weren’t you and your brother called “The Gum Brothers” in college?

A: ………………………………………Ah. So you’ve chosen death.

How many daggers does this man have? A LOT

Seriously, you’d think he has a limit to how many daggers he can carry but. No. He just… fucking pops out another pair if the ones he’s using are lost.

His twin knives are called Rahu and Ketu and he loves them very much.

The Pentels specialty magecraft is body modification. Cabik uses this to make his body pliable as fuck.

This bitch can basically make his body have the consistency of a ferret’s.

Need to dodge? Fuckin’ dislocate your spine! Gutted? Move your organs upwards to not make them fall!

Deimlet Pentel

The older brother of the Pentel siblings. Supposed to be the next family patriarch but left that position for his brother.

Big teddy bear man. Big teddy bear wrestler man.

“HAHAHA!! I AM HERE!!” -Deimlet (and totally not All Might)

Divorced man of two daughters. BUT!! HE STILL LOVES HIS EX-WIFE VERY MUCH!!!

“I may want to remarry my ex-wife. Or not, haha……. Unless…;)?”

Stronk dad to stronk daughters. He taught them how to wrestle and….. he’s so proud of them ;’)

MADE OF LITERAL SUNSHINE!! IF YOU SEE THE SUN IN MIDNIGHT, YOU MIGHT BE LOOKING AT DEIM!!

Super protective of his mustache. It’s his magnum opus so do nOT MESS IT UP

Legitimately hates the Pentels, but still loves his baby bro.

Q: Weren’t you and your brother called “The Gum Brothers” in college?

A: What? I didn’t hear you there! Mind *cracks fingers* saying that again?

While he married out of love, his responsibilities as heir-apparent (and assassin) made him incredibly distant to his family.

When he was tasked to kill his then-wife’s brother’s family, he did so with much hesitation. Because of that, his brother-in-law nearly killed him and ended up dying anyway.

His wife was… not happy, to say the least. That’s why they divorced and she took the kids.

And that’s how he left the family! Killing, as it turns out, sucks ass!!

Good ending tho: he moved to Finland and started tutoring the Edelfelt kids in wrestling.

He’s… actually a masked wrestler there. He’s been on TV a bunch of times!

Joined the HGW mainly to make sure Cabik is doing fine.

Uses his family’s magecraft to super harden his body.

You can’t gut this man ‘cause he made hIS BODY INTO LITERAL STONE!!

Man is just Indian Alex Louis Armstrong. Thatse it! He cannot change this!

#verse; Fate/Apotheosis #Fate Series #Fate Apocrypha #LEMME LOVE THE MASTERS OF RED #yeah i know these are just *my* headcanons but!!! they deserve love too!!!!!#feend vor sembren #rottweil berzinsky #gene rum #jean rum #cabik pentel #deimlet pentel #nasu won't give them love them so i'll do it instead #vivien talks

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annoyedfanfiction · 4 years

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qui-gon x jedi!reader

“So I may have a slight problem.” You desperately jerked the ship to its side, spinning out of the way of some larger debris in Endor’s atmosphere. “I’ve lost the rear engines and I’m under pursuit. Going down on Endor.” The ship jolted as you entered a storm lower in the atmosphere. “The data chip is stored in an advanced pilot droid, RX-795, who was programmed to depart Takodana for Coruscant at 0300 hours standard time.” You pulled hard back on the controls as the holo ended, slowing your descent enough to gain some control of the crash. “Computer, wipe ship memory log.”

The holo ended, leaving the council chambers in silence. “Qui-Gon Jinn bring,” Yoda ordered, eventually, turning to the council Knight. “Immediately.” The Knight obediently darted out of the chambers. “Is that wise?” Koon inquired, quietly, leaning close so only the Grand Master could hear him. “Jinn and (L/N) have a history.” “Here, history helpful may be,” Yoda answered, serenely, as the doors opened once again and Qui-Gon was led through, his padawan at his heels. “Masters,” he greeted them, with a low bow. “To what do I owe the honour?” “Holo play,” Yoda ordered, and your image flickered back into view.

“Fuck,” you groaned, loudly, trying to dislodge your leg from the ship splintered around you. You could hear the droning of an approaching engine above you, and you managed to pull free and dive for cover as they started firing again. The remains of your ship crumbled in on itself, devoured by the fire-reductive implosion response, as your pursuers landed nearby. You began to move away through the undergrowth. “Ah, a little Ewok,” one of your pursuers sneered, darkly. “Ewok jerky for dinner, Kluna?” You stopped in your movements, turning to see the Mandalorian holding up a small Ewok, a juvenile male, as it screamed. “Only if you can make it as well as Inita, Frin,” his companion answered. Sighing deeply, you crept back towards them, unlit lightsaber steady in your hand. “You’re really going to kill a baby?” you asked, stepping out of your cover. Frin grinned, darkly, still holding the struggling Ewok by the scruff of its neck. “Well, we’ll kill you first,” he offered. Kluna raised her blaster. “Wow, I appreciate the offer,” you snapped, lunging behind a tree as Kluna began firing on you. “But I’d rather neither of us were killed, you know?” Darting forward, you swiped your ‘saber through Kluna’s blaster, splitting it open and leaving the front half to fall to the ground. Growling, the Takodanan woman snatched a second blaster from her belt, and you weren’t fast enough to dodge the first shot, which skimmed along your cheek. You hissed in pain, but darted forward to thrust your blade through her stomach, sending her choking to the ground, black blood spilling from her mouth. You grimaced, but ducked as Frin fired at you, throwing the Ewok aside and letting it scamper away into the jungle. Batting away his fire, you moved forward, but he didn’t back away as you reached him, withdrawing a songsteel blade. You countered his first strike and parried, but he matched you blow for blow, even as you pushed him backwards until he was pressed against his ship. You didn’t notice the fighter droid in the back of the ship until a blaster shot rang through your ribs, knocking you away from the Mandalorian. Your opponent grinned, raising his songsteel blade, but was immediately knocked back by the baby Ewok, shrieking loudly. Almost instantly, the clearing was filled with adult Ewoks. Small, but fast and armed to the teeth. You lunged forward, burying your lightsaber in the Mandalorian’s abdomen, below where the Ewok infant clung to his neck, scratching and snarling. The effort splintered the light behind your eyes, and you dropped to your knees, blackness glinting around you.

“Retrieval mission this is,” Yoda stated, calmly. Qui-Gon’s composure had not flinched, but they could all see he was impatient to leave. “And if they are not on Endor?” he asked, hands still carefully folded within his sleeves. “Report back,” Windu answered, evenly, looking his old friend in the eye. “Two of you are no match for the Black Sun.” “Which does raise the question why (L/N) was sent alone,” Qui-Gon pointed out, simply, before bowing once again. “We will report back as soon as we find anything. Good evening, Masters.” He turned on his tail and walked out, leaving Obi-Wan and the Council staring blankly after him, before the Padawan mumbled an apology, bowed, and followed his Master out. “You probably shouldn’t have said that.” They could hear Obi-Wan saying, as the doors closed. “And they probably shouldn’t have sent one Master, no matter how capable, against the Black Sun syndicate, Padawan,” came Qui-Gon’s reply, unerringly calm. “If I have not yet taught you that the Council cannot always be correct, then I have failed in my duties as your Master.”

You were alone when you woke in the clearing. The sun was setting, and our enemy’s ship was largely intact in the more complex areas, although much of the outer plating had been removed and damaged by the Ewoks. You couldn’t complain too much, given that they’d saved you, so you simply set to the tedious work. The snapping sound of rope nearby was immediately followed by a loud shout in clipped Coruscanti basic. You pulled yourself to your feet, careful not to clatter against the metal plates scattered around you, and moved silently through the forest towards the sound. “I thought Ewoks didn’t use technology,” a familiar voice complained. “To be fair, our records are based on Ewok evolution two centuries ago,” another answered, amusement barely hidden in his voice. “It appears they have advanced to their stone age.” “Brilliant.” Obi-Wan’s voice was bitter. “Can you let me down now?” Ewok chirruping piped up as he spoke, and you reached them in time to see the Ewoks encircling the two Jedi. “Woah, woah,” you stepped out from behind the trees, standing between the Jedi and the Ewoks. “We are friends. Saved your young one.” “You speak Ewokese?” Qui-Gon asked. “We’re about to be murdered by sentient teddy bears,” Obi-Wan lamented from above. “Jeerota?” one of the Ewoks repeated. Another one, who you recognised from the clearing, stepped forward and said something you didn’t understand. Immediately, Obi-Wan came rushing down as one of the others cut his rope. Qui-Gon caught him with the force, and as quickly as they had come, the Ewoks disappeared into the jungle again.

“And just what are my two favourite Jedi doing on Endor?” You helped Obi-Wan to his feet after Qui-Gon lowered him to the ground. “Looking for you,” Obi-Wan replied, dusting himself off. “You’re bleeding,” Qui-Gon commented as he examined you, eyes settling on the dark wound in your side. “I ran across a few complications,” you explained, trying for levity. “Saved an Ewok, got saved by an Ewok, got shot, crashed my ship, fun times.” “I’m sure.” Qui-Gon’s voice was dry as he offered you his arm. You took it, gratefully, leaning against him. “The ship isn’t far,” Obi-Wan promised, though you could feel the worry radiating off him. You tried to smile at him, but darkness was gathering behind your eyes again. Qui-Gon’s presence, as always, emanated warmth and peace, even as fear stirred in his blue eyes. “(Y/N), you need to stay awake.” His voice was gentle, but commanding, and you forced your eyes open, not protesting as he took the rest of your weight up into his arms. “Obi-Wan, get the ship running.” Obi-Wan nodded, and started off ahead, careful of nearby traps.

“Why did I ever become a fucking Jedi?” you mumbled, blinking away black spots in your vision. Qui-Gon chuckled, looking inquisitively down at you. “Somehow, I suspect you’d get yourself in equal amounts of trouble with or without the Council, (Y/N),” he pointed out, hastening his step. The ship came into view as you laughed, quietly. “Probably true.” He laid you gently on a cot in the ship, reaching for a medical kit. You grabbed his wrist when he turned back to you, and smiled up at him, blearily. “But without the Council I’d be allowed to be in love with you.” Your eyes widened as a sharp burst of pain shattered through your chest, knocking you awake. Tears trembled in your eyes as you managed to pull yourself into a sitting position, leaning forward to Qui-Gon. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.” You pushed back away from him, folding in on yourself, ignoring the tugging of pain in your side, even as he spoke to soothe you. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have– I’m so sorry.” “Hey, hey!” He took your hands, breaking through your panic and forcing you to look up at him. “You need to stop moving and breathe, alright? You’re going to hurt yourself.” He carefully moved closer, helping you unfold yourself from the position you’d tangled yourself into and gently laying you back down. “Now, I’m going to try and stop this bleeding, and we’re going to get back to Coruscant. I need you to stay calm for me, okay? We can talk about this when you’re better.” You nodded, mutely, releasing his hands as he moved to tend your wound again. “Good, alright, now this is going to sting.”

Vague irritation flooded you as you woke, the even, repetitive beeping of a monitor beside you unsurprising but still brilliantly annoying. You quickly became aware of a warm hand pressed into yours – large and calloused, as yours was, by the years of wielding a lightsaber. His Force presence radiated Qui-Gon’s familiar calm, but you were aware of another voice as well. “The Council does not see the Living Force the way you do, Qui-Gon.” Windu’s tone was exasperated, but fond, a deep undercurrent of worry stirring beneath it. “I have known that for many years, old friend.” Qui-Gon always had been stubborn. “They will see a risk to the Dark Side,” Windu pointed out. “I would expect that opinion of me,” Qui-Gon answered, evenly. “But can you honestly tell me anyone would believe that of (Y/N)?” Mace was silent for a moment. “No one is above the Code, Qui-Gon,” he stated, eventually. “Darkness does not rule in either of you, but the Council has always ruled by the Code.” “I have known that for many years also.” You opened your eyes to see the wry smile he offered Mace. “And I have never approved. If this is the final straw for the Council, then I will leave this Order with pride.” “And (Y/N)?” Mace demanded, harshly. “You would drag them down with you?” “I would go willingly,” you interrupted, struggling to pull yourself into a sitting position. You smiled at Mace. “It’s been a while, old friend.” “Too long,” he answered, though there was sadness behind his smile. “I will leave you to recover.” He turned to the door, and paused. “Oh, and (Y/N)? Don’t ever let him forget that you are way out of his league.” The doors swished closed behind him.

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afewmarvelousthoughts · 5 years

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Truth Pt. 6

Master List: @afewmarvelousthoughtsadmin

Request:

What’s up sug! sorry you’re struggling right now but I’ve come to help you If you could bring this to light for me I’d absolutely love for YOU TO DO JT So basically Bucky X Enhanced reader who are fuckin enemies. Hate each other to every last fiber of their beings bc Bucky is rude and she calls him out on it. AnywHs, they get drunk, truth or dare (go crZy baby) and LOTS LF dirty talk if u wanna do smut but if u don’t then buck taking care of her while she’s drunk cause she admitted her feelings

Pairing: Bucky X Reader (Enhanced)

Summary: Since The Avengers gave you a home the only blight has been Bucky Barnes, a ghost from your past that you can’t seem to shake. It makes you hate him. The feeling, it seems, is mutual. But… a simple game reveals that maybe things aren’t quite so simple. (Post Winter Soldier AU)

Warnings: PTSD, flashbacks, lots of feels, night terrors.

A/N: Yeeeeeeaaaaaahhhhh. Here’s a thing. It’s an intense thing. Though intense in a different way than Part 5.

@wonderlandmind4 and I were chatting about vulnerability and honestly, that’s kind of the entire point of this chapter. Because y’all, being vulnerable in front of someone is fucking HARD.

Tags are open!

@midnightdream83 @mywinterwolf @disagreetoagree @breezy1415 @peachthatdrinkslemonade @wonderlandmind4 @piensa-bonito @handplucked @buckysstar @sam-jae @marauder--harder @for-the-love-of-the-fandom

[Bucky]

Bucky wakes up drenched in sweat, shaking, throat raw.

“Sargent Barnes?” Jarvis intones in a way Bucky has heard far too many times.

“I’m… I’m good,” he pants not wanting Jarvis to call for back up.

“Sir if you don’t mind me-“

“Not now, Jarvis.” Jesus, even a dick to the computer aren’t you?

Jarvis had good reason for concern. This made five days straight, every night since that mission, he woke up screaming.

He braces his head between his knees, trying to get the tremors to calm. Counting, holding his breath the right way, all the different coping tools his therapist taught him. Sometimes though… you just needed to beat the shit out of something.

He looks at his phone, 2:45 in the morning. It was after midnight when he’d gone to bed so the dream couldn’t have been going on for more than an hour and a half… it felt like a lifetime.

A flash of it plays in his mind: Dancing with Nancy, she was pretty and witty, had real moxie, he’d always liked his women with a little bite. As they danced though she aged in his arms until she was nothing but a wrinkled corpse, a reminder of what he should be now. Then the body morphed into that woman from the facility, skin red and painful to see, the power you so effortless wielded tearing her apart from the inside out. But… It was her eyes… they sparkled like yours. He shudders and bolts for the bathroom to splash cold water on his face.

When he looks in the mirror he can’t help but stare. It always felt like the image was wrong somehow like a double exposure of almost the same exact shot so things were just a little off. On the one hand, he looked so much like the pictures in the museums, only a handful of years older, same dark hair, same eyes. He was even getting grey in his beard at the same spot his pa had. On the other, there was a coldness, something not quite human there he thought. Something broken.

Can’t focus on that. He felt like he was about to snap and that was never good. He pulls on some sweat pants and throws his hair up before heading to the elevator.

“Training ground, please.” The elevator moves. Even the AI wasn’t talking to him. Great.

On the way down Bucky tries to get ahold of himself. His right-hand keeps trembling, other images from the dream popping up as soon as he thinks he’s cleared it from his head. That fucking chair. Jarvis was going to suggest an appointment with his therapist, it probably wasn’t a bad idea, not that he thought it would do any good.

The doors slide open and he trudges out, not focused on anything around him. Because of this when he walks into the gym he’s a little taken back by the image of you sitting on the ground, back against the wall, and the meat locker temperature of the place making goosebumps rise on his skin.

He hadn’t seen you at all since the mission. Really, he hadn’t seen much of anyone. Steve hadn’t mentioned you and he was worried that maybe you had been disciplined on his account. He understood why you lashed out at him, they didn’t. But he knew logically that wasn’t how things worked here.

You look up, eyes red-rimmed, sweat glistening on your skin. Even in this state it still takes him a second to get his bearings. You were so striking, beautiful…

There’s a part of him that wishes you were happy to see him so it hurts that the look you cast is venomous. Which is stupid, you have every right to hate the sight of him after the way he behaved.

Your tone says it all when you rasp, “Of fucking course. Almost 100 stories and here you are.”

“Nice to see you too.” Even if it was deserved he’s not in the mood. “You done fucking up every punching bag we have,” he gestures to the pile of busted ones in the corner, “or do you plan on leaving some for the other kids to play with?” Can you not be civil for one second?! He inwardly berates himself.

“Have at it,” you say standing. He notes the way your body shakes. “Not like it’s helping me any.”

As you pass him he grabs your right arm gently, metal flexing around your wrist, “Wait,” he says softly needing to make amends.

White streaks of light pulse up your arm for an instant. “Let go of me, Barnes,” you growl. It feels like a slap.

“So I’m Barnes again?” For a second you shoot daggers at him and he thinks you’re going to snipe back. Instead, you sigh and look at the floor, seeming to wilt as you let the breath out. He releases you.

Slowly you lift your gaze to meet his. Your eyes are glassy, brimming with tears, and so very haunted. “Sorry,” you croak out and his chest constricts. He watches you, your eyes shift suddenly every few seconds as if to track something that’s clearly not there. Damn.

“What’re you seeing?” He asks softly. This was something his therapist had suggested when he first got to the tower and was crashing with Steve. If he was in a flashback talk it out.

You shudder and focus on a point beyond him, “Han… handlers.” These were a very specific breed of Hydra agent trained to keep their assets, in line. They were the ones with their little red books and ‘magic’ words. This could be very bad.

“Are they giving you orders?” A flashback could include auditory hallucinations. His had at the beginning, they almost wiped him, it was horrific. You purse your lips and shake your head no. “That’s good.”

Pressing the heels of your hands to your eyes you let out a low scream and thud to the ground. You bury your face in your knees and for an instant, you pulse, one solid light all over despite your attempts to freeze the power down. Shit. This is bad.

“I just want them to go away. I need it to go away. I just want to fucking sleep.” You’re rocking back and forth, a low keening coming from you. He had thought he was about to snap earlier. You were already fraying.

“Y/N,” he crouches in front of you, worried that if he touches you it will set you off and that would be… well a promise, the only one he made you, broken in a little over a week. You could level this building. “Look at me.”

When your eyes meet his, your pupils are blown out, adrenaline pumping hard through your system. He needs to bring you down but he needs to know how far gone you are.

“How long have you been without sleep?”

“I… I… slept with you. I mean…”

He smiles a little, “Yeah. I know what you mean. And since?” Your eyes shift, invisible enemies moving behind him. “Eyes on me,” he says firmly.

It takes effort, he can tell, but you move them to his. “It’s… I…” You pause thinking, “I mean here and there… bits. Not all since…” Another tremor rocks you, you don’t pulse but the tendrils of light on your skin glow bright. “They’re always… there.” Something like a sob comes from you, you cover your mouth reeling in any further expressions. He aches for you.

“Who’s there?”

You look at him, expression begging for understanding, “All. Of. Them.” He does understand. Your eyes clench shut. The nightmares are everywhere for you so it doesn’t matter if your eyes are open or not. “Her,” you manage, voice cracking.

“Me too,” he whispers. Your eyes open, little sparks there just around the pupil.

Your mouth opens and closes as if you can’t find the words. Finally, “She… she was like me… and I…”

“Saved my dumb ass is what you did.” Bucky offers you a smile. He doesn’t know if this will comfort you but he feels he should say it, “And saved her from more suffering.”

You scoff, “How fucked is it when you can’t tell the difference between murder and kindness…”

He just stares at you. Unable to formulate a suitable response. Because the real answer was that sometimes… there wasn’t a difference.

Suddenly you lean forward and grab his hand, he flinches a bit, worried about your stability. Your gaze is steady for the first time though, “Promise me something… please… please, Bucky…” You’re… begging.

He gives your hand a squeeze, “Anything.” He means this. Anything you asked of him he would do.

“Don’t let me become that again…” His brows knit. “I’d rather be dead than theirs ever again. Please…”

He stares into your eyes, for an instant they’re the woman’s from the facility, dead, dark, the feeling of his fingers closing them forever. He shudders, unsure if he could do the same to you.

“Bucky promise me…” your tone is desperate and your skin begins to lift to that solid glow.

It’s reckless, he knows this, but his body moves of its own volition taking your face gently in his hands. His eyes burn with tears that he won’t let fall and he kisses your lips softly, you press back into the kiss to his surprise, and his heart lifts a touch. He pulls back looking at you, still cradling your face. Your eyes are wide, the dark circles under them making them all the more haunted, screaming for his answer, but you aren’t glowing and that was good.

“I will never let them take you, Y/N… ever. I swear that to you.” He hopes you don’t call him out on his wording. While he means this, has possibly never meant something so fully in his long life, he won’t kill you to keep you from them. Burn every bit of Hydra from the face of the planet? Now that was a different story.

[Reader]

You swallow hard. The sincerity in his voice and his steady stare calms a part of the storm raging in you. In place of the swirl of fear, dread, and panic however you begin to feel how much your whole body hurts.

It’s as though every hair follicle aches, muscles throb from being constantly tense, head pounding from exhaustion, your skin raw on the inside from the power ceaselessly pulsing within you, and that makes you think of her all over again… You feel like you’re going to be sick. Bile rises in your throat, you force it down pulling away.

Reluctantly he lets your face go. You lean to the side, hands flat on the floor, staring at the concrete, and heave a little, trying to ground yourself here and not lose what little dignity you had left at this moment. His right-hand lights gently on your back, the touch sending not unpleasant shivers through you.

“It’s ok,” he says softly, “let it out if you have to. I’m sure as shit not going to judge.” You snort out something like a laugh.

He sighs, “When’s the last time you ate?” All you can manage is a shrug. Yesterday, maybe was the answer. You weren’t trying since nothing stayed down long.

“Ok, look at me, doll.” Doll. He’d called you that the night you were together… you kind of liked it. You do as he asks, turning to him slowly but remaining slumped over.

The fingers of his right-hand stroke the hollow of your cheek. “Is there… someone you… talk to. A-”

“Shrink?” You cut him off.

“Yeah,” he says. You don’t have the energy to explain you’d seen her twice since but here you were. Instead, you just nod. “I assume you’ve,” you nod again. He sits cross-legged, “Doesn’t always do much for me either…” It wasn’t her fault you think. She just hadn’t been equipped to deal with the level of fucked you brought to the table.

He rubs his right hand over his eyes, almost as sunken as your own. That mission did a number on him too, hence why he was here.

“I’m sorry,” you say, righting yourself carefully, to maintain your delicate equilibrium.

“For what?” Bucky’s face knits in confusion.

“You’re dealing with your own shit, you didn’t need me to come and dump mine on you too…” You were sure you could find room to tuck this guilt in with the other menagerie of painful emotions inside you.

“You didn’t dump,” he shakes his head, “I asked. And… like I said… you saved my life… hell, theirs too.” His gaze is intense, “We both know you did even if no one else does. I think that allows for just a little dumping.”

All you can manage, once again, is a shrug. You knew you’d saved him. He’d be dead in the bottom of a crater had you not turned back. A wave of exhaustion hits you and you sway a bit closing your burning eyes. This was sort of like being drunk, you think, only far less fun.

You feel his right-hand slip around your left, “Will you let me return the favor?” Opening your eyes, you stare at him, unsure of his meaning for a second. Oh.

It was true you could go longer than the average human without sleep or much sustenance but you were still for all accounts and purposes a human, you had limits, ones you were coming dangerously close to.

Part of you wants to ask how he intends to return it, wanting to know if its a kindness you can tolerate. Instead, some other part of you nods yes. Agreeing without consulting your greater whole to let someone in.

“Come on then,” he stands, extending his left hand. You take it and pull yourself up, relying on its seeming immovability. Still, you tilt precariously, having moved a bit too fast for your body which was now barreling toward a full shut down.

Without word or warning, he slips his right arm behind your knees and lifts your unresisting frame into his arms. You bury your face in his chest, so past caring, breathing in the smell of him, and grasping his shirt with your fist.

“I’ve got you now,” he whispers as he steps into the elevator. “You’re safe.”

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky #the winter solider x reader

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whiskeyslick · 5 years

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Anne Baring - Kosovo Easter 1999

Warning: graphic images of rape and atrocity. Kosovo Easter 1999 Anne Baring Listen to the Good News, they said… Then, over the mountain pass, deep in snow, we watched those who had lost all except life stumble towards hope, carrying infants, dragging children, old people wrapped in plastic like loaves of bread, so they could be pulled more easily over the icy surface. A woman tall and cragged as an oak leads a line of survivors. Some can walk no further in the heavy snow and die where they fall. A young girl holds her mother in her arms as life ebbs from her body. This time we saw the face of barbarism. This time we saw them: people like us, in clothes like ours, arriving in shock, avoiding the mined land, trudging the last miles along the rail track to the frontier; faces contorted with grief, women, men, children weeping uncontrollably, having lost everything save each other. Day after day we saw a human flood pouring across frontiers: lines of wagons, carts, tractors, trailers, a horse, a donkey; the old in wheelbarrows, and people walking, walking, soaked in icy rain through days and nights of anguish, carrying the old and young so dear to them. We saw bewildered people forced onto trains trying to hold families together, women giving birth alone driven trembling with their new-born into the maw of that suffocating mass. Helplessly we wept with them, seared by their suffering, longing to help, to put our arms around them, comfort, warm them; but we could only send money, food, love, and hope that they would reach shelter from that relentless rain. There was no time to gather children gone to play with friends, no time to warn others, no time to feed the animals, milk the cows, or say goodbye to the dear land, home for centuries. There was no time to gather provisions for the journey: milk for babies, food for toddlers, shoes, nappies, warm clothing. Women made knife-sharp choices - what to take, what to leave - choices to make the difference between life and death for those too young to know what was happening. Women who had seen husbands, sons, fathers shot before their eyes, kneeling, hands clasped behind heads, knowing they had only seconds to remember everything they loved, to treasure the precious life that would soon, so soon seep into the ground. Listen to the Good News, they said… Can this be happening still? This time we saw the face of barbarism. Men obeying orders. They took the young girls away out of the cars, out of the trailers. Everyone knew what would happen. Girls too young to imagine the coming thrusts tearing their soft skin, the rank smell of masked men crazed with blood lust, and hatred for the innocent girl, mother of tomorrow's enemy. Some they shot, some returned to the convoy hours or days after the rape. How could they hope to find their families, comfort for soul and body in that mêlée of desperate humanity? What solace could they find among people for whom rape is defilement, a shame to be hidden? How could this further pain be endured by those who had already known annihilation? If I had seen my daughter taken, her still fragile body shrinking with fear, her eyes pleading for help I could not give, my heart flayed by feeling, my scream would sound through centuries. Even now I hear it torn from my gut for those young lives blighted by the encounter with beasts. Century by century men have tracked each other through greening forests blessed with birdsong. Intent on killing, could they see or hear the marvel? Could they stop in wonder at the sound? How does a man become a predator, able to kill, rape, mutilate? Surely it is time to ask. Surely it is time to enquire. Surely it is time to search for answers. All this has happened so many times before. Is it the old herd instinct that binds together the men of a tribe? Is it the territorial instinct that attacks the stranger? Is it the memory of the primordial clan bonded together in the hunt? Is it the warrior ethos passed from father to son? Or the secret vengeance of mothers who have lost their sons? Is it the brutality endured by children who grow up to brutalise others, avenging impotence with omnipotence? Or is it the hatred nurtured by priests who, century by century, have called in God's name for the extermination of those they demonised, anathematised, banished from the circle of God's love? "Malignant Aggression" Fromm called it. Malignant is a strong word, an appropriate word for the kind of barbarism we have seen and heard. Men are trained to obey orders reflexively, without thinking. Obedience to tribal leaders, military leaders, religious leaders, has conditioned them to obey the call to kill, fearing shame, rejection, numbed to the pain of the other. "To be a man I have to kill. To be a patriot I have to kill. I wear a mask to inspire terror. I wear a mask to hide from myself. I do not know that I am mad. My orders are to kill, rape, destroy: My orders are to kill because the others are a different race. My orders are to kill because the others profess a different belief. My orders are to kill because the others are the enemy. Killing is easy - as easy as saying 'Good Morning'." What does it feel like to be this man? Does he ever ask himself: "What am I doing as I raise my gun to murder my brother? What am I doing as I violate and mutilate his body? What am I doing as I force my body into the violently trembling body of his wife or his daughter? What am I doing as I kick the head of a decapitated man around the yard of his home while his children vomit? What am I doing as I shoot the young child at his grandfather's knee? What am I doing as I slowly sever the ear of my brother and throw it to a dog to eat? What am I doing as I destroy his home? What am I doing as I rob him of all he has left? What am I doing as I tear him from all he holds dear? What am I doing as I allow hatred to corrode my soul?" I cannot escape the guilt of what I have done. I have obeyed orders; I have lost my soul." And what of the men who shrink from barbarity yet must kill or be killed for that is the law of the tribe? And what of the conscripts, who cannot endure the killing? And deserters on trial for their lives, they cannot forget the eyes of those they murdered, pleading for life; the rigid bodies of girls taken away to be raped, homes burnt to bone, orphaned children screaming for fathers, mothers; the eyes of the dying, the eyes of those who, like themselves, knew fear for the first time. And what of the mothers who see the life they have loved and nourished and cherished through hours, days, years of growth destroyed in a second by a bullet, a knife, a bomb? For nothing. Can this be happening still? In the camps thousands crowd together in the mud, the faecal stench, struggling for a patch of earth, a tent, water, blankets to survive the freezing night. Mothers searching, searching for a child lost on the journey who sobs somewhere, lost, alone. Some children cannot speak of what they have witnessed. They draw pictures to tell the story of what they have learned from us who, in spite of saviours, religions, belief in redemption, higher standards of living, endlessly re-enact the habits of the past. We have taught them hatred, cruelty, fear. A father asks his son what he will do when he meets the enemy. The boy, loving his father, hesitates, uncertain. He cannot imagine the answer expected: "You will kill him." That is the legacy of father to son in a warrior culture: the soul's innocence and trust raped by indoctrination. Why is this happening still? And the bombs rained down night after night upon the "enemy": the "intelligent" missiles aimed to destroy the infrastructure of the military machine, hurled from planes painted with images of scythe-wielding death and the word "Apocalypse". How appropriate that word. Missiles tipped with depleted uranium, radioactive ceramic designed to bring slow death years later; Missiles targeting oil refineries, bridges, communications. "You cannot have war without casualties." Immaculate objective words - remote from the experience of being in the path of a missile: a lion leaping upon you, no time to prepare for extinction. We cannot yet see our shadow. We cannot yet see that the continued invention of ever more terrible weapons perpetuates war. We cannot yet see that the proliferation of demonic agents of death ultimately invites our own destruction. The people of the world ache for deliverance from belligerent, psychopathic leaders, from servitude to the ancient belief that there are only two alternatives: power or powerlessness; victory, defeat. And the dead? Prisoners between dimensions the dead ache for release from the cycle of vengeance so they do not have to return to ancestral soil to repeat the bloody pattern of sacrifice, the hatred between peoples who could have been reconciled centuries ago, but for their leaders, but for their priests, but for their inability to renounce the evil of killing the other who is also the brother. Listen to the Good News, they said… How foolish we are to believe that we are redeemed. Surely we must accomplish our own redemption by renouncing the illusion that some of us are closer to God than others. Surely we must redeem Christ from the crucifixion continually re-enacted in the rape of our sister, the murder of our brother, before we speak of redemption, before we speak of the Good News, before we, the dead, can hope for resurrection. [No Easter Cease-fire In Kosovo, April 09, 1999]

#Poetry #anne baring #kosovo #war poetry #human rights

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asexualzoro · 6 years

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list of reasons I find zoro ridiculous

after my similarly titled mihawk post took off I decided to make a zoro post, since he’s my second favorite character and also arguably the most ridiculous character in all of One Piece. here we go

- I know what you’re all thinking. i’m gonna open this list with how he wields three swords, right? no. no, Zoro has done so much ridiculous bullshit, this doesn’t even seem weird anymore. i don’t even bat my eye at this. this is nothing. now that i’ve got that out of the way, let’s begin

- this dude has like, an obsession with cutting off his own limbs? and MAYBE i can understand trying to cut his feet off when they were stuck in wax—you’re trying to save your friends, i get it—but what about when he was sword shopping in loguetown? who’s first response when buying a cursed sword and testing if it’s really cursed is “i’ll toss it in the air n see if I get amputated lol.” plus there’s that old filler where luffy gets his finger stuck in a bottle and, when he asks zoro for help getting it out, zoro tries to CUT IT OFF. im convinced he lost that left eye of his bc he got dust or something in it and then tried to stab it out

- there’s like, several occasions where Zoro has been directed to head up a staircase and gone some other direction. it happened in enies lobby and in dressrosa? like, what’s the dude got against stai—... oh, wait

- his reintroduction post timeskip. get on the wrong boat? just cut it in half! who even cares! how’d you even end up on the wrong boat? you had to walk towards that boat, which means looking at the boat. that boat looked nothing like the sunny, wouldn’t zoro have noticed that? he also has to make an effort to climb on, which means, you guessed it, looking at the boat! he probably sees the crew members, maybe even gets helped up by one or a few. how did he not at any point in time notice that wasn’t his boat?

- also when they landed on sabaody the first time and zoro was like “i’m gonna go take a walk!” and both Sanji and Usopp tried to stop him, talking to him like concerned parents of a troublemaking toddler, like “Zoro you can’t go out there you’ll get lost!” to which Zoro replies “yeah but the grottos are numbered, I can find my way back if I just remember the number!” and Sanji and Usopp are like “okay, solid logic, even YOURE not dumb enough to mess that up” and what does Zoro do? what does he fucking do?

- I want to emphasize he messes it up because a bubble covers the 4 in “Grotto 41” so he thinks it’s grotto 1. BUBBLES. ARE. TRANSPARENT

- “sorry, I don’t pray to god” fuckin edgelord

- Zoro’s epithet is “Pirate Hunter” and it’s super lame. he could’ve been “Demon of the East Blue” but they went with pirate hunter, even though he became a pirate. even Chopper’s is better than his lbr

- THERES A SCENE WHERE SANJI THREATENS TO PUT RAZOR BLADES IN ZOROS FOOD N ZOROS LIKE “do it u won’t” SO SANJI DOES AND ZORO JUST EATS THEM? ODA EVEN GOT ASKED ABOUT IT IN AN SBS AND CONFIRMED YES, ZORO DID IN FACT EAT RAZOR BLADES. THIS 2EDGY4U BITCH JUST. STRAIGHT UP. ATE RAZOR BLADES

- in film gold he wears that black jacket under the white one. mind you he had no way of knowing he would be trapped in gold by tesoro or that they’d all have a dramatic coordinated outfit change once he was free so what the fuck was he doing? why did he wear that? who wears two jackets for no reason?

- “if i’m gonna be a statue I want it to be in this pose” “i’m glad I struck a pose”

- remember when zoro fought mr. 1 in alabasta and mr. 1 dropped a stone building on him and he was just like “this is a rocky day” or smth equally awful? i hate him

- the tarzan yell in skypiea

- actually, the goggles too.

- didn’t he try to convince someone he was fighting they were sunglasses bc they had some blinding light-based attack? I feel like he did but I don’t remember skypiea well enough to be sure

- Zoro vs the bird in skypiea. spent a fair amount of the damn arc running around skypiea getting messed w by a bird (which, according to Luffy, was more evolved than Zoro bc it had developed a sense of direction. burned by ur own captain)

- when asked why Zoro was able to speak with a sword in his mouth, oda said “IT’S HIS HEART SPEAKING”

- that colorspread Zoro where he reads a book about weightlifting while balancing a weight on top

- when Zoro fights that masochist guy in film gold (I think his name was dice?) and said some cocky ass one liner after the guy fell unconscious that went something like “What's wrong? Didn't it feel good? Aren't you gonna scream in pleasure?" awful

- Zoro almost gets murdered by Mihawk and then, later that day, tries to take on fishmen underwater. others r like “you cannot handle this, you will literally die” and Zoro doesn’t even care bc Luffy is in trouble

- he was sailing bc he left home to find mihawk and then couldn’t figure out how to get back

- remember that filler where Zoro taught Luffy how to skate but then forgot to teach him how to turn. I love both that this happened and the implication that Zoro is a person who knows how to roller skate and therefore has spent time roller skating. Zoro roller skating backstory when?

- when Zoro was fighting oz, a 500 year old corpse, he licked his sword. now, on top of licking his sword being ridiculous as hell because, listen, there’s NOTHING cool about licking your sword. you just look like a loser. but a sword that just came out of a 500 year old corpse? really? i know it was preserved by the cold and all but there’s no way it didn’t rot at all. that’s a rotted, frozen corpse. Zoro what in the HELL were you thinking. I hope you get sick

- i’m sure it probably wasn’t even the first time he licked his sword in a fight but I will say with absolute confidence he looked like a loser every single time

- I feel like he licked his sword while facing mr 1 but I can’t remember. if he did, that’s honestly iconic. stare down a dude that’s made of swords while licking yours? power move. only decent time to kick your sword

- Zoro, joining Luffy: “if you stand in the way of my dream i’ll kill you!” Zoro, a day later: “of course i’ll carry my captain in this heavy cage on my back to safety. oh this gaping wound in my side? nothing. who cares about bleeding to death, my captain needs me!”

- all those big weights he’s got. all of them.

- especially that time he was lifting weights post thriller bark after barely surviving kuma, still heavily injuries, complaining about how weak he is. buddy...

- that time in drum island where he decided to train by going swimming in the freezing ice-country water, then when he got out he got lost in the snowy mountains until he wandered into a random battle and took out some guy just to steal his coat

- this isn’t the only time he steals some random dude’s coat

- the chimney.

- that filler in smiles lobby where he gets, like, abducted by a bunch of children for a day and integrated into their family?

- Roronoa Zoro went fursuiting in dressrosa and that’s a canon fact you all must acknowledge

- speaking of being a furry anyone remember mugiwara theater?

- THE FUCKING MUGIWARA THEATER NAMES. mugiwara theater is a gift, alright? here’s some: nakamura hanzorou. zobear. ZOROMILK

- I FORGOT TO MENTION. THAT TIME ZORO N USOPP WERE HANDCUFFED TOGETHER AND ZORO TRIED TO CONVINCE USOPP TO PLAY ROCK PAPER SCISSORS WITH HIM TO SEE WHICH ONE OF THEM WOULD HAVE TO CUT THEIR HAND OFF

- also the fact that his logic was “it’ll be fine cuz chopper can just sew it back on”

- can we also talk abt how later that fight he uses Usopp as a sword because holy shit Zoro

- this isn’t technically zoro’s fault but the guy who sold him his sword to him in loguetown has a giant version of bounty image up above his bath, which........

- barto asked for zoro’s autograph and Zoro just wrote “sword”

- the grave of the rumbar pirates was finished right around when Zoro woke up from his coma post thriller bark and Zoro decided to walk over while Brook is sitting there mourning almost everyone he ever loved and just. plops his sword—an inanimate object—in the dirt by the grave of BROOKS ENTIRE CREW like “hey i’m gonna bury this here u don’t mind tho right? cool”

- he’s lucky Brook is such a cool dude cuz if I was mourning the death of MY crew and some fuck decided to plant a rusty sword there i’d just fuckin kill em

- in Zou they were talking abt whatever and Luffy mentioned how Sanji was as strong as one thousand men and Zoro, clearly jealous that Sanji got praised by Luffy, butt in with a stuttery objection on how HE was stronger than Sanji and worth TWO THOUSAND men, which luffy ignored, and Nami had to reassure him that yes, Zoro, we know you’re strong. toddler

- this is also not technically zoro’s fault but one time someone asked oda in an sbs which strawhats would eat ice in their drink and oda answered who would n wouldn’t (Luffy, Chopper, Brook, Usopp, and Robin would, if ur wondering). Zoro was on the wouldn’t list, and some fan sent oda a letter informing him of a panel where Zoro was shown eating ice to disprove this. someone pulled zoro ice eating receipts on oda and that’s a fact we all have to live with

- the first time Zoro meets mihawk—the strongest man in the world, the man he wants to defeat someday, and incredibly powerful and impressive dude—he cries like a baby

- zoro’s been crucified like 4 times now. once in his introduction than in three movies (6, gold, nebulandia). idk why this keeps happening but honestly? keep it up

- when Brook joined the crew, Zoro said he was sorry for Brooks bad luck as if one of the first things Brook ever saw Zoro do wasn’t to try and die for the crew via Giant Paw Ball of Pain

- speaking of, i’m pretty sure half the reason zoro DIDNT die in thriller bark is because if he died via smth as silly as a giant paw ball his injured pride would kill him again

- I was going to make fun of Zoro for wearing only a suit and a fake mustache in dressrosa as a disguise but then I realized, like, given how absolutely shredded Zoro was in Punk Hazard and how that suit somehow managed to squish it all down without zoro ripping the sleeves off? solid disguise

- when merry was burning and everyone’s bawling and remembering great memories on the ship and Zoro was standing there, 100% stoic, remembering a nap

- Zoro saw marines (Garp) coming to Water 7 while Luffy was still unconscious and ran off to warn the others but couldn’t find his way back to the hotel

- that G8 filler where he falls off a cliff in pursuit of his swords

- speaking of fillers, remember that amnesia one? (ha). highlights include Zoro trying to physically fight a small sea horse (plus Usopp doing a bad lip-syncing) and Zoro swimming through the Grand Line with his swords tied to his head by his bandana

- meets a dragon, eats the dragon

- it got mentioned once that Sanji and Nami canonly help Zoro and the other guys get dressed. so every time Zoro wears something absolutely ridiculous (which is often), it’s probably Sanjis doing

- “I can’t believe I cut a freaking booger!!”

- speaking of, remember that time Luffy flicked a booger into Zoro’s drink at the Baratie and Zoro tried to force him to drink it?? remember that?? I hate them both

- that time Zoro was trying to find the Right Eye in Skypiea, said that (though the path to get there was STRAIGHT AHEAD) all he had to do to find the right eye was just keep going right (even though that would just lead him in circles!). and then after that do you know what direction he went?? do you know?? he fucking went left

- the time Zoro got lost walking on a straight path in a filler.

- Zoro lost to a guy in a fight and just fucking let the dude cut him in half. like, yes, the baratie scene was all cool as all hell and I love it but Zoro did in fact basically invite a dude to cut him in half

- when they were hit by negative hollows and everyone else said stuff that was kinda funny but Zoro went straight up “I don’t deserve to exist” please honey talk to someone

- he was fighting Kaku and kept engaging in Kaku’s devil fruit bs and then berating himself for being uncool as if he wasn’t already fighting a giant giraffe

- to end this list, I want to get to Zoro’s absolute worst offense. remember when Zoro fought Kaku and he did that asura form thing? where he straight up grew four extra arms and two extra heads, all wielding swords? what the FUCK was that? and don’t tell me “fighting spirit” alright. that’s bull. people don’t just GROW EXTRA SWORD-WIELDING BODY PARTS because they’re just REALLY INTO a FIGHT. like I know this is One Piece and shit’s ridiculous all this time but this? this is too much. even for One Piece this is too much. this is so ridiculous. there has to be a line, even in One Piece, with what these guys are allowed to get away with. I can accept haki so good you can see the future. I can accept spinning so fast you set your leg on fire. I can accept being made of springs. I can accept booger bombs. I can accept all that and more, but this? this is where i take my stand. Roronoa Zoro cannot keep getting away with this! fighting spirit is just not an explanation. and the worst part? the absolute worst part?

- Zoro makes four extra limbs and two extra heads, all armed with swords, MATERIALIZE out of THIN AIR with absolutely NO REAL EXPLANATION and then pretty much NEVER DOES IT AGAIN! he did it once in sabaody (and once in strong world) and then hasn’t done it since! everyone else uses the power ups they got in enies lobby all the time but Zoro, somewhere out there, knows how fuckin sick this attack is (bc yeah it’s ridiculous as hell but like I still enjoy it) and he just won’t do it again. not once post timeskip has he used it at all. Roronoa Zoro knows what he’s doing and he is out there, right now, laughing

- roronoa zoro is one of my top three favorite one piece characters and I make this list entirely out of love. (feel free to add on more moments I may have missed and i’ll add them)

#One Piece #roronoa zoro #Zoro #im making a tag for these lists and it is:#ridiculous lists #I love this man. hes awful and I love him #I also want you all to know ive had this list in my notes for like a month and ive been adding to it this whole time #roronoa Zoro is a piece of work #my posts

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nikkideez10 · 6 years

Photo

O I saw this and I just had to do it for my Inquisitor, Herah. Original poster please PM so I can link you! Herah’s story is also being told in my AO account. See link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11280537?view_full_work=true

—————————————————————————————

WHO are they ?

† Name: Herah Adaar

† Title: Inquisitor

† Nickname: Tempest, Sparky, Legs (thanks Varric)

† Pronouns: She/Her

† Body Type: Tall, muscular arms and legs, but also hella’ curvy

† General Appearance: Qunari. 6′8 feet tall. Amber colored eyes, ash grey hair, various scars, with one that runs down her right eye and cheek. She also has several tattoos and piercings all over (Bull likes to trace them).

† Sexuality: Heterosexual

† Catchphrase/Motto: “Well… shit.”

WHEN were they born ?

† D.O.B: Exact date unknown (she was born in Kirkwall under some… difficult circumstances…) but she knows it was close to Umbralis so she celebrates her birthday during Satinalia, cuz why not?

WHERE are they ?

† Place of Origin: Free Marches, near Starkhaven.

† Current Residence: Skyhold, bitches. And it has a lot of Qunari stuff decorating it. ;)

WHAT defines them ?

† Race: Qunari Tal-Vashoth

† Class: Rogue, Duel-Wielding

† Specialization: Assassin (she loves being a Murder Hurricane)

† Alignment: Chaotic Good, for the most part… she has a good heart but often ignores/forgets the “rules.”

† Vices: PTSD, part-time alcoholic, doesn’t trust easily, has issues with religion & the the Qun, loves being sarcastic.

† Virtues: Is fluent in Qunlat, Elfish, and Common. Friendly, funny, self-sacrificing, determined, and a decent guitar player. She also loves to cook.

HOW did they come to be?

† History: Herah and her twin brother Kaaras were born in Kirkwall, a year after her parents left Seheron. Once Qun followers born in Par Vollen, her parents grew up in the same kith. When they were children, Herah’s father, Notas, discovered that Herah’s mother, Asaaranda, was a mage, and helped her hide her magic. Then, later, when she was discovered and made saarabas, he became her arvaarad. After leaving Seheron, they ended up in Kirkwall, where they had Herah and Kaaras, Herah’s twin brother.

However, after they found out that the Arishock on his way, they left and settled in a small village in the Free marches, just outside of Starkhaven. The town had several Dalish aravels located nearby so Herah got to know several Dalish elves well enough to learn how to speak elvish fluently, along with her parents and her brother.

Herah’s father eventually became a weapons smith and even managed to purchase his very own mine. Her mother became a med-mage and midwife. When it was discovered that Kaaras also had magic, Herah’s father started to teach Herah how to fight, discovering that she had a talent with knives and daggers. He taught her to the point that she could rival even him, hoping that she could help protect her brother.

However things soured, and took a turn for the worst when Herah and Kaaras were fourteen. Kaaras secretly had found an ancient elfin text that taught him how to control demons, and one day used the text to accidentally summon a despair demon, which attempts to take control of Kaaras and turn him into an abomination.

Seeing that there was no choice, Herah killed her brother in order to stop him from becoming an abomination. Her parents were obviously devastated, and feeling that her home was no longer home, Herah left and became a merceary for hire, nearly cutting all ties to her parents except for the odd letter home, here and there over the years.

After working with various with several mercenary groups, Herah eventually joined the Valo-Kas. At the time they were under the command of a Qun follower named Korrath. At first Korrath treated Herah well, but after two years, and after Herah had grown up a bit, Korrath started to find her attractive and would often get drunk and harass her, going so far as to try to assault Herah, Herah often having to seek the others for safety.

Then, one night, when Herah was around eighteen years old, Korrath got horribly drunk and tried to rape Herah. Unable to tolerate the abuse much longer, as well as fearing for her life, Herah lost control and ended up stabbing Korrath in the eye with one of her daggers. That was when Korrath’s second-in-command, Shokrakar, took command, and things got steadily better and more stable.

Ten years later Herah was at the Conclave of the Temple of Sacred Ashes, when all hell broke loose, and Herah found herself to be the sole survivor of the terrible explosion that killed everyone else, including Divine Justinia. Now finding herself carrying some odd, magical mark, Herah sees that she has no choice but to step up and become the hero the rest of Thedas apparently need her to be… which she does… kicking and screaming.

† Family Life: Chaotic. Herah’s parents are former Qunari, now Tal-Vashoth, and even though they left the Qun, they still had trouble adapting to life in Thedas, so often had to rely on thier children to speak with outsiders. Along with her brother, Kaaras, Herah was often mistreated by local villagers, and would often have to resort to violence, her brother being the pacifist of the family. Then, after she was forced to kill her brother to save him from becoming an abomination, Herah left home and became a mercenary, cutting ties with them until after she became the Inquisitor.

† Spiritual Beliefs: Agnostic, but does believe in the Maker. Has her doubts about everything else.

CONNECTIONS:

† Family: Notas Adaar (father, a former arvaarad now a weapons merchant), Asaaranda Adaar (mother, former saarabas, now a med-mage and midwife), younger sister, Saya, an apostate mage that was born after she left home.

† Romance: Iron Bull. First they were just sex buddies… but later it became… more… Now they married and got two babies. So there.

† Friends: Dorian is her ‘besty,’ followed by Varric and Cassandra. Herah secretly adores everyone, but those are her top three.

† Enemies Basically anyone stupid enough to tell her ‘no.’ Oh and Coriphishits.

DECISIONS:

† Mages or Templars?: I know that this isn’t the most popular choice, but Templars. Herah’s twin brother was an Apostate Mage, along with her mother. But her brother was also corrupted by a demon and almost turned into a abomination, which Herah believes could have been avoided had he had the proper training and the protection of a Templar Order.

† Throne of Orlais?: Empress Celene survives the assassination. Gaspard gets his head cut off and Briala plots from the Shadows, cuz screw everything having a happy ending.

† Fate of the Wardens?: Allies of the Inquisition, just to make everyone else nervous and cuz Blackwall needs something to do…

† Fate of the Inquisition?: Peace Keepers. ‘Nuff said.

† Plans for Solas?: Befriended for now, if he’s willing to knock off the BS, or kill if he doesn’t… yea Herah wants to help the elves and all that but not to the point that everyone else has to freaking DIE. Crazy egg head.

#herah adaar #dragon age #my inquisitor

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joyfullynervouscreator · 7 years

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Silver and Amethyst ch1

I wrote this a while back, as my background for the Ri-parents in Dwelf-’verse.

@life-is-righteous

Chapter 1

Arnóra tossed her mithril locks over her shoulder with a slight huff of annoyance. The braids her Adad had plaited this morning were beautiful, but she wished he had put them differently, binding her hair closer to her skull so she wouldn’t have to keep pushing small curls out of her face. Adad loved her hair long and flowing, however, always telling her how much she looked like her Amad that way, which was why Arnóra didn’t complain, even when the loose hair annoyed her at work. Amad had been the most beautiful Dwarf in Erebor, Adad said, and though she had died giving birth to Arnóra’s baby brother, he still missed her every day.

The young wire-weaver apprentice knew she was beautiful, her shiny mithril locks her most prominent feature, but the lovely hair was paired with a well-shaped face and a body that could turn heads. She was too young to care much about finding love, only just turned sixty-three and still just a journeyman, but she knew that her looks would eventually have suitors vying for her hand. It amused her slightly when she caught Master Járngrímr staring; she hadn’t much interest in the other metal-crafters who sighed after her, and Járngímr was old – almost 220, she thought, and so fat it was rumoured he had crushed his wife in bed thirty years ago. The Master Engineer was unspeakably dull, but he paid her own Master well for the copper and bronze wires they made for his work, so Master Rudi tended to allow him in the workshop.

Turning her attention back to the thin gold wire she was pulling, Arnóra put all thoughts of Járngrímr’s gaze from her mind. If she did well, perhaps Master Rudi would let her spend a few minutes each day making a pendant for Norin’s Nameday? She had already decided on a design, and maybe her friend Hornbori would carve lucky runes into the pretty aventurine cabochon she had chosen for the center? Thoughts full of plans and reminders to herself, Arnóra completed her tasks with a smile on her face.

Later, as she was thrown against a wall, bleeding from a split lip and trying to keep Járngrímr from pulling up her skirts, she regretted ignoring the way he had stared at her. If she had asked Eyfura to walk home with her, or been more aware of her surroundings, perhaps she wouldn’t be here, fighting for her virtue if not her life. He had broken one of her wrists already, and the bloody nose she had repaid him with had not slowed him down in the least. She couldn’t hear herself screaming, nor did she catch more than the distant sound of a roar, but suddenly Járngrímr was gone, and some Dwarf she did not know was standing before her. His face, pointy in profile, was contorted in a fearsome snarl, and when she managed to move her eyes past the fine-boned hands that were agilely blocking Járngrímr’s more clumsy blows, she realised that one of the dwarf’s knives was embedded in the engineer’s shoulder. With a move she could not follow, the stranger had a knife at Járngrímr’s throat, poised to slit it.

“Don’t!” Arnóra didn’t know who called out to stop the murderous stranger, but when he looked at her questioningly, she realised it had been her.

“Don’t what?” the knife-wielding dwarf asked, in a surprisingly pleasant voice. Arnóra gaped. The whole thing had happened so fast; it was slightly unreal. Her heart hammered in her chest, her breath coming in quick pants as her mind whirled. Staring at the tableau in front of her, she felt like she was in a bad dream, but the deadly calm of the dark-clad stranger told her otherwise. He did not prompt her again for a reason; apparently content simply to look at her while calmly threatening a fat dwarf’s life until she gathered her thoughts.

“Don’t kill him.” Arnóra said, surprising herself. Járngrímr opened his mouth to say something, but he thought better of it when the stranger’s blade nicked the soft skin beneath his bushy beard. A drop of blood painted a vivid crimson streak against his walnut skin. The stranger did not reply. “Please.” Arnóra continued. She didn’t know why it mattered, but she somehow didn’t want the strange Dwarf to have Járngrímr’s blood on his hands.

“I can’t just let him go, either,” the stranger with the red-brown hair replied, with the same level voice he might have used if they were discussing the merits of ale over beer rather than someone’s life. Arnóra shook her head. A distant thought told her that she should be concerned to be in the company of someone who held so little respect for life, but something about the stranger’s grey eyes made her feel safe in his presence. “You clearly didn’t want his attentions, and you look a bit young for such games anyhow. This dwarf is a criminal, Miss, and I really don’t like rapists…” his voice continued evenly, though his eyes darkened when he mentioned what might have so easily happened – if he had not been nearby, surely the fat dwarf would eventually have succeeded.

“Take him to the Guard. I want the whole Mountain to know what he tried to do.” Suddenly furious, Arnóra spat at Járngrímr’s feet. “I want the King to see the scum that walk these Halls. The Way is clear-” Arnóra wondered if her unknown saviour knew she was the eldest daughter of Lawmaker Rúnvidr, but it didn’t really matter; all Dwarrow were taught these laws. “-let him be judged by the Maker and the King. He does not deserve the mercy of a quick death.”

“Vengeance and Beauty,” the stranger mused, mirth glittering in his deep grey eyes. “So be it, my Lady. For you, I shan’t kill this piece of Orc-bait. You will have to go to the Guard with me, however: They’ll want your testimony.” Arnóra nodded.

Much later, when one of the Guards’ runners had fetched her Adad, followed by her teary sister Norin carrying little Lokki, and Rúnvidr had assured himself of his daughter’s well-being, Arnóra finally realised that she never even asked for the name of her saviour. Looking around for him, however, proved fruitless: the stranger with the grey eyes had disappeared as though he had never been there at all. When she asked the Guard on duty, he told her that he had no idea who the dwarf was, but that he’d left a sworn statement of the event in question marked with a mysterious ‘N’-rune.

Natfári, who had been on his way home when he spotted the altercation down one of the narrow shortcuts that on the surface would be called alleyways, had not wished to give his true name when he brought in the scum Járngrímr. Not that he wasn’t proud to have caught the would-be rapist, but Natfári the Guard was supposed to be protecting a trade caravan heading to the Iron Hills, not prowling the narrow streets of Erebor as the sneak-thief and grifter Radulf. He was especially not supposed to be carrying the Black Feather, though showing the small agate token to the Captain on duty had conveniently made all questions disappear quietly. He had purposefully taken the shaken young dam – she had struck him as particularly observant, even if she forgot to ask his name – to a Guardhouse he was not posted at in his official job, and trusted that the Captain would know what the small feather represented. Personally, he would have preferred to cut off a few important – to Master Járngrímr, at least – braids and or appendages, but he appreciated the young lady’s courage. Few so young would have dared accuse a Master of Járngrímr’s status of any wrong-doing, much less attempted rape, even with a witness. He sensed more mithril in her spine than her hair, which surprised him at first: beautiful ladies did not usually have as much spirit as Arnóra showed during the attack. In his experience, daughters of noblemen – Lawmakers might rank relatively low in Court hierarchy, but Rúnvidr was still the youngest son of a noble house – were not used to the kind of fighting necessary to fend off such an assault. The broken nose she had delivered had been a thing of beauty, and if Járngrímr hadn’t gotten both her arms behind her back and his hand around her throat, Natfári would have enjoyed watching her pummel him some more. Rubbing his thigh with a wince, he walked back towards the small alleyway. Járngrímr - too slow and too fat to be much of a threat to him – had not managed to land a blow, but Arnóra’s hard iron-toed boot had left its mark when she tried to kick the Master Engineer just as he pushed him away from his would-be victim. Picking up the small knife she had dropped – he had left his own blade in Járngrímr’s shoulder – Natfári shook his head, a slightly incredulous smile on his face. Had she really been armed with only an eating knife? Resolving to give Arnóra a proper blade at the first opportunity that presented itself and heavily suggest that she learn to use it, Natfári pocketed the small knife, not even questioning whether it was his place to see to her protection.

When she finally fell asleep, Arnóra did not dream of Járngrímr’s sweaty face. Instead, her sleep was filled with the gentle mocking laughter of a black-clad stranger with grey eyes and a strangely familiar scent of roses. Amad had dabbed rose oil behind her ears when she was going out with Adad, she remembered, but felt confused by the dream nonetheless. She didn’t think the mysterious ‘N’ had been using the same trick, though she hadn’t noticed what he smelled like at the time.

In the morning, when she opened her eyes, a small parcel had been left on her windowsill. Looking down at the three-meter long drop from her window to the street, she wondered how anyone had gotten the parcel into her room. There were no other windows in the wall than hers, and the nearest neighbour was too far to climb easily. Opening the fabric wrapping, she was surprised to find a small dagger inside. At the base of the blade, a small feather had been etched. The dagger was perfectly balanced, made from superior quality steel, with a large amethyst set in the pommel. Tied to the leather-wrapped handle was a scrap of paper with a scrawled ‘N’. Thinking that there might have been a letter from her mysterious saviour, she pawed at the fabric, but found no note accompanying the gift. The fabric turned out to be a large shawl, embroidered with silver thread, like the kind Master Rudi sold, around the edge in a pattern of square knots. It smelled faintly of roses. When Adad came in to see why she wasn’t appearing for breakfast, he found her still seated on her bed, with the shawl lightly wrapped around her shoulders as she stared at the beautiful blade in her hands.

“What’s that, Zunshfall mim?” Rúnvidr asked quietly.

“I think it is a gift… from the dwarf who saved me.” Arnóra replied, slightly confused. “Though I do not understand how he knew that you call me Little Feather…” she trailed off, showing off the mark etched into the blade.

“I guess it is simply a decorative symbol, Arnóra,” Rúnvidr said calmly, though his heart jumped when he saw the design clearly. He knew whose position the feather symbol belonged to. “It is a fine blade. You will have to think of a proper gift of gratitude in return.” He would, of course, use different channels to convey his own personal gratitude – and not think about why the Spymaster of Erebor would be wandering around delivering gifts to young dwarrowdams… unless… had the mysterious ‘N’, about whom the guard had been so clueless, actually been the Spymaster himself? He would need to make certain enquiries. If ‘N’ and the Black Owl were one and the same, precautions would have to be taken when the matter was put before the King.

“I cannot, Adad.” Arnóra replied, unable to keep a note of sadness from creeping into her voice at the idea. If she could not thank the giver, it felt wrong to keep the blade, though she already felt quite possessive of it. “I do not know his name, nor where he could be found.”

“Well… think about it, Zunshfall. If he could manage to deliver a gift to your window, I’m sure he could manage to retrieve one too.” Rúnvidr wasn’t entirely comfortable with that knowledge considering what might have just happened with Járngrímr, but if the mysterious ‘N’ truly was the Black Owl, there could be no harm in trying to thank him for his timely assistance… and if he wasn’t, there’d be no harm done for making the attempt. In either case, the smile on his beloved daughter’s face made him happy.

“I will, Adad!” Arnóra laughed, hugging the knife to her chest.

“Good girl. Now, time for breakfast. I’ve asked Journeyman Hargan next door to walk you to Master Rudi’s and back home at the end of the day.” Even if Arnóra saw it as curbing her freedom, he would rather she be annoyed with him than ever have to face that same dread he had yesterday when he was informed by a Guard runner as to the reason for her being late for dinner.

Arnóra nodded her compliance easily. She didn’t mind Hargan’s company, really; he’d been a playmate of sorts when they were younger, and was a nice enough dwarf. He was also the bulkiest muscle-bound dwarf she knew, which was probably why Adad had asked him. Hargan worked for Master Tindri, a few streets from Master Rudi’s workshop, so she’d need to leave a little earlier than usual to keep him from being late to his own work. “Yes, Adad.” Arnóra pecked his cheek quickly before leaving the room, her mind already spinning with ideas for a proper thank-you for her mysterious saviour.

Elsewhere in Erebor, Natfári crept along the shadows that would keep passers-by from noticing him when he entered the Royal Palace. He would have to explain to King Thrór why his mark had been stamped – inking the Black Feather was so messy, but the mark was almost impossible to forge – on the Guard’s report, as well as the documents that would be delivered to the Court Scribes in preparation for a Trial in front of the King. If they had been Men, the crime might have been handled by a magistrate or a Lawman of the First Degree, but among their kin, females were so rare that any violation of one was considered a crime against the Maker himself. Natfári sometimes wondered how women – that was what Men called their dams, he knew – felt safe walking alone in dark streets when an attacker like Járngrímr could be let off with paying a small fine. With the Spymaster himself as a witness, there was no way Járngrímr would be able to buy the Guards’ silence, even if he had not been placed under the careful watch of Captain Mundi, who was utterly devoted to the protection of dwarrowdams in general and so honourable that even Natfári’s extensive network of spies and informants had had to agree that he was an entirely upstanding citizen. In truth, the good Captain had been one of Natfári’s personal favourites among the Guard even before he accepted the small token of his unofficial office. When the news of the arrest broke – and it would be all over the Mountain by midmorning, or Natfári would be sorely disappointed with his underlings – there was bound to be an uproar. That was another reason he had chosen Mundi’s garrison as the place to deliver Járngrímr – Mundi would not be tempted to give in to a vigilante mob, nor did he hold truck with excessive ‘justice’ administered in the criminal’s cell like some guards Natfári knew.

“Lord Nár,” he said quietly, enjoying the way the nobledwarf always jumped when he suddenly appeared from the shadows. “I trust the day finds you well.”

“And you, Abhârzunsh,” Nár replied with an even nod. “I take it you’re here about the report that landed on my desk this morning?”

“About the Nergakart[1] I intervened in, yes,” Natfári replied with what he meant as a pleasant smile, though it came out looking more than a little sinister judging by the way Nár seemed to shrink a little. The King’s advisor rallied quickly, however.

“Yes, a most disconcerting notion – to think I had him round for supper last month!” Nár babbled, looking ill at the thought that he could have shared ale and meat with someone of such despicable nature. “Anyway, King Thrór will see you in his study.”

With a bow, Natfári was gone, leaving Nár to the mess of papers that covered his desk and making his way to the King’s study. When he entered, however, he was slightly surprised to find Prince Thráin standing by the fire, while the King sat behind his desk. The Prince did not generally concern himself with everyday ruling – King Thrór had squashed any such desires ruthlessly, believing his son too weak to be a ruler and never realising that the scared boy who missed his Amad had grown into a thoughtful Dwarf with a good head on his shoulders, even if he was more soft-spoken than most guild masters.

“My King,” Natfári bowed politely, “and Prince Thráin,” he bowed again – only the Prince returned the gesture with a nod – “I hope the day finds you both well.”

“Explain yourself,” Thrór demanded. Natfári felt a little confused, surely the matter was crystal clear?

“Adad, the Abhârzunsh would not accuse someone baselessly, Lord Járngrímr clearly isn’t-” Thráin interjected, but Thrór’s harsh look silenced him abruptly.

“My King, I came across Master Járngrímr of House Reifr as he was attempting to force himself on a very unwilling dam in one of the smaller alleys of the Upper Commons. I intervened on the young lady’s behalf, having been alerted by her screams as I walked down the next street. Luckily I arrived in time to stop Master Járngrímr before irreparable damage was done to the young lady – whom I later learned had not even reached her coming of age – and delivered him to the safekeeping of Captain Mundi at the Moonstone Crescent Guardhouse.”

“Leave.” Thrór said, turning back to his papers. Thráin began moving towards the door, but Natfári stayed – when he needed to report like this, it was never done with in five minutes. “Both of you!” the King suddenly bellowed. Natfári jumped.

“Adad is.. not well, today,” the Prince said quietly, when Natfári stumbled out of the study, utterly perplexed. “Járngrímr is an old friend of his, I’m afraid. Do not worry, Abhârzunsh. Adad will do his duty by this young lady Arnóra.”

“Are you sure? That did not… seem like the Thrór I have come to know.” Natfári replied cautiously. Such talk could be considered treasonous, but Thráin did not react beyond a sigh.

“I fear that my Adad is growing old, Abhârzunsh, and the thought makes him ill-tempered as you saw.” Prince Thráin stopped, gesturing down a split in the corridor. “Now, please excuse me, I have to go inform the other Masters of the Engineer’s Guild that our esteemed member has been accused of Nergakart and will be convicted shortly. No one is going to be happy with that news.”

“I should hope they would be pleased that a vicious attack was thwarted and a young lady’s peace preserved,” Natfári replied waspishly.

“And they will be – at first-“ Thráin replied with a slight laugh, “but then they will begin bickering about who will take over Járngrímr’s apprentices, who has the most rights to his workshop – his heir or his senior journeyman, probably – and who should finish whatever commissions are on his books, and the squabble will be endless. I had hoped to spend my evening with Lady Frís, but I fear I shall have to cancel our plans. This guild meeting is like to take most of the night,” he sighed, and Natfári felt some sympathy for his upcoming trouble. He also found it slightly peculiar how openly Thráin spoke to him, whenever they actually met, but he had not yet found a satisfying answer to that puzzle. Instead, he simply bade the Prince a polite farewell, and went back to Nár’s office to write a more comprehensive report for Thrór’s later perusal.

The trial of attempted Nergakart was textbook. Though the perpetrator tried for leniency – claiming that nothing had actually happened – the Law was clear and Master Járngrímr found himself summarily shaved and exiled in short order. The only one remotely unhappy – even those who had liked him where ashamed now that they had not realised his darker nature sooner – to see him go was his newly assigned apprentice, who had to find a new Master willing to take one someone who was, if not tainted, then certainly a little shaded by having Járngrímr’s name on his papers.

Arnóra’s life continued peacefully. After the first gift of the dagger that now never left her side, there had been no further communications from ‘N’. Her adad was quietly relieved; he did not like owing people, and though he knew that if ever the Black Owl asked something in return for his daughter’s peace, he would pay it gladly, he was glad that the Spymaster seemed to have taken no further interest in Arnóra, whose mild infatuation faded as the years passed.

Natfári was happy that, on the few occasions he spotted Arnóra around Erebor, she was wearing the blade he had gifted to her. It had amused him to find an amethyst and silver pendant on her window sill the night after he had delivered the gift, but he had accepted the small token with a funny sort of gratitude. His sister had loved the intricate design, the thin silver wire shaped into spirals and waves around the central stone, interwoven in a delicate pattern. She – and her friends, once Nauma had showed off her new finery – had pestered him endlessly until he revealed the craftsdwarf and the result had been a steady source of work for Arnóra, who seemed to enjoy making the intricate pieces.

[1] Contraction of nerkhar gadra makartûna – supreme violence against a lady (of good standing). There is no Khuzdul word for a lady – the ûna ending makes any noun into a x-lady ie harrûna -> affinity-lady – so I’ve used the word/radicals for ‘she who is trusted’ to imply that the lady in question is believable.

#parents of Ri's #Dwelf-'verse #pre-hobbit #life in erebor #Silver and Amethyst

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